Image courtesy of wharman

Why do people participate in Twitter chats? I’ve been thinking about that question a lot. I posed the question “what Twitter chats do you participate in and why?” on Twitter and Facebook. What came back was pretty consistent: people participate to get information, ideas, contribute to a community, and meet new people.

Gauri Salokhe participates in the #KMers (knowledge management) to network and learn, and it is well-organized:

Ed Nicholson participates in #agchat because the discussion and participants are diverse and contribute insights. Both Ed and Gauri noted great planning and moderation as a reason for continuing to join the chat.

Pamela Grow and Alison Rapping participate in the #NPCons chat for the people and insights:

Avi Kaplan loves the #4change chat because it is his community:

Leora Wenger participates in the #smallbizchat for the information and fellow contributors:

And me? I participate in the monthly #NPCons chat (nonprofit consultants). I keep coming back because it is thought-provoking, includes a very diverse group of smart people, introduces me to new tweeps, brings me into a community, and is incredibly well-moderated. I also consider it an important time for “professional development” every month – in other words, the content is strong.

I think people on twitter are craving community, not just individual engagement. Think about it: on Facebook you have Pages and Groups. On Linkedin there are Groups. On blogs, Buzz and YouTube we can follow conversations and watch them evolve. But on Twitter we are stuck with this clunky mechanism where we have to view conversations separately, and cannot even follow complete conversations. At 140 characters, most conversations die out after three exchanges -  maximum.

Twitter chats fills our craving for community. In a chat, we meet like-minded people and sharing knowledge in community. Twitter chats are the Groups of Twitter.

If I were to create a “recipe” for a Twitter chat, I’d start with the great information my colleagues offered:

• Organize it around a conversation, with endless topical ideas. For example: small business, being a great consultant, pitching to the media, working with volunteers, mommy blogging, etc.
• Create community. You could invite people personally to the chat (like Hildy Gottlieb does before every #NPCons chats – it works), retweet great comments during the chat, connect people together afterwards, etc.
• Think about what insights people want to gain and design conversations around that. Have great guests that can converse about the insights people want.
• Be consistent. “Same bat time, same bat hashtag” every month.
• Planning and good moderation are critical. How many moderators do you need? How will you moderate?
• Recruit diverse participants. Encourage a diverse participant base who will bring others into the community and who represent many different viewpoints.
  

I’ll leave the last word to Leora Wenger:

If you participate in a twitter chat, what keeps you coming back? If you host one, what makes it successful? What have been the challenges?

Resources:

The best compilation of Twitter chats is this Twitter chat schedule, compiled by Robert Swanwick.

How to Participate in a Twitter Chat, with tips and resources by Jeff Hurt.

I read a fascinating blog post at The Community Roundtable entitled The Value of Community Management. The blog post considers the value, specifically the financial benefit, that community managers provide to managed social communities. Several readers who manage online communities wrote in to offer their data about the difference community managers make. Reading the discussion, I realize there are a number of points that are fully applicable to social networks such as Facebook Pages and Groups, Linkedin Groups, Google Groups, and others. They apply equally to for-profit and nonprofit-sponsored communities.

1. Active management of an online community creates real value for the organization

Tom Humbarger was the paid, active community manager until his position was eliminated. From that time forward, his company chose to manage the online community passively. Tom wrote a blog post about what the effects of active vs. passive community management. His data shows that growth, number of visits, number of page views, and time on site decreased dramatically during the absence of a community manager. The full article is well worth reading here.

As an example, this graph illustrates the dramatic drop-off in the number of site visits once active community management ceased.

2. Similarly, active management of a Facebook Page creates real value for the organization

I was the active manager of a corporate Facebook Page for a period of three months in 2009, until the company decided to eliminate all managed social media. From that time forward, the company decided to auto-fed blog posts to the Facebook Page, with no added interactions. During the time of active Facebook Page management, the Page grew at a rate of about 8 fans a week, had a post quality of 21, drove about 8 visits a day to the site,  but had a conversion rate from Facebook Page to website registration of almost 25%. Since the Page became inactive, the number of new fans/week has dropped to less than one, there are almost no website visits, zero conversions, and the post quality is zero.

Community Roundtable blog reader Maggie McGary also saw similar stats in her nonprofit’s Facebook Page: she writes in the comments that the number of visits from Facebook to her nonprofit organization’s website plunged during a one-month absence from active Facebook community management.

Community management, whether you define it as managing a private community, or a community on a social media platform, is critical to community growth and moving people from the managed community  towards organizational goals.

3. Active management also encourages relationship-building, which leads to loyalty and community growth

When I was a community organizer, we used to call this “relationship organizing.” Simply put, friends bring friends to organizations, and remain involved because of them. I used to try and map friendships, recruit influencers, and ask them to bring friends into the cause. In online communities, we develop cyber friends that influence us to participate and keep us active. I have started participating more actively in certain online groups because I have developed friendships with other members over time. I also recommend these groups to my friends, and feel increased loyalty to the sponsoring organization. I would never have created these online ties if the group wasn’t active and well-managed.

I asked Hildy Gottlieb, who managed the monthly twitter chat for consultants to community benefits organizations, if there are online ties between the participants of the monthly #npcons chat, and if these ties arose from the chats. She responded emphatically: “Oh goodness yes. There are many people who have met through these chats, who are now having some pretty engaged and higher level conversations throughout the month because they feel they know each other from that involvement.  It’s just like any other involvement or community- the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.”

Simply put, a well-manged online community leads to real value for both the members and the community sponsors. That’s a win-win situation.

Have you managed a social network? Can you add your data to this conversation?

Have you seen the effects of passive management on a social  community?