Real person, fake person or logo? This is one question I get often. It really boils down to the following: “How should the community manager be presented in an online community?”

I have always been a big believer that every community needs a clear person or team that seems real. The level of realness, however, depends on a number of other considerations, such as the community topic and any personal safety concerns that the community manager may have.

The newness of social media makes us sometimes forget that email is a strong channel to communicate with your customers, fans and enthusiasts. Email is also a great way to keep a community in the minds of your members — think of how much email you get from Twitter, Facebook and especially LinkedIn. A whole lot!

You can also use the power of email to be just as effective. Communicating with your audience can be a piece of cake if you know how to create an effective newsletter that they'll actually want to read.

Here are three quick tips to get you started.

TripActions is the leading, cloud-based corporate travel and expense management platform. Trusted by nearly 4,000 companies globally, TripActions empowers organizations with real-time data and insights to make business and travel policy decisions, paired with flexible T&E management tools that enable organizations to ensure the health and safety of traveling employees while controlling costs and saving money. TripActions delivers consumer-like ease-of-use with powerful personalization, unrivaled inventory choice, 24/7 travel agents and streamlined travel payments that users love. 

As you might have guessed, as the COVID pandemic continued to rise, TripActions saw a dramatic increase in travel-related questions regarding the outbreak. These questions ranged anywhere from how to ensure the safety of travellers while they're on the road, to the financial impacts, refunds and cost control around travel changes and cancellations. But as the pandemic continued to develop, TripActions was getting asked more general COVID-related questions, and even though they didn't have the answers to all of them, they looked to deliver a solution: The TripActions Community—an open forum that leverages content, insights and best practices from its users to drive peer-to-peer engagement, sharing and learning.

One of the great things about being the Head of Community for a maker of online community software is an exposure to hundreds of communities. Another aspect of the role is also synthesizing ways to ensure success for new customers who launch a new community.

During times of unprecedented crisis many are at a loss in terms of how to respond. I was looking at some research from a PWC study, which noted before COVID-19, that 69% of leaders had faced a crisis situation in the last 5 years. Also pre-COVID-19, only 54% of companies had developed a crisis plan. What does this data tell us then?