I think most folks in the photoblogging/online photography world are well aware of the brouhaha (for lack of a better word) that happened this past week with JPG Mag. I’m not going to go into what I feel was wrong or right. I don’t know the full details, but I, along with much of the photography community, found the handling of the situation rather poor. It seemed the only folks honestly sharing with the community were Derek and Heather. What I found especially interesting this past week was the response and power of the community. I read Derek’s post about the situation early that day since I subscribe to his feed. Within a very short time however, word had spread and the community had responded. People immediately started cancelling their JPG Mag accounts and posting about the fiasco on their own blogs. The unofficial JPG Mag Flickr group started getting tons of comments. No doubt Derek and Heather received a number of emails, along with Paul of 8020 Publishing. The community reacted swiftly and in no uncertain terms. Now, whether it was right or wrong is up to each individual, but I was impressed by a community standing up for itself. I think many folks felt that by removing the origins of JPG, and by Derek (leaving/being forced to leave), the heart of the community was being ripped out, and of course the community wasn’t happy about this one bit. It’s fascinating to see how one action can have such a huge impact on a community.

At Expressions we have a very strong and supportive community and I am always grateful for their encouragement. This “incident” with JPG Mag is a good reminder that keeping your community happy is vital, and to do this you need to communicate with them openly and honestly. Obviously, in business you can’t divulge all your information online, but just telling the community what’s going on - especially in the face of abrupt change is essential. If nothing else, Paul should have addressed the situation quickly, honestly and in detail. The fact that he didn’t, resulted in even more folks getting upset over the situation. A sudden change makes the community wonder what the hell is happening and how it will effect them, which immediately makes them uneasy and quick to leave.

In the over 4 years of managing Expressions and building the community behind it, I’ve learned a lot of important lessons - some of them the hard way. Here are 5 of them I thought I’d share:

1. Listen and learn. Your community is intelligent and they have interesting things to say. Listen to their feedback with an open mind. Yes, you won’t always be able to take on their suggestions or change something for them, but they should always know they can send you feedback at any time. When we first started thinking about building a new photoblogging system we immediately asked our community for their thoughts. The overwhelming majority was happy with what we had in mind, so we moved forward. Since then, our members have had a huge impact on how we have designed and developed Vividry. Many of the features are specific requests from Expressions members.
2. Talk. Let your community know what’s going on as much as you can, and especially if there are big changes in the works. We have tried to communicate with folks as much as possible about the progress of Vividry and what that means for Expressions. Development has been a tad slower than we would have liked, so we haven’t had much to talk about yet, but we try and address any questions and concerns as openly as possible.
3. Apologise. If you fuck up, apologise for it and let your community know what measures you plan on taking so it doesn’t happen again or how you will compensate them for it. It’s as simple as that. Over a year ago, our servers went down for about 1.5 days. It was horrible! What made it worse was the fact that we didn’t have any way of letting our members know what was going on and what we were doing about the situation. It was bad planning on our side and we learned a very good lesson. As soon as the server issue was resolved we sent out an apology to everyone, refunded everyone for that month, started a Google Group where we knew we could always post messages to our members and created a status site for Expressions. We learned the hard way, but we apologised and took action.
4. Be personal, but don’t take things personally. I handle a lot of support emails. I try to always be friendly and personable in my correspondence. These folks aren’t “customers” or “clients”, but members of a community. Doing things with a smile is always a good thing and people know when you are being helpful and when you are just responding to a support question because you have to. The former is what you should always aim for. However, don’t take things personally. When someone complains or is rude, when they put down the site/application/service you’ve worked so hard on, don’t take it personally. You can’t please everyone. Sometimes people just have bad days and they take it out on whoever they can. Take a deep breath and keep things on the friendly side. Nine times out of ten the other person will realise they are being mean or unreasonable and apologise for it.
5. Be a part of it! Don’t just manage a community, but be sure you get involved. I don’t just manage Expressions, but I use it. I love photoblogging and photography. Although I don’t always find the time, I try to visit blogs as often as I can and comment on them. Take part in your community. Be one of the members yourself. You’ll learn a lot more about it if you are part of it. Take the time to get to know as many of your members as you can. If it’s a new community, try to welcome each member personally.