What is Your Level of Activity? Posted March 27th, 2006 in Mailbag

This may have already been asked and answered, but I was wondering how much of a role you play in the day to day management of your forums.

I try to keep a good consistent level of involvement on my forums. It is a must that I do so as an admin. I posted last week a few thoughts about how I feel administrators should be involved, but I will happily expand on my role here today.

Depending on the forum, my role really varies. Due to the fact that I am basically a business guy without experience in web design, coding, or other various technical tasks, I mainly focus on what I am good at. That is managing the community, monetization, and growing the community. I made the decision long ago, that it would cost me valuable time and money to try to learn those things I wasn’t good at. It was a much smarter decision for me to hire that work out or find talent within the community.

I like to think of my role in any given community as a humble overseer of sorts. I am there at any time for the staff or membership to come to with issues. I am available for many hours each week through instant messenger and I am open with my contact information to both staff and members alike. I will post daily (weekdays) on every forum I own, and like to make a minimum of 3-5 posts on each forum daily. This lets the staff and members know that I am around throughout the day, reading up and checking on things. Aside from the “seen” activity, much of my time is spent behind scenes working with designers, coders, ad networks, partners, and so forth.

I hope this has shed some valuable insight in to my workload. I definitely have to be smart about things, or I would quickly get overwhelmed with my daily tasks.

Here is an interesting thread: What kind of admin are you?