Connie Bensen

Over the past months I’ve been answering questions, connecting people to resources & mentoring people. I love it & it’s really gratifying! But for some time I’ve felt that I could do more if I had people learning with each other in a focused situation. So many focus on the technology but we know that building community is about relationships & the art of fostering them.

As a result, I’ve put together two courses for community managers. The first will be for those working with external communities & later I’ll start one for those working with internal ones. My vision is to provide community managers with a course that will provide you with practical skills that you can use every day. We’ll have discussions about best practices & the ‘what if’ & how to handle it when it happens. The Community Manager position is such a broad encompassing position that it can be overwhelming.

The first course is for Community Managers working with external communities. There will be six sessions filled with information & the opportunity to discuss it.

• Session 1 – The Plan – Strategies, Goal Setting & Metrics
• Session 2 – Listening & Engaging – Brand Monitoring & Branding
• Session 3 – Make it a Party & Recruit Help – Participation & Advocates
• Session 4 –Telling your Story – Blogging, Networking & Collaborating
• Session 5 – Attracting new members – Driving traffic to your community
• Session 6 – Internal Influence – Wearing many hats & routing traffic

Facilitation – it’s going to be remote, of course!

• First session will be one-on-one to identify goals & review your community
• Remaining sessions will be conference calls with maximum of 4-6 per group
  • session meetings one per week
  • first session starting mid July
• Access to a private discussion forum to continue the conversations & share resources

For more details, please send me an email at conniebensen@gmail.com 

*update* I’m getting a great response. I’m looking forward to working with you!

For those of you around the world, I’ll make adjustments for time zones.

We all have to laugh at ourselves once in awhile. I do my share of it all the time. And I do tend toward the serious side here. So I’ll share this (it’s the easiest way to explain to my sister what happened too). The rest of you can laugh along, ok?!

First of all, my sister got the tech skills in our family. I know plenty & can get myself into trouble quickly. But on the flip side I really try to be independent. I know that I can’t ftp when I’m using my remote desktop on the vpn! (are you impressed?!). Well my sister has this saying when I’m going to go on the backside… "Don’t break it, but just in case, I have it backed up." (ah, so little faith).

A part of my job with Network Solutions is to blog at SolutionsArePower.com. It’s a hosted wordpress blog & I’m blogging to 4 others similarly set up, so no problem. umm I spent this past week not being able to log in. Shashi helped me by taking the posts as word doc’s via email, but… I really needed to get beyond that.

I talked to a bunch of people & everyone was offering advice. By the end of the week, I had my laptop startup spiffed up, cleared cache, ready to defrag, etc (that all needed doing anyway!). After a consult with Network Solutions tech people, I decided to call my ISP. Of course the URL worked fine for them – no they wouldn’t give me office space. Nancy, can you talk to them at the help desk, please?! (My sister-in-law reads here regularly & works at my ISP). They’re a mile away. It got so bad on Friday afternoon that my husband said I could buy a new laptop! Good thing we’re far from stores…

Last night in utter frustration I was venting to Jim Wu, Techrigy’s tech support & community guy. (They offer SM2 a free brand monitoring service. They’ve started a community & have some great informative blog posts!). (Jim is kindly feeding my posts from here in there. Scroll down & check on the right)

Jim had had a long day too and it was 11 pm for him. So he set up a GoToMeeting session so he could see my desktop & wireless router config. (I really didn’t want to screw with that because originally took me 3 hrs to set the thing up with a call to the Phillipines. I’ve had a new one here since last Nov, but have been scared to try to install the thing). He asked who set this up – and I said, "I did!". So then I gave Jim control of my desktop. He said, "It’s going to kick you off, just come back on". Yep, It kicked me off. I tried to recover gracefully, but… went to bed. Here are Jim’s tweets (for those not familiar with twitter, start at the bottom & read up):

So, this morning when my 19 yr old daughter informed we didn’t have internet I knew this. I was experiencing a bit of withdrawal myself. So I did some cleaning. Called the helpdesk at 9 am. Computer helpdesk didn’t open til 10 am. arrggghhh MORE cleaning! At 10 am I called the weekend helpdesk #. I think I woke him up & said he couldn’t look up my IP because of a thunderstorm. uh yeah Nancy, are you reading? So I got the car out & headed to the nearest library. (I used to supervise this branch & bringing in wireless was my idea! I know that they leave it on 24/7 so even though they’re closed on weekends I was able to sit in the car & read email.) Yes, desperate times call for desperate measures!

Jim had sent me an email with my IP information. And a comment about a Blackberry (yes! another reason to get one!). So I emailed him my phone #. Tried logging into the blog URL and had no problems. Ok then, in worse case scenario I can drive 6 miles & post to the blog (I prefer to write them in LiveWriter anyway).

Are you tired yet? We’re still on this adventure… hang in there. So I get home & both the ISP tech support & Jim had called back. I called Jim back & he patiently helped me set my router back up, do some testing… He told me that I need to tell my ISP that my DNS is configured incorrectly. (Nancy are you still with me? Can you open a trouble ticket please?). My laptop wasn’t being as cooperative as my hardwired desktop so he asked me to hardwire it. So I did so, but didn’t have an active connection.. Umm I realized really quickly that I had cabled the desktop to my laptop! AHAHA silly me – I felt really sheepish when I had to admit to that! It helps if you go from MODEM to laptop, duh me! And in closing Jim explained how to install the new router (which I can do by myself of course! I have also written my IP info down too).

The moral of the story is that there are some VERY helpful people online. I try to help people with the talents that I have. And I always appreciate help from others. Thanks to Jim, my sister & everyone else that offered their tech help this past week!

Have you met Shashi Bellamkonda? If you have crossed paths with him you’ll know it because I think he’s more of a proponent of social media than I am! And he’s one heck of a nice guy, too. We know him as @shashib on Twitter (a definite must follow). Last fall he connected with me and was determined that Network Solutions needed a community manager. He convinced his management to put him in the position as their social media swami & is totally passionate & committed to his role.

Now, I’m excited to be joining forces with Shashi at Network Solutions. I look forward to working with his enthusiasm! I will be blogging at SolutionsArePower.com about how small businesses can be more effective online. Network Solutions offers a full range of products ranging from domain registration, hosting packages, a broad range of options for marketing, security, e-commerce & creative items such as website design. They are also the oldest domain registrar company (1994).

In case you’re new to my blog:

I blog about community building strategies here at conniebensen.com. I am recognized as a leader in community management. I enjoy providing resources, mentorship & connecting with the thought leaders in social media, PR & marketing. I also blog at Marketing 2.0.

I enjoyed working as Community Manager for ACDSee products. My sister & I developed a new relationship with each other as we established a vibrant community at DigiScrapInfo.com. It’s been great working with photography & crafting enthusiasts and I look forward to continuing my relationships with all of you. I will miss working with all of the great people at ACDSee. But it’s time for new challenges.

My philosophy is to provide resources & the best customer service possible. Before working online I spent a decade building community in a public library setting. I work remotely from my home in Minnesota & truly enjoy the opportunities & challenges that Web 2.0 offers!

My friend Shashi blogged about Jeremiah Owyang listing Community Managers at larger companies. He linked to Mario Sundar’s post which linked to Sean Moffit’s list. Can you feel it?  there’s a whole lot of linking going on.

So in my librarian style – I feel the need to do the following:

• simplify it – leave it to a bunch of guys to fragment this!
• inclusion – you can include yourself!
• automate it – let all of you contribute

There is a great collaborative wiki called ‘Twitterpacks‘. I just added a section for Community Managers. (Something happened to this wiki & list – I moved them over to my wiki – password is build ) .  I think that there are enough of us to fill it up quick & others can use it to follow us in order to get excellent customer service!

So pop over & add your Twitter link, your name, title, company etc. Let’s connect!

• the password is ‘build’

About the wiki – I was introduced to it was because they also have it set up by Geographic Location. That’s cool! Minnesota is here. Password is ‘project’

And please abide by the guidelines of the wiki.