Without a doubt, it was an extremely well-written post. Published on Medium.com back in March by David Hopkins, ‘How A TV Sitcom Triggered The Downfall Of Western Civilization’ was pop-culture analysis at its finest. It argued that, far from a bumbling romantic, the character of Ross Geller on Friends was really the victim of anti-intellectualism in America. To Elizabeth Tobey, however, what was even more impressive were the comments.
As of this writing there are close to 1,000 people who have given their take on the post, and as Tobey pointed out last week in a session at C2 Montréal, they weren’t all that high-level. This may be in part because Medium, which was co-founded by Evan Williams following his stints at Blogger and then Twitter, was designed to let readers put comments on Medium right next to a particular paragraph, rather than shoving them at the bottom. With most branded content, community-driven content is often siloed or even ghettoized.
“When you think about a normal online post, people will say, ‘Don’t read the comments,’” said Tobey, the head of community management at Medium.com, referring to snarky feedback from “trolls” and the like. “In this case, some of the comments were nearly as long as the original post. You have to think about it like a cocktail party — the person who starts talking isn’t necessarily the most important person in the room.”
Brands often start such conversations, in other words, but Tobey said they should be aiming for the kind of engagement that takes on a life of its own. Marketers may be wary of that — what if the conversation takes a dark or inappropriate turn? — but Tobey argued they have little choice.
“Communities are the beginning and the end of your company. Without them, your product has no purpose,” she said. “This isn’t just true at Medium. Think about Nike: Yeah, they have shoes, but without the people and the feet to run, to hike to walk, there’s no reason for them to exist.”
Tobey, who only started at Medium about four months ago after working in the video game sector, said her goals are centered around growth, loyalty, happiness and retention. To get a sense of how engaged Medium readers are, she created “conversation trees,” which looked a little like the roots of a plant, with posts generating more comments spiraling farther down than those that get few comments.
This data offered insight into what topics are resonating, of course, but also let her offer feedback on features to the product team that may be helpful.
“It’s not just about using your product to make your community better, but using community to make your product better,” she said. “When you do that, your product team will feel more integrated into the needs of users they’re serving.”
Of course, no brand — whether it’s publishing on Medium or via its own blog or other channels — wants to build an echo chamber where no one engages. A bigger concern among CMOs, however, is what happens if communities become too engaged or volatile. Tobey said this too, may be inevitable.
“We’ve reached peak toxicity,” she said. “No matter what community you have, there will be bad stuff.”
One part of solving this comes within products themselves, she said, where a platform can be “weighted” against those who behave the wrong way. This might be a mechanism that identifies bad comments and removes them instantly, for example. A more powerful approach, however, is to simply be a role model for the behaviours you want, Tobey said. That’s why some of her own posts on Medium, such as “Let’s Talk About Plagiarism and Civility,” have tackled subjects like transparency, being responsive, honest and reducing friction head-on.
“The point of this exercise wasn’t to do what the person who reported the problems wanted us to do,” she said. “We want to get as diverse a set of ideas as possible, challenge our assumptions and report on what came out of that.”
As more brands get experienced in various forms of content marketing, this will be part of the culture shift that needs to happen if they want to be successful, Tobey said.
“In many companies you don’t want to talk about the things that go wrong. There’s vulnerability there,” she acknowledged. “But, in that vulnerability there is power. There’s a respect for honesty and trust and it makes your company not that opaque wall, but a place where you and your community can be partners together.”
