At Open Social, we value communities more than anything and we truly believe that community managers — continue reading
Community Manager Appreciation Day is celebrated annually on the fourth Monday of January. Created by Jeremiah Owyang in 2010, it is a way to recognize and celebrate the efforts and impact of community managers around the world.
At Open Social, we value communities more than anything and we truly believe that community managers are the unsung heroes of any organisation. On behalf of Community Manager Appreciation Day, we asked our expert community managers to share their highlights of 2021, tips that make them good at their role and how Open Social has contributed to their journey. Read on below to get some useful insights that can be transferred to your community.
HSE (Irish Health Service) Open Social Community Management Team
Highlights of HSE social communities in 2021
In 2021, the HSE launched three exciting new online support groups; An online support group for people living with type 2 diabetes, an online support group for new breastfeeding mothers and an online support group for people who want to quit smoking.
Some of these are the first of their kind in Ireland and are paving the way for the development of further novel digital health interventions.
Our breastfeeding support group has been very well received by our users. We also had several well-attended virtual live sessions with our breastfeeding group which have been rewarding to attend for both our mothers and our staff.
Our diabetes group has also had positive feedback, both from service users and community dietitians. We produced diabetes-related content for the online support groups that were well-received nationally and are now also used by dietitians throughout Ireland to educate their service users with diabetes.
Our quit smoking group welcomed a large number of people who expressed an appetite for online support to help them to quit smoking. All evidenced-based tips and guidance were communicated to the group through a variety of content formats aimed to help each group member achieve success in their quitting attempt.
What makes you a good community manager at HSE?
Our community managers have always had our service users at the centre of all our communications. From creating holistic, relevant and evidence-based health content, to supporting our users through health-related challenges using empathetic and encouraging comments – all communication is expertly tailored to our user’s needs.
Our community management team consists of true experts in their fields. Lactation consultants, dietitians, smoking cessation officers and HSE social media experts all work seamlessly together to create a safe and supportive space for our communities.
Our team is not afraid to experiment and face challenges head-on. We have had several setbacks in 2021, including two cyberattacks on our national health service IT systems. And of course – they are providing healthcare services during a global pandemic. Yet, despite all this, they have shown true determination in getting these groups off the ground during this challenging year.
How Open Social has contributed to HSE’s journey?
Open Social has offered us a flexible platform where we can tailor our community to suit our service needs. Open Social provides appropriate features to ensure GDPR compliance, which is vital when offering healthcare-related services through a platform.
Rogier Wennink, Labour Law Lawyer/Platform builder, Platformacct
Highlights of Platform ACCT in 2021
One of my highlights was our ‘kickoff-event’ in May 2021 as a community manager. It was good to see so many people in our branch show up, it really gave the community ‘momentum’. Also, we had a really nice online network event in December. Due to yet another lockdown, we were forced to move the ‘live event’ to online, and despite missing out on what would have been a nice network lunch, the substantive part of the meeting worked online.
What makes you a good community manager at Platform ACCT?
According to Rogier “what makes a good community manager is that you must be visible, approachable and helpful to the members of the community”.
How Open Social has contributed to Platform ACCT’s journey?
Open Social has provided us with ‘the best of two worlds’. On the one hand, we can have a front end website with a lot of publicly accessible information, on the other hand, we have a private and growing platform of HR professionals who can exchange knowledge and experience about their profession.
Sophia Rabien from Vier Pfoten
Highlights of Vier Pfoten in 2021
We launched our new community platform which garnered positive feedback from both our volunteers and the organization. The interaction has increased since 2021 after the launch of the platform.
What makes you a good community manager at Vier Pfoten?
I follow step by step approach when promoting the platform to deal with new users appropriately and monitor their behaviour well. Providing structure, like an overview of important campaigns and groups as well as the most important activities on the start page has helped me a lot. We encourage users to comment and like to raise interaction. We also offer training and user manuals and help users that have registered but never logged in by writing a mail to them.
How Open Social has contributed to Vier Pfoten’s journey?
Our team had helpful meetings with the Open Social custom success manager. The customer success manager also demonstrated inspiring examples of other clients (e.g. dashboard pages, data usage explanation etc.)
Open Social team wishes you a very happy Community Manager Appreciation Day! #CMAD
