Community Breakfast August 2011 - Online Personas in Community Management

Hosted by UserVoice

Building a brand
Persona is just your personality, not a brand.

Write your thoughts about life, etc, not about the product, not about what you think your audience will want to hear. The product will speak for itself.

Stories are better.

Let your personality show.

Consistency is important. Editorial calendar helps keep you consistent.

Let the community answer questions, do not automatically jump in.

Sometimes your community will rally to someone's defense, or rally against someone's "bad" behavior, so do not automatically rush to deal with an issue or troublemaker.

Company brand vs personal brand vs hybrid
Blogging, tweeting as yourself or as your brand presence?

Types: Brand (@UserVoice), personal on behalf of brand (@evanhamilton), personal branded (@meg_cotweet), fake identity.

The nice thing about personal branded is that you can leave and they can point that account to the corporate account.

Some people feel that they don't get as much interaction with a brand account.

Some companies hire BECAUSE of someone's powerful personal account.

Sometimes mistakes happen. Own up to mistakes. People forgive them more if it comes from a person.

Is humor ok? or slang? Best to be more formal to prevent misunderstanding. Humor and tone do not always ring through.

Very few examples of followers truly getting angry at an accidental personal-tweet-from-a-company-account situation - unless you're being a dick, like Kenneth Cole.