Community Managers and Sanity

by Charabis

Hello again and welcome to the Weekend Wonder. This weekend, we have a topic close to me, since it's what I do! Well, the Community Manager part. My sanity, as my loyal readers know, has always been questionable :P

We've all heard about community management, but how many people really know what goes into being a good Community Manager? I don't know about you, but I was sure I did. Boy, was I wrong! There's far more to it than I had even thought possible. However, there are different types of Community Managers as I've come to find.

The position that every Community Manager wants is to be one for the company making the game. Almost by default, they're seen as incredibly knowledgable about the game compliments of inside information. Many times, they have but to drop a hint that they have secret knowledge and everyone hangs on their every word. On occasion, that information is even revealed.

Then we have the Community Managers for outside sites, such as the great crew here at Ten Ton Hammer. While viewed as less knowledgeable than those working for the main sites, we are typically viewed as more knowledgeable than the average gamer. Heck, it makes sense when you think about it. If your job is to cover a game, you're going to be spending a lot of time digging up every scrap you can find! Of course, once the information is found, the outside Community Managers are quick to share it so long as it doesn't violate any Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in place.

Clearly, I can't speak to the sanity of gaming company Community Managers, but I can obviously speak to my own, or lack thereof. I can also speak to my personal experiences and even my frustrations. At the end, I'll provide a link to the forums for any who want to chat about this. I would be most interested in hearing from some of those who have been there and back.

One of the first things I noticed was that there were multiple levels of requirements. For instance, there's so much content needed every week just to keep the job, but you also need traffic to the articles to get paid. Two different requirements. The challenge lies in the simple fact that doing the former doesn't automatically lead to the later.

Another thing that I quickly found out is that the requirements don't change based on your staff or lack thereof. When I started as a Volunteer Writer for the Vanguard section of Ten Ton Hammer, it was blast! It still was when I left to take over the Gods and Heroes community, but there was that one little thing I hadn't realized. Now, I realize it all too well. Quotas are set based off where the site should be, not the number of writers you have. If you have no writers, then you'd better pray not to get writer's block because you're doing it all! I can say beyond a doubt that this is probably one of the harsher lessons for a new Community Manager to learn. It sure was for me :P After advertising during the second week of May for a volunteer writer or two with a closing date of June 1st, I was shocked to find not a single application in my inbox.

So what does a Community Manager do when they post a lot of quality content, yet the site traffic doesn't move fast enough? It's a difficult situation at best as you start going back over everything you've done, trying to figure out where you went wrong. The reality in many cases, however, is that you didn't. It's one of the realities of the industry.

I had some concerns over my traffic counts, and spoke with Shayalyn about it. She pointed out that much of her traffic came in the final few weeks before launch. While it made me feel a little better about my numbers, it also occurred to me that there was no way of estimating whether enough traffic would go through the site in time. Obviously, this would make short-term goal setting to ensure the final counts were high enough nigh impossible. So what's a Community Manager to do?

Of course, the launch of a game changes everything. Forums devoted to the game tend to degrade as those that love the game and those that hate it begin to clash, reducing many boards to flame wars and troll breeding grounds. To keep the community together, the Community Manager often has to spend many hours a day policing their forums to keep some semblance of order. More often than not, the people who have left the Community Managers no choice but to censure their posts turn their anger on those running the forums.

So what is it that makes a Community Manager tick? What is it that makes a person even try? For me, I've always loved a good challenge, and having issues with sanity certainly doesn't hurt ;) The one thing that I've never figured out is how someone decides which community or communities to follow. So what does draw a person to one Community Manager's site over another's? That is truly something to wonder about...

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