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Have you ever met someone who "lights up the room?" Next time, check for their George Clooney wrinkles.  That's Guy Kawasaki's nifty way of describing a sincere, full-on smile.  Turns out people who do that are those "light up the room" people.  But how do you do that in cyberspace?
enchantment
Here are some key takeaways from Guy's new book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, that can be applied directly to managing online communities:

Be likeable and trustworthy, and bake a bigger pie - the best community managers already know this secret---that you need to be truly interested in other people on a cellular level if you want to be magnetic.
  • Share some of your own passions; don't hide behind a corporate persona
  • Default to trusting your members
  • Don't be afraid of competitor communities; if you're doing it right, no-one else can replicate your flavor (bigger pie is better)
  • "Embrace the nobodies" (this was one of my favorite quotes from the book). If your community has a clique of cool kids, make sure you reach out to the newcomers and nobodies too...you just never know who might be your next passionate evangelist.
Make sure your cause is enchanting too - every successful online community is united by a cause.  It might be evangelizing Pokemon, supporting military families, or sharing great school lunch recipes, but there must be a central passion that brings the community together.  In the book, Guy provides a great outline of what makes a great cause; here are some particularly relevant ideas:
  • Make the path to participation smooth; don't make it hard for folks to join your community
  • Does your community have a tagline? A short, clear message that distills the cause into words could be a great uniting feature
  • Plant many seeds.  My interpretation of this is to go outside your own community.  Mix and mingle on many different social platforms and support other communities too.  The more people you meet and use your killer George Clooney smile on, the more supporters you have out there.
Build an ecosystem around your cause - sometimes community managers feel like an "army of one," but you can't build a truly enduring community without support and buy-in from the wider world.
  • Bring your boss on board, and get support from your co-workers and/or employees; Guy offers a whole chapter on overcoming resistance. Bottom line: use perception, data, and framing to present your cause in the best way.
  • Make sure your cause is "spreadable." Use technology, diversity of membership, and intrinsic rewards to facilitate the spread of your ideas/community.
  • Customize your tools to your audience; Guy goes into wonderful detail on using push and pull technologies to engage your community. Just be sure that you are using the correct medium to address your members; if your target group is 20-somethings, then email might not be the best mechanism, right?
There are so many things in this book that could be directly applied to community management that I recommend Enchantment for everyone's bookshelf.  Read it with a highlighter (or digital highlights) in hand, and maybe you can even enchant your friendly neighborhood troll!

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I'd love to hear your thoughts here in the comments, or connect with me on Twitter.

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  • enchantment: Guy Kawasaki: Enchantment

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