Philip is Community Manager at Zmags. Previously, he was community manager of  FIFA UK at Electronic Arts and Digital Producer at The Walt Disney Company. You can Follow Phil on Twitter and his blog.

G: How did you build your experience as community manager/strategist?

P: I started at an early age (16), first as a member of forums and then rapidly moving on to contributing content and managing environments. Special interest fan sites and smaller communities with a core following were the order of the day for several years. I did however take a break to focus on the strategy side rather than the management for a 2 year period and spent that time as a consultant / strategist before diving back in to community management. I think this mix of experience; working from small sites to big communities and with a period of consultancy / strategy has enabled me to develop a reasonably strong grasp of community management and what’s involved.

G: What are your top resources for community management?

P: There are lots of great resources out there but some of the main ones I keep track of are the #cmgr and #cmgrchat hashtags on twitter and Rich Millington’s blog at Feverbee.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

P: From my experience I’ve got a jaded view of this. If you are looking to build a “community” then your own branded and dedicated space is the best option, Facebook and Twitter build audiences rather than communities (there are a few exceptions). The type and structure of a community will vary from place to place but the biggest thing is ownership, if you are beholden to a 3^rd party provider then you start on the back foot in terms of providing for your members.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

P: You have to provide a space for members to connect with the brand/community and with each other. It has to be easy to converse, consume any content, navigate and have the option for members to interact in both public and private settings.

G: How do you attract new community members?

P: There are two main routes for this; create an environment that members buy in to and an experience they want to share, this word-of-mouth promotion will drip-feed new members in to your community. The other way is external promotion. For a business that may be hitting your mailing list and making them aware that a community exists, it could be Facebook advertising if you are trying to build on Facebook. Essentially it’s about promotion to those people that aren’t yet members.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

P: This largely depends on the nature of your community and the common thread that’s their reason for being there. Finding common ground that you know will always have differing opinions is always the best way to spark a discussion.

G: How do you reward your community stars?

P: Whilst at EA (Electronic Arts) I created a group labelled “GameChangers”, this was a mix of the most vocal and influential members of the community sprinkled with outsiders; those who didn’t frequent the branded community that often but had their own communities to manage. Their reward was the opportunity to get information early, be part of the decision making process, to come in to the office to see things first-hand and generally take a step closer to the brand and product. A number of them were flown from the UK over to Vancouver to meet the product development team and exchange ideas.

G: Does the size matter?

P: Size doesn’t matter. The aim for a branded community is to ensure anyone that uses the space builds stronger relationships with the brand and with other users.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management?

P: Some of the most common mistakes I’ve noticed can be split in to the following; wrong internal department trying to create and manage a community, lack of resources and support for the Community Manager, lack of understanding of the value of a Community. To avoid them they need to do the due diligence (like any marketing project, acquisition or costly activity) before launching one.

G: Do you have any social media crisis management experience?

P: The best way to approach the problem is to plan well in advance, create a strategy of how to deal with a situation, who should manage it and what the likely scenarios are for a crisis. They can’t always be avoided but you can prepare and put processes and support mechanisms in place to deal with them.

As a follow up to the recent post “Challenging the Old Media Business Models”  I want to get a bit deeper into the analysis of media business (revenue) models. There are quite a few them which come in different classifications and structures, but i find this diagram organized by Paul Bradshaw most suitable to discuss the subject, mainly because it is very clear, informative and well structured.

Most of these models like advertising, affiliates, premium (“velvet rope”) services have been tried and work pretty well under certain circumstance , but  “Social value” model hasn’t been explored that much or hasn’t been considered as a valuable enough on its own. According to Paul Bradshaw , “Social value” model revenue is generated through social interaction by brand community (in the form of donations, support or spin-off). Actually it is often dismissed as very mystified and unclear , because social value is quite difficult to measure. But the times are changing. I think with social media going mainstream, personal branding growing bigger and bigger and evolving monetary systems online  – “social value”  model can be the next big thing. I was thinking about it for a while and after short brainstorm came up with this:

Consumer pays directly to author.

Social media is all about disintermediation. Therefore, it is is quite a straight forward model, but if developed it would present a real shift in consumer’s perception – paying for the content when you don’t have to ? Madness? No! It would be all about the social status and personal brand building!

It could be very attractive idea for bloggers who already have well established personal brands and maintain their own platforms. In order to implement this model the author would have to provide superior social platform where the relationship building with the community would have to be considered as main priority. According to Paul Bradshaw people never paid for ‘content’; they paid for a package and a service that included content – “They bought a newspaper (brand), not ‘the news.” In this case the newspaper would be a personal brand which would have to provide best social engagement possible. The personal branding  would have to work both ways – not only author would have to get paid for well developed brand and top content, but consumer would have to receive some social points back as well. Lets say consumer could leave his name and contact details on the contributors list or virtual good system could tweet automatically that a person just made a reward or donation. Also, this model could work really great in B2B environment as the parties are much more aware about mutual benefits of marketing and social interaction .

Consumer pays author – author pays media platform.

Author sharing revenue with the media company – basically paying money for the platform to speak (or to be heard).It may sound ridiculous, but this model could be very attractive for less established writers who has interesting ideas but have no strong background to support them or have no capabilities/resources to build their own platforms.

In order to implement this model the two conditions would have to be present – strong media brand and qualified but now well known writer. Young writers would be interested to have their material published on big platform for greater audience in return sharing their revenue with the media platform. Furthermore, the media platforms would be interested to maintain their brands and attract good journalist/bloggers because of advertising dollars they would bring – specialized and engaged communities created under big brand could be well targeted.

The outcome.

If these models are implemented the outcome would be quite dificult to predict. It’s clear though, that the personal branding and community building would gain major importance in the media strategy. The content would improve and there would be less “noise” in media in the long term, because of “natural selection” process.  The  big media brands could concentrate on their core capabilities managing the talents rather that content production itself. Who knows maybe one day we will have our X-Factor of media?  “In my dreams I have a plan If I got me a wealthy man I wouldn’t have to work at all, I’d fool around and have a ball”. – and that would be the song to sing for the audition, just the wealthy man would be the authors who bring wealth with the valuable content  and community. But most importantly consumer would get to be a king, it would be able to influence, participate and gain from the process .

So what do you think about it? Please share your thoughts whatever they may be and submit your answer to a quick poll:

Here is the list  of top articles and presentations analyzing the new media business models:

Making money from journalism: new media business models (by http://onlinejournalismblog.com)

What does the “Media Business Model” mean? (by http://www.longtail.com)

The Freemium Business Model: Anything There for the Media? (by http://rebuildingmedia.corante.com)

I am not that much into religion, but was having some thoughts about social media community and it’s Teletubbic vibe or the goodness surrounding it. It brought me to this idea that goodness is very transferable and viral in it’s nature, therefore I’ve decided  to analyze what do social media people have in common with priests and what they could learn from this honourable profession.

We listen

Well we know that social media is all about good listening. Social media people are a bit like the priests in their confessionals, waiting for the users to acknowledge the “sins” about their need and wants, that they could “help” them with the brilliant content, products or services. I think one from the many things we could learn from the priests is that listening is not one way process  – you have to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers.

We preach

Well, I’m just being honest with myself – I love to preach. I bet that there quite a few social media professionals who feels the same way. The blogosphere is an ideal place for that; it’s like a big church where you can push your ideas to so many different audiences. The one thing to remember though, you have always to remember the purpose of your preachment – it’s not about you it’s about what your audience can take from your lecture.

We build communities

Religion is all about community building and transferring the values and beliefs to the community. It sound a lot like what community managers are trying to do for their clients – transferring the emotion, values and belief of the brands to the community. Social media citizens have to remember that building the real functioning community takes a lot of time, work and patience.

We work for a better cause

Ok, I’m under no illusions that blogosphere and social media enthusiast don’t want to earn money, but the thing I like about social media that you can add value for yourself by creating some added value for someone else as well. Everyone is doing what they are doing with some intention – the church leader wants to become a Pope one day as a social media professional wants to reach the new highs in his/her environment, but an important point to remember is how not to forget the main cause – to create value in order to get value.