Choosing Your Staff, Your Future.
When a forum is first opened, you will be able to handle all management aspects. But further down the track, you will notice you will have to spend more, energy, funds and time in developing new content and advertising your forum. In most cases, this is when you should consider hiring volunteer/unpaid staff members.
Selecting the staff without consideration may affect the forum and the community significantly. Remember, your staff represents you and your forum. Towards your members, mods are the higher ranked members who keep the forum safe and organised. They are expected to be polite, welcoming, encouraging and an overall A+ superb member. So remember to select your staff wisely.
When is it time to hire your staff?
Depending on your forum genre, i suggest admins to never have pre-hired staff for their forums. You should always manage the forum yourself, it allows a better understanding of your members and then forum. If you can manage the forum yourself, do not hire staff.
An admin should only consider selecting moderator(s) when they notice their time is scarce and they find it difficult to keep up with new members and new posts daily.
A suggested modification would be the one which shows New members joined and new posts made. With this handy mod, you will be able to keep track and moderate new posts made by your members.
Where and Who should i select?
Do not promote a member because his/her is your best friend. I can not stress that enough. Now a days, so many forum owners promote their good friends. Yes, they guarantee a great start when the forum opens but have you noticed, their general activity and performance etc drop after a few weeks? That is why you shouldn’t select moderators due to their friendship status but for their overall performance.
When your forum slowly grows, keep a look out for members who are passionate, helpful, active, uses proper grammar and are not the ones who stir up trouble. Why? Because these members are going to be your future moderators.
How do i select them?
I’ve noticed many forum owner’s find it easier or more comfortable with hiring a overwhelming of new staff members. I suggest you start off with one.
To hire a staff, you should develop a moderating guideline for yourself, which includes the what-to-do, when-to, how-to etc. Once your guideline is complete, send it to the member and ask for their confirmation about working on your forum. If they say yes, thank them and welcome them onto the staffing team.
Once their onboard, educate them with how you would like to them to moderate, which forums you have assigned them with etc.
Awarding Moderators in the long run.
Not matter how dedicated a moderator is, in the long run they will need motivation to keep up a great job. So try to become friends with your moderators, have weekly Mass MSN conversations and just get small get togethers with them and create a stronger friendship with them.
You may award your moderators with small incentives, such as mailing them cards, cash funds, coupons etc. But there are also many intangible awards you can provide them, forgiveness (if they ever make mistakes), kindness, motivation etc.
Firing Staff Members.
In my past experiences, forum admin’s struggle with demoting staff members. Why? because overall it will create an awkward situation. But if a staff member is affecting your forums reputation (or in any aspect), proper actions must be taken or your forum may end up in pieces.
I hope this article has given you a broader picture on selecting your staff.
Written by
Michael. W
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Redistribution of this article will be violating copyright laws.
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Tags:
moderators,
staff
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