Online Community Moderation: It’s Social. It’s NOT Personal.

I’ve not gotten off to the high-volume start I’d hoped here at the ‘net Bard. New clients and a new promotion at work has increased my workload, prompting some reorganizing and rethinking of my routines (including blogging). It’s taken me a week or so to adjust to the new pace of things and get back in the blogging groove. The positive side is, it’s given me some good material for future posts on organizing your workflow for multiple high-volume Copywriting/SEO/SMM clients.

Today’s topic relates to online community moderation, but it also applies to anyone who is working and interacting on the social web (and that includes blog comments, message boards, twitter and any other web communities.)

My participation in the social web actually far predates becoming a web professional. Once upon a time, I was a “power user” and influencer on a very large topical forum, and after that I was an administrator and moderator on a few others. The time I spent in those communities were valuable learning experiences that led quite directly to my current career in web copywriting and social media.

One of the most important lessons I learned, if not the most important lesson, was to not take what people say on community sites personally.

There is a lot of emphasis out there on being authentic and transparent when posting to and interacting with the social web. I’m not going to contradict any of that; by all means, you need to speak in a real, human voice and act as if you are dealing with real, flesh and blood people rather than avatars. (more…)