This is a guest post from our old friend Venessa Paech. Venessa worked with us at Arts Hub for a number of years, and has moved on to bigger and greater things as Community Manager with a major global internet content business.

Hi there,

I worked for Fiona and David at Arts Hub for several years, initially as an arts writer, then later as Editor and all round social media nerd.

These days I work as a Community Manager and I’ve been following Fiona and David’s niche content musings with interest. I thought it might be helpful to reflect on some community lessons I learned while at the Hub.

Endorphins and delight

Membership websites should stock up on Freddo Frogs

Fiona and David have already shared their chocolate frog tale. This small, delicious token of thanks for subscription was personal, fun, got people talking to each other (and us), and coming back for more. Who doesn’t want an endorphin rush associated with their business?

Community management professionals I’ve met are all over the power of the frog. Some local peers even cite Arts Hub as inspiration. This seemingly simple act generated oodles of good will and a critical forgiveness/trust buffer. Our members knew we cared and that we were trying. This way, when we screwed up (and we did), they gave us a chance to put it right and trusted that we weren’t in fact, trying to screw them.

Along with the endorphin rush is something marketers turn themselves inside out trying to bottle and peddle – delight. A mildly delirious mix of surprise, joy, playfulness and discovery, delight is community engagement 101 and Arts Hub nailed it with a milky amphibian.

Feedback – invite it, but only if you mean it (and buy a hazmat suit)

Fiona and David maintained a pro-active feedback loop with members and the market at large. They, we, were talking to members (lapsed, current and future) about what we were doing and why. We invited their opinions and ideas and explained how, why and when their feedback would play a part in shaping our services. It was hard work sustaining these conversations; giving them the time and care they needed; but we often reminded ourselves it was kind of the point (otherwise, who or what were we producing content for). It was also often painful. As Fiona and David have blogged here, people won’t always say what you want to hear and often they’ll make you the target of other issues in their lives. It’s annoying, and it’s worse now online than it was in 2000, but it’s unavoidable if you open the door and let the guests in.

The value of these conversations can soundly trump the standing on the edge of the cliff-ed-ness sensation they’ve been known to induce. Many businesses make overtures toward feedback but fail desperately with follow through (or in setting realistic expectations for follow through). It has to actually be a conversation, not feedback in a vacuum. And it has to be honest (certainly, not transparently duplicitous).

Brands and businesses are coming to comprehend the value opportunities embedded in social engagement and online community. But some still think they can have it both ways. They want to ‘add’ community and reap the benefits, without acknowledging that the hard bit is sticking your neck out and honouring community as constituency. In this time poor era, people don’t have time for your “community”. So unless you’re truly serving theirs as best you can, you’ll have a tough time of it.

A Hazmat suit can be useful!

It’s a perceptive democracy, where the freedom to have your say and the right to expect it will be duly noted is implicit. Whether you like it or not, self-scribed ‘members’ have a relationship to you and your product/service/website/ideas. Generally speaking, the best thing to do is to own up to that and make it mutually beneficial.

Don’t say you want feedback, unless you honestly do. Don’t say you’ll take opinions under consideration if you’ve already made up your mind and it’s immutable. Keep it real with people about where they sit in your universe. Own up to your mistakes and your anxieties. If you don’t, they’ll call you on it, plus, you’ll ose points with the karma fairies. If you can wear all of this, do it – it’s worth it.

Community voice (help it happen, then get out of the way)

Compelling content was always at the heart of the Arts Hub universe and early on Fiona and David recognised the significance and staying power of community as engine for ideas, innovation and output.

Member passions and curiosities closely informed our programming and our independence as a small editorial entity offered agility and freedom to present alternative narratives and perspectives.

But our greatest strength and success, in my mind, was as disintermediators. Our creative community peers and members told us they were tired of wrestling with traditional media gatekeepers to get attention for their work, and frustrated that when they actually scored that interview or profile piece, their voice was distorted by journalists beholden to their own egos or agendas.

So we made sure that when we talked to them, we let them take the lead and got out of the way. We steered clear of over-written commentary that showed off our writing skill, but obscured the subject and the point. We did our homework – not just because it enriched the end result, but also as a mark of respect to the community we were covering. We earned a reputation as accessible, equitable media makers by focusing on our brand ‘voice’ and letting the voices of our members take pride of place.

Importantly, we got that it wasn’t about us. We invited our community to tell their own stories, in their own voices. They felt they had every right to author an op-ed rebutting the one in The Australian about arts funding, and we agreed. They – and we – were interested in shaking up the critical establishment of their world.

Our members would write their stories (how a project came to be, their take on the arts budget, an insight into their process), we’d mentor them editorially, publish and distribute. It might reach fewer eyes and ears than a national newspaper or television network (these days… perhaps not), but our eyes and ears were self-selecting affiliates far more likely to absorb the content and follow through on any calls to action.

It seems so obvious, but it’s a lesson media and advertisers are still learning; find an authentic, personal frame of reference, or your signal will drown in a world of noise. That’s how you create sustained, honest relationships with audiences and consumers – the glue of community as enterprise. It’s a considered pas de deux, not a gaudy star search.

These days, disintermediation is tilting at mainstream, with self-publishing to the social web all in a days work if you’re a creative, content producer type. But Arts Hub was an early adopter of the philosophy and the team, led by Fiona and David practicing what they were preaching, proved it could be profitable. By making it about members and their needs, it was all about Arts Hub and how it was different from the pack.

Arts Hub was by created for a community, by members of that community. We nurtured and facilitated conversation and exchange around shared interests. We believed enough to let our members shape our editorial. By trusting in paid content, Fiona and David forced accountability to members – if we didn’t deliver, subscriptions would implode. It’s worth thinking about this as businesses grapple with the shrewdest way to monetise their communities of affinity. Members handing over hard earned cash is a sign of some pretty strong commitment on their part – and a pretty serious call to action for you as host or service provider.

Tethering your future to your member base is a scary thing to do. It’s a marriage. But it’s also tremendously powerful and you’ll struggle to reap the rewards of digital community without taking a similar leap. Take the plunge. Stock up on frogs.

Venessa Paech
www.twitter.com/venessapaech

Images: Flickr The Shopping Sherpa and Max Knight