For those of you who don't know, I'm currently in my third, decade-long career. I left school at 15 years old with absolutely no idea what to do.

What's the one thing almost all associations have in common? It's formal volunteer leadership programs. Volunteer leaders are highly visible, engaged MVPs in the association, lending credibility and encouraging other members to attend events and participate in activities. There are volunteer trainings, guidelines and formal committee structures and procedures, all of which boost the program's credibility and desirability; members aspire to join the ranks of these MVPs.

A topic of frequent interest and debate among Higher Logic clients is the auto-login feature. Auto-login embeds a user's credentials into community discussion group emails, enabling users to click on links in emails generated by the community platform to engage in the community site without having to manually log in.

When organizations launch a new private online community that includes a member directory feature, one of the big questions that always comes up is whether or not to automatically include all members, or require individuals to "opt-in". Privacy is a big concern these days, so it's understandable that associations want to give members complete control over whether or not they're included in a member directory.

However, asking members to opt-in just doesn't work. Success rates will be much higher using automatic enrollment with the option to opt-out, versus asking users to opt-in.

What happens when a member posts a negative or inflammatory comment in your online community? Having negative comments, or "detractors," in your community is not a bad thing; in fact it's a great opportunity for an organization to demonstrate transparency and a culture of openness.

There's a saying: "The conversation is happening whether you're listening or not." If a member voices a concern related to the profession/industry, or even about the organization itself, the odds are that other members have similar thoughts. It's best to address concerns head-on and open up a dialogue about the issue. Although after looking at the moderation analytics from over 400 organizations representing over 100,000 communities, it actually appears to be a fairly infrequent scenario.

I know it's tough to keep up with all of the tools and tricks for retaining and engaging your members - hats off to you. When it comes to achieving your organization's goals, you often need to wear many hats. How do you measure online member engagement? And how does it correlate to increased revenue and greater satisfaction?

Launching a new community is exciting, and overwhelming. Your online community is an incredible tool that can be used to fully embrace new members and, at the same time, increase your overall level of member engagement. It can be easy to get so caught up in the details of planning and launching your community that you forget one key component: getting people to participate when it's live.

Assuming you've fully launched your community, one of the most important next steps is to ensure any new member to the organization is properly onboarded and welcomed into that community. For most organizations, the new member will be the most likely not to renew.

A few weeks ago, Joe Rominiecki wrote a good article addressing the fallacy that higher member engagement leads to higher renewal rates. Instead, he points to Sheri Jacob's new book asserting that it's actually member satisfaction rather than member engagement that drives renewals.

I absolutely agree with Sheri but there is one fundamental flaw with Joe's article: The assumption that the act of consuming content is not an act of engagement. Consumers of content (or "lurkers" as we like to call them) are engaged, it's just a different type of engagement.

Monday, January 27 marks the fifth annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). CMAD is a day to appreciate the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes making online communities succeed.

At Higher Logic, we have nothing but respect and admiration for the people who run the 100,000+ communities powered by our platform, not to mention just community managers as a whole. We know the work that goes into managing online communities, from getting users to adopt a new system to mitigating disputes among community members to convincing staff and volunteer leaders to lead by example and participate to navigating new relationships with IT departments - community management is definitely a challenging job.

We had our users' group conference earlier this month and, aside from our best attendance yet with over 300 attendees, we were treated to some really great sessions by seriously smart Higher Logic clients.

One of the tips that's stuck with me over the past few weeks was one from Lindsay Starke, Online Community Coordinator from Professional Photographers of America, who did a fantastic session on the psychology of community management. The tip is something I've seen many times in various communities but which I'd never given much thought to until I heard her explain how and why her organization does it.