Should You Bother Starting A Google+ Community

Should You Bother Starting A Google+ Community Google+ is a fun and flexible social network with lots of creative uses,  and it gives you a nice boost towards Google finding your content in search results.  If youre creative and regularly active on the network, your Google+ page will be a powerful workhorse for you. But what about Google+ Communities? Should you have one? While your Google+ circles can create a simple version of a community, Google+ has created a system specifically intended to serve as a forum or group within the larger social network. It comes some handy controls and features that you cant mimic with a simple Google+ circle, butit also  comes with an added work load. What Will A Google+ Community Require? Before you decide if a Google+ Community is worth it, you should first understand what having a community will involve. Be responsible for what happens in your community. You are responsible for what happens in your community. Unlike a circle, a community comes with an understanding of moderation happening. Some communities put up a disclaimer and let it turn into a bit of a free-for-all, but remember that youre after quality, not quantity. You want the engagement, the conversations, the content, the participants, the ideas–they need to be of quality. You dont want to chase after the lowest common denominator just to get quantity. A popular community will always face the never-ending battle with  appropriate comments, just like you would on your blog. I take a pretty dim view of comments that insult or antagonize, though not every community manager would care. It really depends on the community. But, if you do care, you have the ability to remove comments and ban and remove users in a Google+ community. Let them know when they get out of line. Give them a warning and stick to it. What happens in your community doesnt stay in your community. Moderate well.What happens in your community, particularly if youve associated it with your brand, reflects on you. 1. Do you have someone who can regularly moderate your community?   Y or N Controlling spam in your community. Google+ (as of yet) doesnt let you post or share content in multiple communities. This can be annoying. Its tempting to be a part of several related communities that youd like to share your latest blog post in, but so would spammers. Theyd love to join every open, public community and mass post at once. So thank you, Google+. When you post to a community, you cant also post it to your public feed. Youll have to post the same thing twice if you want to see it on your own feed. Still, if the community youre posting to is public? Anyone who goes to your profile page will see what youve posted. Private community postings are only seen in that community by fellow members. Restrictive, yes. Necessary, probably so. Write clear guidelines on what the community is all about is an important step. What else do you do if youre feeling that community members are abusing your community? Public or private. Decide right at the start, when youre creating the community, if it will be public or private, and how much time you have to manage it, because once you choose public or private, you cannot change it. Use blocking and muting tools. Dont be afraid. Its hard to fire a customer or reader, but sometimes, for the sake of others in the community you might have to. Write guidelines. Write clear guidelines for expected behavior, and hold participants to it. Let them know what kind of content they should share, and how they should behave. Be clear. Remove and/or ban members who continually break the rules. Be an editor. Remove posts that do not belong, seem spammy, or are purely self-promotional in a community where that might not belong. Some spammers are very clever, and you might think they meant well and give them the benefit of the doubt but no. Just remove it. A community filled with junk content quickly dies. No one wants to be there, yourself included. 2. Do you have someone who can identify and remove spam without any qualms? Y or N 3. Do you have the time to stay on top of spam? Y or N Be the best curator you can be. A community is a fantastic place to curate selective outside content. Remember, the curator controls the message. I like to think of it this way: your Google+ page is where you share your content. A Google+ community is where you share other content. The art of curating content is exactly that: an art. Get good at it.Keep in mind, though, that curation–finding and sharing content–is an art form. You are not just filling space in your community. You are only sharing the top-notch valuable content that fits with the description of the community.  Its important to get in the habit of of curation, finding great content to share, but it shouldnt become a sloppy habit.  Share what has value. Read the posts you are about to share, dont just skim and toss in the community to fill a quota for the day. Be purposeful and mindful of what you are sharing. One way to make sure all of the content you share is up to your curation standards is to create a list of must-have criteria (in order of importance) before sharing. You might require shared content to come from individual blogs only, or it must have at least 1600 words, or it must have unique imagery, or maybe youll only share content that has infographics. Whatever it is, create a standards list. It makes it much easier to decide on whether or not something ought to be shared or not. 4. Do you have someone to act as curator?   Y or N 5. Do you already have a reliable system for finding great content to share? Y or N Be proactive about building your community. Once youve got a community built up with content, its a good time to go in search of some heavy hitters and active users. Its my personal preference to allow for a little time to get a stockpile of content–and conversation–in a community before going after any VIPs that Id love to have join. Its hard to make a decision to join a community until you see what kind of content and conversation to expect. Of course, there are more to this world than the VIPs. You cant assume youll get one Big Name Person to join and your community will suddenly become the hottest ticket in town. You have to build your community from several different directions.