Community Management Lesson 2: Not everyone wants to be your Facebook fan and that is okay!

This part two of a series of posts where I will discuss lessons learned in Community Management. If you’re stopping by for the first time, I am co-founder of The Social Woman, a community for Canadian women to make friends and meet offline at local events. I took on the role of community manager and want to share with you tips that I have learned along the way-from building and growing community from the ground up, keeping members engaged, and learning when to let go.

In lesson 1, we looked at “Leading By Example” and how it is important to set the expectation of how you want things in your community. If you want people to engage, you have to engage.

LESSON 2: “Not everyone wants to be a part of your community..and that is okay!”

Say what? What do you mean? And why is that okay?

Not everyone needs to be or wants to be part of your community.

Think about it.

How many times have you been invited to join <insert random facebook fan page name here> and you do so (almost begrudgingly but you love your friend to death so you do) but you’re not really interested.

And you never really go back. Or participate.

It is not about the numbers, you want people to join who are going to participate and add value!

Again.

Numbers don’t matter. Quality trumps quantity.

So before you go off and invite your entire address book to your Facebook fan page, think long and hard about who would be interested and add value to your community. Sure, you can send out an email and ask them to pass on the info..but don’t hassle!!

In the case of The Social Woman, we wanted to focus on fostering local friendships and while we could have chosen to open the site and have thousands of members…that wasn’t the goal.

So think about the types of people that will be interested in your community whether it be your blog, your LinkedIn group, Facebook Fan Page and work on attracting those people (and of course, keeping them interested!)