Hello again,

I would like to thank everyone that attended the Best Practices for Moderating Your Online Community Webinar (click for the archive) that was hosted By Forum One Communications and Mzinga last week on Tuesday, September 30th. I also would like to apologize for taking so long to post these additional questions and answers. As was mentioned during the presentation, we had a lot of great questions funnel in, and unfortunately we ran out of time. Bill Johnson and I went back to the transcript and pulled out the most popular questions and topics and wanted to cover them for everyone to review. While I am not quoting the specific questions that were asked, I have "bucketed" the general "topics of interest". I hope that you enjoy the additional content, and please let me know if you have any additional thoughts or comments. I do plan on posting ~2 additional follow up posts concerning the webinar, so that we can make sure to address all of the outstanding questions.

International Reach
Mzinga currently covers 12 languages and will be covering over 20 by the end of 2009, due to our current agreements. The languages that we currently cover include English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Dutch, Russian, and Brazalian Portuguese. We leverage US resources for our domestic clients, and do not off-shore any of our Moderation services.

Internal vs. External Moderation
This was a very popular topic among questions, so I did want to address it here. As I mentioned during the Webinar, Moderation can take many different forms (managing content and member accounts, seeding and facilitating conversations, proactive scanning and removing content...). When you are Moderating Internal communities, your focus may take the form of facilitating conversations and seeding content, and may not focus on the managing of content and member accounts. This will still be a responsibility, but not a focus. Online communities may be a new undertaking for both your company, as well as your employees. They both need assistance and an internal "Champion" to assist in the development and nurturing.

3rd party
There were some questions concerning what should be looked for or asked when choosing a 3rd party. I would say there are some key questions to ask any potential partner: Who are there clients, How much experience does their team have, What differentiates them from their competition, and What is the size of your team. Within those basic questions, you can uncover a lot of information about a potential partner. Above and beyond those questions, you should always go with your gut, and listen to your instincts. Do not choose solely on cost. In some cases "You get what you pay for" is not relevant, but in others, it does truly apply. It is 1 thing to go with the biggest, baddest, and newest technology, with all of the bells and whistles, but if you do that, and the service that you receive is not what was promised, or not what you had expected, then you are in a worse position than you began.

Seeding / Facilitating Content
There were some questions concerning "Seeding" discussions and content, what did that mean, and how is it done. We have had some clients who would like to launch a new community, but they are afraid that when the open their doors up, that there will be no members or content. A successful community launch will include a plan for the posting of content within that community, There needs to be activity within the community so that members do not feel like they are the only ones. "Nothing attracts a crowd..like a crowd". Proactively seeding and posting content within a community during the pre-launch phase is very important. If you have tapped a segment of the community who may not be familiar with online forums, you may also choose to continuously post and seed content, facilitating the participation within that community. Educating your members is the key, so that they can assist in the management and education of newer members in the future.

Thanks for reading

Mike