Help to support new mods on Social care team!!

[Elaine_ThreeIre]

I am looking for some advice please?  So recently my Social Care team has had a lot of leavers, joiners and movers so effectively I am now at a point where I have lost over 10 years of moderator experience and have a relatively new team with very little social/mod experience L

Does anyone have any guidance or instructions that you can share with me to support the team through this forming stage. What approach has worked for other companies? What are the pitfalls I need to look out for? How can I support and develop the team to improve their tone to deliver the high standard that has been set by previous mods.

[LarryI]

+ @SheilaM and @ChrissyL as they are the managers of Lithium's moderation team, they may have some great insight to add!

To anyone here managing moderation teams, I'd love to see your feedback too!

As I worked alongside Sheila and managed moderators in my previous role, here's my advice:

• Create Moderator Guidelines
  
  • It is very important to set clear guidelines for moderators.  Guidelines should contain processes for handling every major and most minor scenarios, as well as best practices you want them to follow.  Training to these guidelines should help with most pitfalls.
  • Our best practices and recommended processes can be found in a default Moderator Guidelines template we have (while it needs to be updated, it's still VERY relevant): https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Launching-your-site/Launch-Moderation-Guidelines-template/ta-p/68...
• Set expectations on how to best communicate and set a positive atmosphere
  • A great moderator is impartial and moderates to the User Guidelines set in your community.  The User Guidelines can help govern the tone you want to set for users and moderators help enforce this in their communications.
  • Ideally, this is in the Moderator Guidelines.  We have four absolute requirements for moderation in that linked document towards the end, which I highly recommend teaching them.
• As the manager, check in regularly and give feedback to the moderators
  • Review what they are doing now vs. your previous senior moderators.  Incorporate that into regular feedback to them on how to improve in their roles.

All of this really ties into the guidelines, but they are important to maintaining consistency.  It will take time, but with that clear direction and feedback from you, they will improve!

Also, we have training videos for Moderators in Lithium Campus, so I recommend reaching out to education@lithium.com to request that for your moderation team.

[Elaine_ThreeIre]

Hi Larry,

Thanks so much for your advice it is greatly appreciated and i will certainly be taking it onboard. I particularly like the suggestion around reviewing and comparing current v's previous moderators. 

I have sent the team links to some really useful learning modules on Lithium Campus which i'm sure will give them the basis they need to get started but as you say it will take time.

In your previous role did you manage a Social media team also or was it all moderators on Communities? The team i manage are also responsible for providing customer care via Social Media i.e. Twitter/Facebook so any advice you can give me on improving the skillset here is also welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks and regards,

Elaine

[LorraineF]

I agree with all of Larryl's points, in addition I would also say to give them time.  In my experience if people feel rushed or hurried when moderating they are likely to make mistakes.  Much better to be a little late than make the wrong decision and upset people on the page/feed. 

My team look after Twitter and Facebook and I've used the same priciples there.  We have guidelines to follow but find it's far more of a judgement call on these channels as its not always so black and white.  To help consistency we often discuss these cases in regular team huddles and talk through what action we should take.  We also keep a note of the 'big stuff' we moderate along with a screen shot on why we've done what we've done.  Great for others to refer to if they have a similar issue and if there is any comeback we have our decisions recorded.  Good luck!

[Elaine_ThreeIre]

Thanks Lorraine really appreciate the advise. 

One thing that do use is a 'best practice guide' which is a really great support tool to help any new guys while they go through the transition into a Social Care role. This is probably similar to what you refer to as the 'big stuff' also QA forms and regular coaching seem to creating a culture of confidence on the team.

Thanks again

Elaine