Online Community Management Guide – 7 Key Challenges

With the rapid growth of online communities in the last few years, the challenges faced by communities and community managers have grown, too. Reddit is home to over 130,000 active sub-communities (subreddits), and Facebook boasts a huge 1.8 billion people community of users every single month. Community managers need to be able to face and overcome the rising challenges of running a community to ensure it reaches its full potential.

Here are seven key challenges that community managers face and how they can be solved.

What Does a Community Manager Do?

A community manager is responsible for overseeing the online community and its operations. They work closely with various different areas of the community, including moderation, content, and data security, to iron out problems and ensure the platform runs smoothly for its users.

Here are some of the jobs that a community manager may be responsible for:

• Moderating discussions and content
• Collaborating with marketing teams
• Working with community support
• Improving brand and community communication
• Sharing content to the platform
• Tracking metrics and monitoring community performance
• Developing effective strategies to improve engagement

How to Manage an Online Community

Effective online community management can only be achieved by a competent and experienced manager. Due to the vast number of roles and responsibilities that a community manager may take on, they should exhibit the following skills:

• Excellent oral and written communication
• Creative and strategic
• Literate in technology
• Good customer service

They should also have experience in PR, promotional events, and social media to help the community thrive and reach its full potential.

Community Management Challenges

1. Moderation and Content Control

Moderating and controlling content is essential to maintaining a healthy and sustainable paid community. Effective content moderation will help the online community remain a safe and welcoming space for all its members.

The Challenges of Content Moderation

• Spam and Unwanted Content – Spam is where members constantly flood the community with posts unrelated to the niche. This could be people who have joined the community to advertise, or sell digital products, or share links. Constant spamming can make it difficult for community members to view content they like and have discussions. Furthermore, manually deleting spam can be time-consuming for moderators.
• Harassment and Offensive Material – When community members encounter offensive content or face bullying and harassment, it creates an unsafe and hostile environment. If community managers can’t control this behavior, it will drive away existing members and stop new ones from joining the community.
• Maintaining Community Standards – All content should align with the community guidelines. However, this can be a challenge in large communities with hundreds of daily posts. Without proper content moderation, members will start to feel confused and irritated and may even leave the community.

Solutions: Moderating Communities Effectively

• Implement Clear Community Guidelines – Clear community rules or guidelines will outline acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Include prohibited content and the consequences for violations, such as warnings, suspensions, and even permanent bans. For example, Reddit maintains order by outlining clear guidelines that users are expected to follow.
•  Use Automated Moderation Tools – Technology can help you moderate content and reduce the burden on human moderators, especially if you have a large community. One example is Facebook, which regularly uses AI to flag and remove harmful content that violates its community guidelines.
• Employ a Team of Moderators – Recruiting and training a team of moderators can help community managers enforce guidelines more effectively, resulting in a safer community space for all. Large communities such as Stack Overflow have moderation teams to police the platform and ensure it remains a safe and respectful environment.
• Enable Community Self-Policing – Ask community members to enforce guidelines and flag harmful content. Wikipedia is a fantastic example of this, as it relies on its own members to maintain accuracy in its articles.

2. Member Engagement

One of the main challenges of community management is engagement. The community manager’s responsibility is to ensure that the content is up to standard and actively engages the community, whether that’s through polls, posts, videos, or even course content. The community manager should keep members engaged and invested in the community.

The Challenges of Member Engagement

• Inactivity and Drop-off – After first joining, members can quickly lose interest. Boring content can lead to inactivity or member cancellations. If content doesn’t engage the community, members don’t have a reason to return.
• Diverse Interests and Preferences – Not everyone finds the same type of content interesting. This can be a big challenge if your community centers around a more general topic such as fitness, books, or movies, and TV.
• Sustaining Long-term Engagement – Although members may have been excited by your content at first, it can be difficult to keep them engaged over time, especially as the community evolves and changes. Coming up with new and fresh content can be a huge challenge for managers.

Solutions: Reengaging Community Members

• Create a Welcoming Environment – A warm and welcoming atmosphere will encourage new members to participate. Create a separate welcome channel in the community. Many forums and groups have “Welcome Wednesday” threads to encourage new participants to engage.
• Regularly Post New Content – New and interesting content will engage both old and new users. If you’re struggling to come up with content ideas that engage your community audience, check out our killer engagement strategies.
• Organize Events – Live Q&As, expert talks, virtual hangouts, and one-off classes are all fantastic ways to keep the community interested.
• Reward Active Members – Showing appreciation for active community members can motivate others to engage. For example, Stack Overflow offers badges and reward points if members answer questions. Duolingo takes a similar approach, offering virtual currencies and trophies, which creates a sense of achievement.
• Conduct Surveys to Understand Member Interests – Tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms are a fantastic way to conduct surveys and gain regular feedback. Ask for feedback on post types, times, and frequency to understand what your members want, and adapt your content strategy based on the feedback.

3. Conflict Resolution

Managing conflicts within the community is an important job. If managed incorrectly, this can contribute to a negative atmosphere and drive members away.

The Challenges of Conflict Resolution

• Escalating Disputes – Minor disagreements can quickly escalate if community managers don’t address them quickly. This can create a hostile atmosphere for all members.
• Bias and Fairness – It can be a challenge to ensure all members feel seen and heard in the community. If moderators show bias, this can create mistrust.
• Consistent Enforcement of Rules – Different moderators may deal with conflicts differently. This inconsistency can lead to confusion within the community.

Solutions: Resolving the Conflicts

• Enforce a Code of Conduct – Create a clear code of conduct that highlights acceptable and unacceptable behavior and the consequences if community members violate this. A good example of this is GitHub’s Community Guidelines. Examples of their sanctions include blocking or removing harmful content and suspending user accounts.
• Train Moderators in Conflict Resolution – Community managers should teach moderators the skills and knowledge to handle conflicts when they arise. For example, online training platforms such as Coursera and Udemy offer courses on resolving conflict, which ensures the moderation style remains the same across the whole team.
• Promote Respectful Communication – Encouraging respect and communication within the community will create a positive and respectful atmosphere. Communities such as Reddit outline specific rules to encourage respectful communication.
• Address Issues Quickly and Fairly – Spotting and managing conflicts early on will prevent them from escalating and creating a hostile environment within the community. For example, Discord servers often have specific channels for reporting conflicts, which means moderators can address them ASAP.

4. Growth Management

Although scaling is the ultimate goal of any community space or business, it can come with various challenges. Here’s how to manage growth effectively.

Challenges of Scaling

• Overwhelming Existing Members – Rapid growth can weaken the sense of community and shared identity. An influx of members can make existing members feel left behind, ignored, or overwhelmed, and they may not wish to participate in the community any more.
• Maintaining High-Quality Interactions – Rapid growth means more posts and larger discussions. Because of this, moderators may struggle to keep up with the new volume of posts, and some may slip under the radar. It becomes harder to offer the same level of support and quality of interactions.
• Resource Allocation – As a community space grows, managers and moderators will need more resources to maintain the community. Adjusting to this, and ensuring you have the right tools can be a challenge for community management teams.
• Preserving Community Culture – To achieve long-term success, your community’s core identity should remain at the forefront of the community. However, a rush of new members may mean that the original values and culture of the community might get lost.

Solutions: Growing Sustainably

• Introduce New Members Gradually – Managing the frequency of new members can prevent overwhelming the community. To do this, create an invite-only system. Clubhouse found this system effective as it started to grow. This approach will still encourage growth while maintaining order and creating a sense of exclusivity.
• Maintain a Balanced Ratio of Moderators to Members – Reddit may offer a vast network of communities, but they stay on top of things with a team of moderators for every subreddit. Implementing this in your own space will ensure there are enough moderators to manage a rapidly growing community and the surge of activity that comes with it.
• Create Subforums for Specific Interests – Segmenting your community into subgroups can make managing growth much easier. Discord is a fantastic community for this, offering “channels” that can be used to split topics up and avoid overwhelming the wider space.
• Collect Member Feedback – Member feedback will ensure the community is still meeting the needs of its members even as it grows. Communities such as Product Hunt actively ask for and implement feedback to improve the platform. This makes existing users feel valued and listened to.

5. Diverse Needs

As your community grows, the needs and preferences of its members will grow with it. Here are some challenges community managers might face and how to combat them.

The Challenges of Different Needs

• Varied Interests – Since members have a range of different interests and content preferences, creating content that appeals to everyone might be difficult, especially if you’re dealing with a broader niche or topic.
• Inclusive Participation – To create a sustainable community, all members should feel included, no matter their background or level of expertise. However, as your community grows, certain groups or individuals may overshadow others, making other members feel unwelcome or ignored.
• Balancing Niche and General Content – Choosing to offer specialized content for a specific niche will appeal to sub-groups in your community. However, it also has the potential to alienate the wider community, leading to low engagement and drop-offs.

Solutions: Catering to All Community Needs

• Offer Content in Different Formats – Implementing different types of content into your community, such as articles, infographics, podcasts, and videos, will cater to various preferences and learning styles, helping engage different members.
• Create Niche Subforums – Splitting your community into smaller groups based on niche interests can help encourage engagement without alienating parts of the community. Reddit is a prime example of this, offering subreddits that cater to a huge range of specific interests.
• Encourage User-Generated Content – Promoting user-generated content will tap into the knowledge and expertise of your community. An example of this is YouTube, where users share content on a wide range of topics.
• Conduct Surveys to Gauge Satisfaction – Collecting feedback on content will help you understand which type of content offers your members the most value. This will help you optimize your content strategy and create posts or courses that your members will find more engaging.

6. Maintaining Relevance

To build a long-lasting, sustainable community, content must remain relevant and valuable to the audience over time.

The Challenges of Staying Relevant

• Keeping Up with Trends – As time passes, industry trends change and evolve. This can make it tricky to ensure community discussions and content stay relevant. If your community fails to adapt to these changes, it may lose members.
• New and Refreshing Content – Life moves fast, and content can quickly become outdated or stale, losing value and interest. This is especially true for educational content, where subjects are always developing and evolving as new research comes to the forefront.
• Stagnation – If community managers fail to freshen up their content, members will become bored, which will lead to disengagement and drop offs. It can be a challenge to offer fresh content and experiences.
• Changing Member Needs – As your community grows, your members’ needs may change. If community management doesn’t meet these changing needs, members may leave the community altogether.

Solutions: Keep Up With The Times

• Stay Updated with Industry Trends – Monitor industry trends and make a note of topics relevant to your community. For example, Hacker News stays relevant by sharing news and updates regarding technology, which actively engages their community.
• Act on Feedback – Using feedback to guide your content will help you stay relevant, as you’re appealing directly to your members’ needs. Platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Slack use feedback to improve features, meaning that the platform will continue to evolve according to user needs.
• Introduce New Features and Tools – New tools, features, and activities will keep your community space engaging, fun, and active. Facebook and Instagram are ahead of the game when introducing new features, adding things such as live streaming, stories, and marketplace integrations.
• Collaborate with Industry Leaders – Partnering with influencers or industry experts will provide value and insights that community members won’t get anywhere else, enriching the entire community experience. For example, Linkedin often features courses and content from industry experts.

7. Data Privacy and Security

One of the biggest jobs of community management is ensuring that member data and privacy are secure and unlikely to be breached. Whether you’re a big company or a small training business or fitness coach, the security of your community is essential.

The Challenges of Community Data

• Data Breaches – Unauthorized access to sensitive information and data can lead to breaches that impact member safety. Data breaches damage the reputation of your community.
• Compliance with Regulations – Communities must adhere to data protection laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Failing to comply will lead to legal penalties and mean your members will lose trust in the community.
• User Trust and Concerns – With social media giants such as Facebook coming under fire regarding data, community members are becoming increasingly concerned with how platforms use and protect their data. Failing to be transparent about how data is used will lead to a loss of trust.
• Managing Sensitive Information – Only authorized personnel should be able to access sensitive information about community members. This includes personal information and payment details.

Solutions: Ensuring Community Security

• Use Secure Platforms – Use trusted and reputable platforms like Slack or Teach to ensure that community and member data is secure. These platforms comply with industry standards regarding personal data and offer effective security features to avoid data breaches.
• Communicate Data Privacy Policies – Developing clear data privacy policies will help build trust with your members. Be transparent about how data is collected, used, and protected. For example, companies like Apple and Google make their privacy policies easily accessible.
• Comply with Data Protection Regulations – All measures should comply with data protection regulations, such as the GDPR and CCPA.
• Regularly Update Security Protocols – This will ensure your community remains secure in the wake of new cyber threats. Platforms like Dropbox regularly review and update their practices and protocols, making users feel safe.

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Final Thoughts

Community management is never easy, but it is essential, especially as your community platform evolves and grows. A good community manager should be able to meet the needs of new and existing members, ensure their sensitive data is protected, and provide resolutions for conflict. The key challenges we’ve highlighted in this article and the solutions that managers can implement to fix them, are essential to creating a thriving and sustainable community.