Enterprise Social Media

Insights from a former Yahoo! Community Manager

Posted on 05. Feb, 2009 by Michael Brito in Community Management

It’s no secret that Yahoo! search has been losing market share for the last 5 – 6 years to Google; and while the Yahoo! home page has always enjoyed having the “most visited web site” for the better half of the last decade, that bragging right came to an end in 2008, according to Comscore.

However, Yahoo! still has several properties with massive communities that are extremely engaged, filled with life, full of conversation  and generate millions of page views each month (i.e. Groups, Answers, 360, Bix and of course their dormant social network with Mail).

I recently caught up with a previous co-worker and good friend, Jami Heldt. Jami was the former Community Manager for Yahoo! Groups. She agreed to answer some questions I had about Yahoo! and her role there.

How does Yahoo! value their community?

If I understand this question correctly, I’d have to say that Yahoo! values their community in a number of ways, but first and foremost by offering a wide variety of useful tools to stay connected to the things most important to them – be it, family, friends, news, media, information, or any number of other things.

What metrics do you use to measure the success of community management?

We didn’t have rigid “success metrics” so to speak, but we did track weekly traffic to our product blogs to gauge reach. The two key metrics tracked were Page Views (PVs) and Unique Users (UUs), obviously the more users we reached, the better.

What tools do you use to engage with the audience?

At Yahoo!, we used a variety of tools to engage with our users, some included: product blogs, workshops, forums, and of course Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Messenger, and Yahoo! Mail!

Is there a feedback model that you use to filter issues from the community to the product team(s)? Can you share it?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I have an extremely complicated scientific method for filtering the truly hot and valuable insights from the community. Okay, just kidding. I don’t have a tried and true method for filtering feedback to ensure that only golden nuggets get passed along but I can say that it’s extremely important to have a thorough understanding of your company’s product and how its users are interacting with it. With this understanding comes a heightened sense for what issues/feedback are truly important to pass along to key stakeholders.

Does Yahoo! listen and value community feedback?

Overall, yes, at least within the groups I interacted with. That said, Yahoo! is a big company and I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s always the case across the board, but as a company, they try.

In my opinion, if a company wasn’t receptive to listening to and leveraging the insights and feedback from their users, they wouldn’t have created a community role (granted, they did recently lay off five top notch community managers). Additionally, it’s my opinion that it’s the job of an effective community manager to demonstrate the value of listening and integrating user feedback to the extent possible.

Based on my experience, the “community management” team reports into marketing. Do you think it would be of more value if it reported into the product organization(s)
Not necessarily, but I do think that it’s extremely important for a community manager to be closely aligned with the product team. I can say that I am pretty certain that if the community management team I was recently a part of reported into product instead marketing, we might just still be working at Yahoo!

What are the traits to be an effective community manager?

I think a few of the essential qualities that a community manager must possess in order to be effective are: great listening skills, excellent communication skills, patience, the ability to multi-task and of course the capability to balance business objectives with community need.

Anything else you want to share?

Well, I can definitely say that I was disappointed by Yahoo’s decision to lay off the Community Management Team that supported some of their largest products (including Groups, Mail, and Messenger).  Granted I may be a little biased since I was personally affected by this decision. All in all, I am most saddened by the fact that my hard work and resulting momentum towards improving the perception of Yahoo! Groups among the Groups community for the last 20 months will quickly dissolve without continued effort.

The sentiment below, from respected Groups moderator, sums it up quite well:

Speaking from an external point of view, having your enthusiasm and energy in support of Yahoo Groups’ user community has been very effective in building a positive attitude towards Yahoo and the Groups Team.

Jami is a highly energetic Community Manager with over six years experience working with online communities. She has a natural talent to connect with users of online communities in a deep, personal and productive manner. She’s skilled at representing the voice of the community and translating need into tailored products and features.

– END  OF INTERVIEW–

A big thank  you to Jami for answering my questions!  If you enjoyed this post or value my point of view, you can always subscribe to this blog or follow me on Twitter.

Tags: Community Management, Yahoo

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