Today is an exciting day for me. It is the second annual Community Manager Appreciation Day. I admit that it might not be as big of a deal as say, any other day at all ever, but as a Community Manager I am going to take it. I have been abusing all streams of social media in order to bolster my ego. After all, what’s the point of a job like this if you don’t take advantage of it?
So now I’ll do some community managing in order to earn your appreciation.
The main subject of this week’s blog post is nothing new – but it’s important, and being Community Manager Appreciation Day, it feels like the perfect opportunity to bring it up again. I get a lot of support emails asking questions that as a seasoned forum user I take for granted. A while back, I wrote an article outlining the basics of being a great community member, including the basics of forum use and some of the guidelines that we enforce at the SitePoint forums. Whether you’re new or just a little unsure of something, have a read of these tips on becoming a great online community member.
The article covers the basics of searching, reaching out for help, and that all-important one – getting us to like you. Being part of a community is about more than just asking questions. It’s about bouncing ideas off your peers, looking for new ideas, figuring out how you can make your current site better – a whole myriad of things. Forum staff aren’t just there to make sure you toe the line – we want to make sure you enjoy your time with us and get the most out of it that you can. So have a read of the article and feel free to ask for help if you need to. I have to earn my money somehow!
The next thing that I want to tell you about this week is our new contest., starting on February 1st. This one is going to be awesome! Over at the forums, we’re running the Pure HTML & CSS Competition. There are some great prizes up for grabs, so make sure you keep your eyes out for kick off.
Our Facebook page is abuzz this week with blog posts. I reported last week that I was going to give twitterfeed a go, and so far so good. If you have any feedback, make sure you post on our wall. I’m keen to hear it.
Last up for the week – thanks so much to everyone that took part in our fundraising sale to help out the victims of the Queensland floods. We are so proud to have been able to do our bit to help – which of course we couldn’t have done without you. So thanks – you rock.
Hot Topics This Week
We’re going for a bit of a quality drive in the SEO forum this month. Check out the Don’t pay for SEO, do it yourself thread. There are some interesting ideas and opinions being voiced.
Do you guys use Smarty? There is an interesting thread in the PHP forum talking about just why Smarty sucks. What do you think?
This one is of particular interest to me. Never having been much of a chatter, I have found it to be incredibly useful now that I work remotely. Do you chat, or are your chatting days over? It’s what the talk is all about in the General Chat forum this week.
Last up for the week is from the PHP Application Design forum. This week the geeks are talking about frameworks for AJAX heavy apps.
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Sarah HawkFormerly a developer in the corporate world, HAWK (known as Sarah by her mother) said goodbye to the code and succumbed to the lure of social media to become the Community Manager for the SitePoint network. Now Hawk is working with Discourse to build their product and community.
