I was recently reading about Facebook testing downvotes on their comments. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s reacted by calling it “flattery”. Some people may not know this, but Vanilla has had a downvote feature since 2012 — it’s part of our reaction system. Even though this is an option (because we believe community owners should have choice), we don’t recommend the use of these “negative” reactions for most communities.

It’s that time again, another CMX Summit is coming! It’s a yearly gathering of community builders and professionals of all levels that meet to connect and learn from each other. To me, it’s one the can’t miss events of the year and certainly most of you must agree, as the tickets are sold out. We are also sponsors once again for what is surely to be an amazing get together in Redwood City next week (September 5th & 6th).

This will be my fourth CMX Summit and I'm also a seasoned conference veteran. With this in mind, I thought I would share my best tips to ensure you get the most out of CMX Summit. Of course, I work at a vendor, but like you, I manage a community as well -- and that is how I attend the event. So without further ado, here are my best tips to ensure you have an amazing experience:

Your community is humming along, and all of a sudden, an individual joins who takes personal pleasure in disrupting your community. It may be inflammatory remarks, attacking others for no reason, or simply taking an extreme contrarian view on every topic to drive everyone nuts. Unfortunately, it also means your community may have a troll problem.

Civility and logic pretty much go out the window with trolls. They are not in your community to build relationships, to add to the discussion, or be friends. They have come solely to cause mayhem. So what can a community manager do? 

Below are three tips we have seen to be effective when dealing with trolls.

“How to unclog a kitchen sink”...

“How to clean a gutter”...

“How to do a Windsor knot”...

Each and every one of us has a problem in our lives we need a solution for, and what better place to turn to than Google? Search engines provide us with instant fixes in the privacy of our own homes. It’s no wonder then, that the most popular search queries begin with those two magical words: “how to”.

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.