An important step in launching an online community is establishing a moderation strategy. Effective moderation will ensure your community consists of relevant contributions, robust engagement, and appropriate user behavior.
Good moderation comes from striking a balance between maintaining order and allowing your audience to engage with one another and drive discussions.
Here are five tips for effective community moderation:
1. Define Expectations
When launching a community, it is important to clearly document tone, purpose, and behavior expectations. Share documents that explain online etiquette, establish moderation guidelines and outline the Terms of Use.
2. Appoint a Community Manager
Community managers drive conversations and deepen the relationship community members have with a brand. They grow membership and activity within the community, engage with new users, respond to questions and comments, post questions and introduce new topics. Community managers also govern the community and ensure that activities align with the purpose of the community, addressing inappropriate posts and discussions if necessary.
3. Control Access
Not all content in your community needs to be public. Community managers can organize content and control who can see what. They can also create private groups or grant users different roles to restrict access to functions and content.
4. Share Quality Content
When moderating a community, it's important that the content benefits your audience. This'll ensure a quality experience and keep users coming back. Gauge user satisfaction by sending out email surveys to community members, monitor key words and top questions asked, and refresh content as needed.
5. Reward Quality Contributions
Community moderation often has a negative connotation; however, it's important to also acknowledge the good. For example, when monitoring community activity, identify those members who actively contribute and participate in discussions. Gamification rewards users with badges, reputation points and expert status based on participation. This not only demonstrates appreciation to active users, but also provides other members with incentive to engage on a regular basis.