Community Moderation is More than Spam Control

Community moderators play an important role in ensuring that there’s robust and engaging activity within your online community. Yet, when community members (or sometimes others who don’t participate in your community) hear the word “moderation” they automatically think that your community moderator is only there to catch the bad guys. And while that is part of it, it’s not all the role entails.Moderation plays a big part in shaping the culture of your community. Your community moderator helps set the tone of the community, helps community members find the answers they need, and helps get your community members acquainted to their new favorite place. If you thought it was hard to explain what your role as a community manager is, imagine the struggle of your moderator!They aren’t the “community police.” Yes, they are there to help enforce the user guidelines and terms of use around desired behavior in the community. But that’s not their only job. Here are four things your community moderator also does to make sure your community is running like a well-oiled machine.Welcome new membersIt’s no secret that as new members come into your community, they need to feel welcome and seen to encourage them to keep coming back. While you can also use your community ambassadors for that, your moderator still plays an important role in the onboarding of new community members. Saying hello to them or introducing them to threads to get started are key elements of ensuring stickiness within your online community. Your moderator is integral to that onboarding by being the official “face” of your community team and helping to cultivate a sense of belonging at the start.Keep conversations flowingWe’ve all seen it. Someone posts a question in the forums and, either due to the volume of activity in your community or maybe people just didn’t see it, the question doesn’t get an answer. I highly doubt that you just leave it there and hope for the best, right? NO! I like to tag people in the comments of the Community by Association Network that I know have experience dealing with a certain situation to get them engaged in the conversation. That’s a great way to keep conversations going within your community as part of your moderation activities. Additionally, if conversations get off topic, the moderator can steer others back to the main subject or move conversations to their correct places to keep them focused. It’s a subtle and under-appreciated task that helps keep conversations relevant and vibrant in an online community space.Watch for trendsDepending on how your community team structure is set up, you may also have your moderator looking at community analytics. They may not necessarily be managing them, but having a deep familiarity of community trends is key for a community moderator. Understanding things like what type of content your community members are consuming, the topics they are most interested in, or the conversations that get the most attention is essential to being able to recommend changes to your programming or create experiences for your community members that will keep them engaged.Help manage feedbackCommunity feedback comes in many shapes and forms. It can show up in a discussion thread, it can show up in your feedback forum, it can show up in a private message. However it shows up, your community moderator can help keep that information organized and farm it out to the right places if it isn’t specific to community so that it gets a response. Your moderator is also a great person to help close feedback loops. Say someone posts in the forum that they have been having trouble with a product. Your moderator can offer to have a side conversation about what this community member is experiencing and pass that feedback on to the product team, urging them to address the community member’s concern directly via email or by just giving them a call. After a week or two, your moderator can follow-up with the community member to see if they received resolution to their problem. It’s a great way to develop trust among your community and build relationships across the association!Community members shouldn’t feel like moderators are only there to watch their every move. Moderators do have a responsibility to keep an eye on things, but that’s not their only job. Without moderators helping to create a sense of community among your members, your community is destined to flounder before it has a chance to grow. And for more mature communities, it can become stale as the activity goes on autopilot and members will soon start to find another place to gather. Moderation is a fundamental activity for online communities. Be sure that you don’t distill it down to just monitoring spam.How are community moderators positioned in your community? Are you using them to their full potential? Let us know in the comments below!