What can a community manager do when members become too critical? With Community Director Ami Defesche

In this episode, the inspiration stems from a late-night LinkedIn DM from a distressed community manager handling a tumultuous Discord community. They felt overwhelmed and discouraged by all the suggestions and criticism constantly coming from community members.

To better help Discordant on Discord, I invited Ami Defesche as my guest expert. She's currently the community director at Wildcard Alliance—and formerly at Intuit and Blackbaud. Ami is a community builder with a passion for helping dreamers and doers in small businesses. So, if you're looking for community strategy for online businesses, look no further.

As an experienced community builder, Ami shared strategies and tools for managing overwhelming feedback and toxic behavior in rapidly expanding communities. So, tune in to learn about the importance of mission statements, setting boundaries, and self-care practices for community managers.

In this episode:

(03:01) The Communitea: Discordant on Discord’s letter

(04:43) The Challenges of Managing a Discord Community

(06:15) Strategies for Managing Community Feedback

(12:48) Tools and Techniques for Community Management and Moderation

(20:29) What to Do if You’re Starting a Discord Community Today

(23:52) Self-Care for Community Managers

Expect: Community strategy, online community building best practices, and community growth strategies.

Resources Mentioned:

❤️ Sign up for Heartbeat. Bri’s recommended all-in-one community platform.

💛 Join Ember. The place for go-getter community creators building community-powered businesses.

Noteworthy quotes:

“If you're going to start a community anywhere, start as best as you can with the thought that one day it's going to have 10, 000 people in it […] What would you want in place to make sure that was a productive group?” - Ami Defesche

“You have quite a bit of agency as the moderator, as the community manager to set the framework for how members behave in this space and what you expect of them.“ - Bri Leever

Ami Defesche

Ami Defesche is a community builder with a passion for helping the dreamers and doers in small business. Currently the Community Director at Wildcard Alliance, formerly Intuit and Blackbaud.

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Bri Leever

Bri got her start building a community and growing it to a multi-million dollar revenue stream for a social enterprise in Portland, OR. Now, she supports folks used to running their business on content, coaching, and consulting to create their community offer. She's a Community Strategist by day and a Campervan host by night on the Big Island of Hawaii and you'll usually find her on, in, or under the water.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'll never forget inspiration for this episode came from a late night LinkedIn DM from a community manager who was just beside themselves with the chaos that was unfolding in their Discord community. And I had the opportunity to have a call with this person and just hold space for all of the tension that they were containing in their role as a community manager. And so I actually asked that person to craft this letter, which we anonymized. And I love this episode so much because I've never personally managed a community at this scale or on Discord. So I really love being able to glean the insights from Ami in this episode. And I really enjoyed this conversation. I walked away with so much energy, super excited, feeling like myself empowered to go run a Discord community, which is not a mistake I will be making anytime soon. But for those of you who are leading communities on Discord, or for those who just want a good laugh, I think this is a really fabulous episode. And just a note that this episode was recorded way back before I really had the format nailed down for the Deer Bree podcast episodes. So it might feel a little bit different than some of our other episodes, but the content, I promise you, is gold. So thanks for tuning in. Welcome to Deer Bree, an advice column for community conundrums, fiascos, and drama. This season of Deer Bree is sponsored by our friends over at Heartbeat. Heartbeat is an all-in-one community platform, and it's the one I chose to host my own community. Your members can finally have events, conversation, content, and even courses in one distraction-free, intimate, customized home. I chose Heartbeat for three reasons. First, Heartbeat is unparalleled in their events management features. Events are a core part of my community architecture, and their features make my life so much easier. Second is segmentation. It's super easy to break my community into smaller, more niche subgroups and create a more customized experience for that group in Heartbeat. And finally, their courses. Being able to host my educational materials and learning journey in a community-first platform makes my community that much more valuable and retention that much stickier. I'm an affiliate with Heartbeat, which means when you sign up through my link in the show notes, I get paid a small amount and no extra charge to you. Thank you for supporting my work in that way. And finally, I usually record this podcast from Hawaii Island. So a special thank you to the Kanakamali people on whose land I currently reside. Today we're reading a letter from someone who has a community on Discord. And let's dive right in. Dear Brie, I manage a handful of communities on Discord with a heavy percentage of Gen Z members. One of these communities I run on Discord started because the creator blew up on Twitch. Overall, the community built from their audience is a genuinely good-natured group of people who want to have positive social impact. As this creator became more popular, they've told their audience to be open if they saw things they wanted them to improve or change. While this is very humanizing and comes from the good place, it has opened the floodgates for criticism as their audience has grown. It feels like it's literally never enough. We've raised tens of thousands of dollars for nonprofit organizations, and yet our followers are saying it's performative and that we're doing more harm to minority communities by not using the creator's platform more. It's to the point where it's affecting the well-being of our volunteer moderators, and things keep spiraling out of control to where our reputation as a community precedes us, even though most of the problem behavior is happening off-platform. I love my work as a community builder, but this shit is hard and it kills me that it's wearing on my volunteers like this. How do we deal with never being enough? Should we even bother trying to outrun our ghosts of social media past? Signed discordant on Discord. I feel that in my bones. I think anyone who's run a community has these sinking gut feelings. Like you wake up and there's a notification and your guts just sink in your body. I know exactly that feeling. I have been there. Not in this exact scenario, but I'm really excited to dig in more to this really common moderation conundrum and how to approach it. So to help me, because I, while I like to think of myself as very tech savvy, didn't even know really about Twitch until getting this letter. So I brought in someone who's more hip with the Gen Z folks face today. I'd love to introduce Ami Defesh. She is a community builder with a passion for helping dreamers and doers in small business. She's currently the community director at Wildcard Alliance and formerly at Intuit and Blackbot. So I'm sure you have seen your fair share of the shit show that can go down in communities. What are your initial impressions for our friend Discordant in Discord?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

It's so funny because you talked about the sinking feeling at Wildcard now. I run a Discord community. So I'm in Discord every day, deep in that kind of culture and stuff. And there was sinking feelings about because this is really common, unfortunately, especially on Discord as a platform. I want to go into this just saying I'm not in that community. I don't know exactly which community we're talking about. My thoughts might include some assumptions based on details I don't have, but hopefully I can offer some helpful insights. But it sounds like to me, right off the bat, is what happened here is something great, but also something difficult, which is scaling really fast. When a community, especially around streamer, grows really fast, there's not a lot of time to build the systems that help manage all the noise from a ton of community members, especially if they're good-natured people who are really passionate about something like social good. So I think that would be where I would want to dig in first if we reframe how we look at this community as less so about people rallying around an individual like a streamer, but really looking at the streamer's community as like its own entity, like a business. I think there's a lot we could do to help structure the feedback so it feels heard. We don't experience some of that toxic pylon effect, maybe, and everyone starts to feel a little better about it. The moderators know what to do with it. Happy to dig into all that, but that's just my top of mind thoughts about it.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah, that's great. I'd love to hear more about how you would approach that. And in retrospect, maybe there's always two sides to these scenarios. There's what can we do now that this has happened? And then retrospectively, how would you approach it differently if somebody was given a second chance? Or maybe they're just starting like a community on Discord and they're like, I do have a fresh slate before things get out of control. So maybe we can address what's happened. How can they regain some cultural norms in the community to help with this? Or what would you suggest for them now? And then we can go back and revisit what we would do differently.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah. So I think one of the places I would start is, and I'm going to keep coming back to talking about this business. And I hope that's not like off-putting because whether or not it's monetizing or what, it's just the mental structure I put around it. But a business, when they build a community, they usually have a mission statement. The purpose of the mission statement is to set expectations with the community about, hey, when you come in, here's what to expect. Here's what this community is all about. When they come in and they're experiencing what this community has to offer and engaging with the leaders in this community, in this case, streamer or the mods or whoever, that they know what as a collective they're driving toward. In this case, sounds like social good. Having this statement, you don't have to call it a mission statement. It can be whatever works for your brand, but having this very clear kind of, hey, here's what I and this community is about. Here's what we're driving toward, really sets solid foundations, accepting feedback when you open the floodgates to, hey, what can we do be doing better? It can be based on something that you have control over. Instead of being at the whim of the community, you're saying, here's what I stand for, like let's build this together. That's probably where I would start this introspective work. And it's a great opportunity. I'm growing. I have a platform now. This is awesome. Let's figure out what exactly this means. Because as much as people will want you to do everything, your scope is limited. You can't do everything. And it's very easy for people on the internet, especially anonymously, via Discord to tell you that you should be doing more. I was on Twitch back in 2013 where we were going from two-hour charity streams to the expectation being that you were streaming for 24 hours and sacrificing your sleep and trying to raise money. And even at the end, after sacrificing like your well-being to stream for charity, there would still be people that said they didn't do enough, or you should have done more, you should have partnered with so-and-so, or whoever. Setting expectations is, I think, pretty key.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Absolutely. It's a delicate balance in community. And as we were just having a conversation about this in my community, the delicate balance between product market fit and setting the compass for your community and saying, based on your vision and values, this is where we are going. Because if you come from the product market fit side, I can see how this influencer also got to this point where they're telling their audience, I want to hear from you. If you see things or areas that I can improve or be better, we want to hear from our audience, which is of noble intention, but it can also open the doors to chaos if not guided with a strong vision and value. This is what I'm about. This is what this space is about. Within the boundaries of this mission, what do you want to see more of? Because if you don't set those boundaries first, you're just opening the door to people who are not actually a great fit in your community.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Nailed it. And it's especially tricky. I like to discern the difference between your audience and your community members. And I've found especially for communities on Discord, that the distinction can be confused. Given the last decade where social media has trained us to be consumers in an audience. Like that is how we engage with content is as consumers. And the community approach is different. You are inviting members into a space to participate as not just a consumer or commenter, but as a member of your communities. For our friend Discordant on Discord, you have a lot of power in this scenario and rise up to it. You can actually expect more of your members and tell them you are expecting more of them, especially when we're talking about a community. If we're just talking about your social media audience, honestly, I have no idea what to tell you. And people are like, potentially chaos couldn't sue at any point, and I don't know how to control it. But once we've created that boundary of now you, but you are opting in and you are creating an identity as a member of this group, you have quite a bit of agency as the moderator, as the community manager, to set the framework for how members behave in this space and what you expect of them. So I love everything that you shared there. Anything else that you would add for members for what they can do now? Or do you want to go to what we would do retroactively?

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah, I think I would love to just add on to everything that you were just saying, which is that, yeah, as a community manager, especially using a platform Discord, there's also a lot of tools that you can enable to help put some structure around how people can interact and highlighting and encouraging the behavior you want to see more of, and like funneling or I don't know, moderating the behavior that you want to see less of. So I was thinking if because it's the kind of feedback loop described in the letter as like a floodgate all pouring in and feeling a little difficult or toxic. Maybe there's a bot you can add to Discord that's like a suggestion bot and it filters into maybe a certain space or a private queue. Maybe there's a ticket system, and the moderators can pull in this feedback privately and then have some sort of a platform to surface it in a more curated way to the community. So, an example that I've seen in another community that worked pretty well was they accepted suggestions privately, let's say through a ticketing system, and then they would have a monthly AMA or town hall event where the community managers will say, Okay, we've been collecting your feedback all month long. Let's talk about some of the most commonly seen ones and how we're addressing it. That way you don't feel like you have to constantly be responding to every single thing to put out fires, but you have some time to digest, prioritize, and then come back to your community thoughtfully about how you've heard them, you value their feedback, and this is how you're going to move forward. Looking into what systems and tools exist that you can put that structure around the feedback and surface it in a way that's more manageable, feels better. When I talked about rewarding and recognizing behavior that you love, there's gamification systems, there's using native Discord features like roles to highlight the people who are really doing a great job of oh wow, like this person gave really constructive feedback. Like, this is exactly what we want to say. 10 points to you, or you get this super user role or to act as like indicators to the community of this is how you function.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

This podcast is sponsored by Ember Consulting, where I'm the founder and head community creator. At Ember, we help people who are familiar with running their business on content, coaching, or consulting become community powered. As you hear in this podcast, creating a community is really tough, and managing it can be even harder. So don't do it alone. Whether you're looking to launch a new community or pivot your strategy, our one-on-one consulting helps you skip the learning curve and do it right the first time. And when you're ready to belong to a space just for community creators learning, testing, and growing their communities together, check out the Ember Community. Now, back to the episode. I love that idea, and it's hard to enforce at first, especially if members are used to having the privilege of throwing feedback at you at any channel at any time and any mood that they are in, and even adding to that in the town hall, saying, Hey, we really appreciate Ami has shared several tickets with feedback that's super detailed in our feedback form. Thank you so much for that really detailed feedback that was helpful for us. Or like bringing up a thread that's super helpful for our team. This was the result of that request or post, or bringing that into existing programs and working that recognition into areas where your members are present is only going to help reinforce that behavior. I love that advice. And for our friend on Discord, I used to manage a pretty robust Facebook group. So it's not the same, but I put Facebook groups and Discord the same territory of unruly and chaotic this mix between community and audience, and people don't always quite know how to behave. It feels overwhelming because there's a few really toxic or bad actors who might not be a good fit for your community. But those are the hardest moments when I had to have an individual conversation with those members to say, hey, it doesn't seem like you're happy here. What are you looking for? And is this community actually a good fit for you? And those times where I did have to summon the courage to say, this is not a great fit anymore. I found that by taking that brave and courageous step, I was, and I had to tell myself and remind myself, like I am protecting hundreds of other members who are ready to not hear from this person anymore. I'm guarding the space for them and making it a better space for them to thrive, the ones we really want to support and see grow in our community by taking the brave and courageous step to address these issues with the few bad actors who could have a redemptive moment and be like, oh my God, you're so right. I do want to be here and I'm committed to changing the behavior and taking the steps to do that, or then being like, Yeah, you're right, F you, and they just slip the table and leave. My dad always said, and I love this quote avoid creating a policy where a hard conversation is what's required. It's critical to have the vision, values, mission statements orienting the ship for the individuals not getting on board. A hard conversation might be required to do what it takes rather than saying just starting the long list of things that you're gonna outlaw. No more this and no more that and no more this and no more that you have this list of 50 adults, and people are like, wait, what happened here? I love when I go into communities and the community guidelines are like so specific. You want to keep from swinging the pendulum so far that you really stagnate a lot of the creative energy in your community. And so I think the best way to do that is to have your vision of values mission statement, but to also keep it simple enough that it leaves room for you to have those difficult conversations because that's ultimately going to be what protects your community members who are a good fit.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yeah, and I love that your like reference of the list of don'ts because pretty early on in my career, one of the best pieces of advice I got as a community manager was whenever possible, try to spin something positively rather than negatively. Usually this is in the form of addressing negative feedback. My first job as a community manager was for a mobile video game. And people would, we would release an update, no one was happy, it didn't meet their expectations, or whatever. And so my first instinct just as a human was like, I am so sorry, we missed the mark. Like, you guys are right, we're gonna do better. And my boss said, Stop everything, hold on. How can we say the same thing, but positively? Love that you guys are so passionate about this game. You've put countless hours of exactly what you want, and we love that. We've heard your feedback. Here's how we're going to improve on what we just released to make it even better for you. Thank you for taking the time. No one's the bad guy. They're not the bad guy. We're not the bad guy. It's just, wow, look at this discourse we're having. This is great. And then immediately the anger gets turned down a notch. They feel heard. The conversation is positive again. Same thing with community guidelines. Like it's a list of do's, not don'ts, right? Do be respectful. Do add as much detail to your feedback as possible so we can act on it. And that way people come in knowing what they should be doing rather than what they shouldn't be doing.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Okay. Well, this is such a great conversation. So I want to quickly just address if we had a fresh slate and we were starting from scratch on Discord, is there anything else you would add to help create a better positive outcome in the end?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

I think always starting with growth in mind can be helpful. There are situations in which you suddenly have this growing community and you're like, Discord might be a great idea. Then you have a Discord and you're building as you go. And it's harder to implement systems and guidelines reactively than it is to start with them. Hindsight is always 2020, but if you're going to start a community anywhere, start as best as you can with the thought that one day it's going to have 10,000 people in it, 50,000 people in it. And what would you want in place to make sure that was a productive group? Knowing what you might need or putting a plan in place for growth could be helpful. Sometimes you just don't know what you need until you need it. But yeah, just yeah, doing that thoughtful pre-planning to say, if this word blow up, what am I going to need? And then choosing those things ahead of time.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

It's great advice. It is tricky because we don't want to spend so much time building out. For example, if you're planning a conference, do I plan for build a space for 10,000 people, or do I get a small room where my first 12 members can join? And so you have to build little by little, but definitely trying to proactively assess long term if this were to blow up, what would be Some guidelines we could have in place today, knowing that this is just a part of community building. As a community manager, that's why self-care is so important. And maybe this is the other piece for Discord, like they're really feeling it for their moderators. And so I think addressing what is happening, we need more boundaries for your members and your community. But I think there's a whole other side to this of your moderators doing what they need to have self-care as a community manager and being able to take a step back when I manage the community and just saying at the end of the day, we are not like doctors saving lives, not being too hard on yourself when things are going according to plan in the community, and knowing that you can always redesign it with different features, different rules, different boundaries to get better outcomes that are more sustainable for you. But don't beat yourself up about needing to change it all at once.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah. Incremental change is more manageable and effective, and you're gonna get where you want to go. Doubling down on self-care. Even if that just means taking a second before feeling like you have to respond, especially for everybody, but I would say, especially for volunteers, we're all in the community space because we care about people. We want to connect people, we want to uplift people, we want to drive positive outcomes together. When someone's unhappy, we want to fix it right away. I'm like, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Someone in my community is unhappy. Take a second and let the deep breath happen because in this situation where lives are not on the line, taking that deep breath moment will sometimes help you come back to a situation with more clarity and diffuse it more effectively than if you were just reacting in real time all the time. It's hard to do. I still have a hard time doing it.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Maybe this is a good question to leave with as we come to a close. What's do you have any self-care rituals or even if it's idyllic, like you haven't done it yet, but you're like, this is a thing I'd like to do to keep you fresh and feeling like you're pouring into yourself so that you can give to others?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

It's very personal, but mine is art, but offline. So if I go paint with a paintbrush or like journal, because suddenly there's not no, there's not notifications popping up. There's not like Discord sitting there open and waiting for me to look through all my channels. You're gonna turn it off and go offline. I think it would also work just like taking a walk and sitting in the grass, unplugging. Don't overthink it. You don't have to plan out a big thing or buy a bunch of bath products or whatever. Just go sit in the grass, put your hands in the dirt. It always helps me feel more refreshed.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

So good. Thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

What is yours? I gotta know yours.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Any tips? Oh, the first thing that came to my mind was some yoga for me. Like stretching and getting back in my body always helps ground me. It's so easy, especially in a community space and especially as an entrepreneur and community builder. I can easily start to feel like everyone else is doing things right and I'm doing all the things wrong. And so I think I have to like recognize those moments of overwhelm and anxiousness. That's my signal to disconnect and get back in my body. Trying to be more attuned to my mind and noticing those patterns is the first battle for me. The second one is saying, I just have to do 10 seconds of stretching, not trying to do a whole yoga flow, but just 10 seconds of stretching will get me out of my chair. Usually I'll end up doing more than 10 seconds, but that's a good one for me.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yeah, I actually heard we're coming up on our time, but if it's helpful to anyone who deals with fight or flight responses regularly in their professional life, which I think uh community managers do, I read that moving your body to get your heart rate up is the best way to deal with it. I am not a scientist or a psychologist, but something about the elevated heart rate being a signal to your body that you have escaped danger, then it can calm down and you can complete the cycle and come back with more clarity. So yoga is a natural way to do that or just going for a run or a walk. It's physiologically one of the best things that you could do.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Simultaneously don't like to sweat, but I do love that. No, that's great. Thank you so much, Ami. It's been such a delight to have you on the episode. Thank you to our listeners for sharing some space in your earbuds. I like to say now go drink some water, but I think it'd be like way more appropriate to say now go stick your feet in the earth. Well drinking water. We're gonna make sure everybody's hydrated and grounded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

All right.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

See y'all next time.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Thank you so much for sharing some space with me on this episode. Please like and review wherever you find your podcast. To submit your own community conundrum, fiasco, or other drama, go to the link in the show notes. Aloha and catch you next time.