I was asked some questions...

on engagement, events, interviews, etc.

Sometime in August, I had the pleasure of being spotlighted at Community for Africa and everyone were to ask me any question all through the day. I answered a ton of great questions from the community and today I'm sharing some of those questions and my answers.

Before we dig in, I am curating the a gift guide for community managers! What’s on your wishlist as a community manager or what would you appreciate as a gift this season? Let me know

---

What measures will you suggest for engaging a community full of founders/mentors?

Martha: Keeping them engaged boils down to the content being shared with them. What content is being produced and how is that benefiting your members?

Knowing the type of content been shared, would help you know what you’re measuring as ‘engagement’. Engagement could mean blog traffic cause you’re sharing a lot of blog posts, or it could be event attendance rate cause you’re hosting a lot of events. You get?

Another thing that always helps is getting to talk with super members and finding out what they think works or what can be introduced to improve their participation.

What type of content is relevant to your community?

What are you measuring as ‘engagement’?

I'm just starting out in CM and volunteering for an only women crypto community. They mostly host irl events but the community is large. I can't help but feel others who can't attend those events may feel left out.

*irl = in real life

Martha: You said it’s a large community, and so I think it’s possible to have community members host some events in their region as well. Pick out community members in different regions or ask members to sign up to be regional leads, and let them be in charge of their region and bring members in that region together. More like what CMX does with CMX connect.

Another way to get everyone included would be making those IRL events hybrid, so those who can’t attend IRL can join up online. Regular virtual events can also be incorporated to cater to everyone

My question is, in your years of being a community manager, have you always had a personal preference for the type of community you manage?

In searching for Jobs and your waiting time to get one, sometimes one is tempted to take a role and just swing it with the community management skill they have. How have you been able to persevere through waiting for a role and getting exactly what you wanted?🤲

Martha: There was a time I didn’t have preference, I just wanted to work and do something; needed to experience it no matter the angle it came from. Right now, I can look through a job description and decide that this is not what I want. But yeah, it makes the wait longer because community roles can sometimes be scarce and very conflicting. Being a Nigerian alone is enough drama as you can’t access the many roles outside of the country and most of the ones within want to slave you out.

Get your hands dirty as much as you can, when you can. In the process, you will know what you want to focus on long term and over time you’ll get to push for only what you want.

Also find a way to diversify the skills you already have to get into roles that are not necessarily spelt out as “community management”

How do you one become good with interviews?

I can assure you that you can be good with speaking but when it comes to interviews, it just seems like a struggle to find the perfect words 😂

Martha: Try to get your mind into a calm state before any interview. Don’t approach it as if it’s a gunfight - gunfight as in “if i answer wrongly, they will shoot me” 😂

1. The person interviewing just wants to get to know you, and you know who you are and what you can do, so put your shoulder pad on. When preparing that’s not the time to start comparing yourself with someone who you feel is better than you are (side note: no one is better than anyone, we are just different), focus on yourself and talk about this thing you do daily.

2. Practice answers to certain questions even when you’re not up for an interview. Most of the things you will be asked are things you’re doing already doing or have done, so sometimes just put yourself to the test by answering those common questions, so you are conversant with the answer no matter how the question comes.

3. Pause before answering any question, don’t rush your answer. When you rush, you lose your train of thoughts and it’s not usually pretty. Take your time to make your point. Even if the interviewer told you at the beginning of the call that it’s just 10 minutes and then he or she showed up some minutes late.

This is your job, you have done it over and over again. An interview is just an avenue to talk about how you can use what you know to help that community.

Have you ever tried to build a community from scratch? How did you do it? Did you do it alone?

So i and some of my data analytics friends created a community in January. The purpose of the community was originally to learn and become super proficient at using Microsoft Excel but we've outgrown that purpose few months ago... It's been a wonderful experience managing and leading the community so far. We started with 27 members but I had to take some members out due to their lackadaisical attitude towards learning and growing. Up until last week, we were about 15 in the community but the moment we decided to start "building in public" for 7 days. To be precise, on LinkedIn. Some of my community buddies started to give some excuses (work, personal challenges & goals) that i felt was genuine so i came up with options that i believe would be more convenient for them and ultimately motivate them to join in the challenge. To my greatest surprise, they didn't and so i had to reach out personally to majority of them to know what the problem was and how best we can support them but yet, there was no sign of seriousness and so i had to remove them from the community. I felt so bad taking them out of the community even though i know i did my possible best but I've been feeling so bad about everything that i had to take two days off the community to recharge and put myself together. I'm no longer sure if i did the right thing or not so I'd like to know what you think about this situation or what would you advise me to do moving forward?

Martha: For the first questions, yes I have built from scratch before. The first wasn’t done alone- I put it together with my boss and the process was this…

• defined the purpose

• defined our audience

• choose platform

• planned content and content distribution

• setup the platform and sorted onboarding and rules

• launched to the public once everything was set

Took a lot of planning back & forth; we planned for like 5 months and launched in the 6th month 😄 but after launch, we did what we had planned and kept improving as feedbacks came and things evolved.

—

well, doing stuff with friends can be great but so many times it’s frustrating 😅 but i admire the commitment to getting the original goal done.

First things first, guidelines are very important cause it allows people to know from the beginning what they have signed up for. And from what you’ve shared, they signed up to learn and I guess be accountable, and there was nothing about building in public. If overtime something comes into play, you’d have to give members time to adjust, but I also understand how frustrating it is to be doing something for someone’s good and they act like they are doing you a favour.

I would close the group as well 😂 But as a professional, you’d have to leave the situation first and find joy somewhere else; just get away from it till your emotions subside, and then you look into it again.

• do you want the community to continue or has it outlived its purpose?

• if to continue, how can you get 1 or 2 people to build in public so others could see and probably get motivated or how can you build in public yourself and show them the benefits?

• can building in public be picked up later, maybe find something else they will be willing to do or just keep at learning?

• if the community has outlived it purpose, can it be repurposed or just shut down? (cause yeah it’s okay to build, fulfil a purpose and shut it down)

You’ve taken them out and that’s still fine ‘cause at the end of the day you know what you want with the community. Take the break you need, re-strategize and get back in, if you have to. If this is something you are looking to last long term, put together a solid strategy and guidelines.

My first one is, (how should I put it now) let’s just say making the switch from solo community manager and decision maker maybe as a freelancer to working in an organization where you have to keep external stakeholders not only in the loop but largely in the decision making process, how did you get used to it? And manage to stay on top so you didn’t lose the love for the job because of the back and forth of the process at that stage?

Martha: I’ve never had stakeholders issues but I’ve worked in communities who where my plans never saw the light because the founders wanted to do ‘their thing’. I’ve also worked with people who dragged decision making and stalled a lot things.

In these two scenarios, I’ve ranted, gotten annoyed, hated the job and what not 😂 but you’d have to find a way around working with them eventually.

What do they want? How can you do what they want in a way that they love it but it doesn’t take so much from you either? More like play to their drum but know when to draw the line and be firm about the things you won’t negotiate.

Finally, all jobs are hard. If a situation is stressing you out so much, it’s just something that needs to be worked out and once it’s worked out, it’s no longer a pain in the neck. Eventually you’d figure it out and walk through it.

👀 Check these out!

• Evaluate your community and plan better for 2025 with this FREE audit workbook

• Plan and organize all your community content & programs for 2025 with this planner. can be easily shared among team members to keep everyone in sync. Check it out!

• I am curating the a gift guide for community managers! What’s on your wishlist as a community manager or what would you appreciate as a gift this season? Let me know and I'll find the best deals to share with everyone.

---

Till next time, I appreciate you.