Last night I joined folk at Tempero to speak alongside Sony, BMA, ACCA and Mint Digital about online community management and share our tips and experiences.

It was a packed house and the event was kicked off by Tempero’s founder, Dom Sparks.

First up was Nico Henderijckx from Sony Europe gave us a fascinating introduction to their “Super Users” and how they are an integral part of Sony’s customer service strategy.

The Association of Certified Chartered Accountants’ Charlotte Garfield spoke about creating a lively community from what could seem like a fairly dry suject – namely accountacy! Working closely with Tempero‘s Thane Ryland, the ACCA has managed to create a thriving community on Facebook and how they’re looking to extend their strategy to Twitter in future.

Andy Bell from Mint Digital gave a highly entertaining talk about developing an online presence for Channel 4’s Sexperience. (Cue sniggering in the audience!) He talked about the challenges of creating a site set up to pre-moderate comments and managing users’ expectations.

Gordon Fletcher from The BMA talked about how they’re making the most of all communication channels to encourage engagement. Doctors, it seems, prefer email, so the BMA have made sure it’s part of their strategy to keep a dialogue open with them to help with their campaign on NHS reform.

And last up was me! I talked about taking over the mantle of The Archers community host from Keri Davies and how The Archers’ 60th anniversary affected the message board and listeners.

My tips?

• Keep (or seem!) calm when the going gets rough – don’t take things personally
• Get to know your subject and your community (I’m lucky enough to be able to draw on a wealth of books – pictured above! – as well as Camilla Fisher, the ever-helpful Archers archivist, and the long memories of many on the message board).
• Make the most of content and conversation across all channels – The Archers has a message board, Facebook page and Twitter feed – as well as a thriving community built around #thearchers hashtag.
• Feed back to the “mother ship” regularly – don’t keep all this fascinating insight to yourself!

You can download all the presentations from Tempero’s website.

And if you’re interested, that list of Archers fan characters on Twitter is here.

Thanks to Kelda Wallis for arranging it all.