Katelyn - To start, could you talk about a community project you've worked on recently that you're most proud of?
I'm currently working on the monthly Writers Contest in the Dataquest community. I started this to invite and incentivise our members to write lengthy articles to our community magazine to share their knowledge and experiences.
Till date, our community has contributed ~50 articles to this initiative. Super proud of these results!
Max - Since you are based in a very different timezone than EST/PST, what are some pain points + tips that you could share when working with global community members?
We have a mostly asynchronous forum-based community. So, thankfully timezone conflict isn't a chronic pain for me.But I do run into it when organizing a meetup for our superusers group (~10 people). I combat it by:
- Not having these meetups too often - we have them once a month
- Not trying too hard to accommodate everyone's schedule. I host the meetup at a time that suits me best and have people RSVP 1 week prior using Luma. This way I can understand if it works for a majority of our members and change times if necessary.
Jocelyn - You mentioned that writing is your superpower! I love that. What's one tip you'd give to Community Managers who want to improve their writing skills?Also, do you approach writing differently when writing for the community vs internal stakeholders? What's your philosophy there?
Write something to helps other Community Managers. What's something you wish you knew 1 month/ 1 year ago? Reflect back at things that you've learnt with difficulty and write to help others who may face this problem.
I follow the same philosophy whether I'm writing for the community, internal stakeholders or my audience:
- Make it easy on the reader's eyes - no long paragraphs, sentences of varying lengths, bullets when possible (like this answer)
- Keep it simple - no big words, remove fluffy adverbs
- Keep it concise
Cole - Would love to hear what your favorite engagement play is at Dataquest
Hi Cole! I love creating "programs" to rally people around creating a particular type of content. For example, I've created:
- Learning Assistants program to get more questions answered
- Community Champions program to get more data science projects
- Writers Contest to get more articles
I've found that creating these program invites members who want to contribute but don't know how. It gives them a purpose, incentives and tells them how to contribute.
