Here you will find some short tips on how to get started with your Open Social community from a community manager’s perspective. In order to access all the functions below, the 'site manager' role is required. 

 

Content management
 

Community managers can add and manage all content within the Open Social platform. This includes all content posted by community members.

Content includes:

 

  • Posts

  • Events

  • Topics

  • Pages

  • Groups

 

Simply click the + sign at the top right of your screen to add content:

 

Add Content

 

Do you want to delete or edit content? Simply click the ˅ symbol at the top right of any content item to delete or edit the content:

 

Comment delete

 

You can read more about content management in our manual.

 

 TIPTIP:

Whenever the community manager comments on a content item, it will automatically float to the top of the feed. This is a great way to keep the community active according to interesting/relevant topics.
 

Group Management

 

In Open Social, anyone can create a group about a certain topic. A community manager is able to edit group information and manage and/or delete memberships of a group in the same way as the group manager.

 

Manage members

Edit
 

 

You can read more about groups in our manual

 

 TIPTIP:

Groups can be a very powerful tool to build a community, with an emphasis on ‘can’. Having lots of small groups with very few members and little activity can make your entire community look inactive.


When you manage groups well, however, they can add great value to your community and help ease your workload by keeping it active. This is because you will basically end up dividing your community into smaller groups with multiple (volunteer) group and/ or community members. Just be sure you don’t divide your community into groups too soon.

 

Groups can have a variety of purposes:
 

  • Local groups where users can ‘meet’ other users who live nearby

  • Groups related to a specific project or event

  • Groups related to an urgent matter

  • And so on….

 

An effective way to manage your community once it starts splitting off into groups is by creating a group for all the group managers, so they can ask questions and share ideas about how to maintain an active group.

 

User Management
 

If you would like your community manager to be able to manage users they will have to be given a site manager role within your platform. In their Open Social platform, the Site Manager has the ability to: 

 

  • See all users

  • Add and invite users

  • Edit user account settings

  • Export users into a CSV format

 

In addition, a community manager can:

  • Block users (content stays and can’t post or log in)

  • Cancel user account (multiple options and email confirmation)

 

Please note that when you block a user, their content will remain live within your community. They just won’t be able to log-in or post any new content. When you cancel a user account you have multiple options:

  • Disable the account but retain associated content and groups

  • Disable the account and unpublish associated content, but keep associated groups active

  • Delete the account and re-attribute associated content to the anonymous-user account. Associated groups can be re-assigned.

  • Delete the account and all its associated content and groups

topic assigned to anonymous

 

You can access all the above functionalities by going to the people-menu in the admin menu and picking the desired action from the filter drop-down.

 

User management

 

You can read more about user management in our manual.

 

TIP TIP:

To avoid unrest in your community when you need to block a user, make sure you set up and publish a Community Code of Conduct. You can refer to it when people first join the community and/ or when issues arise within your community.


Creating a Code of Conduct will also help you think about what kind of community you are trying to create and what kind of behavior you want to either stimulate or discourage.

 

Email Notifications

 

Open Social comes with a set of email notifications for community managers. These will help you track new activity on the platform. New activities are:

  • New users on the platform

  • Newly created content (groups, events, topics and posts)

  • New comments


Read more about this feature!

 

TipTIP

We encourage you to enable these notifications so you can manage and respond to new content while building your community. Engaging with new users when they first arrive in your new community can really help kick-start an active platform.

Think of:

  • Welcoming new users to the platform by placing a welcome message on their profile:

 

Post on Profile

 

  • Tracking inappropriate content, so you can alter or if needed delete it

  • Spot the creation of duplicated groups or events

  • Track and monitor hyper-active topics

  • Turn off notifications for working hours and switch them back on for evenings and or weekends so you are still on top of your community outside of office hours