At this very moment a spammy comment is being written on the Moz Blog, a tweet is being sent to @Moz, and someone is signing up for the next Mozinar. You'll probably never see any of these happen, and may not realize that just like Newton's third law states, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." As each one of these actions occurs, a Moz Community Manager is jumping into a reaction: The spammer is banned, the tweet is answered, and the Mozinar is being prepared.
Charlene, Megan, and Erica showing how much fun Community Managers have :)
Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day, or #CMAD as it's come to be known. It's a day to thank the amazing community managers out there who keep all things moving no matter what the day or time. At Moz, we're lucky to have an exceptional team of folks that manages everything from social media posts to handling spammers. It's not always a pretty job, but it's one they take to heart, and have come to live and breathe the role.
I dare you to try to figure out who's tweeting when.
It's my great honor to introduce and thank each of our community managers, as well as several folks who contribute greatly to the team. They make sure our site isn't overrun with spam, your questions get answered in Q&A, your tweets see replies, and that you have help writing a great post for YouMoz.
Before I dive in, I'd like to give a shout out to all of our Associates, especially Gianluca and Miriam, who help the Community team in a myriad of ways every single day. In order to be fair, I'll introduce each person in terms of how long they've been working on community-related tasks here at Moz.
Keri Morgret - Community Manager
Keri started out as an Associate in early 2011, where she initially focused on YouMoz. She had been quite active in the greater SEO community, and her knowledge and experience was top-notch. Top that with a need for perfect grammar (she once refused to read a self-published book because of bad grammar), and she took YouMoz to great heights.
Over time, she took over Q&A, and eventually came to manage just about everything happening on the site each day. Keri moved to Seattle, and became a full-time Mozzer in May 2012. Here's a high-level peek at all the areas Keri currently handles:
- Managing YouMoz
- Managing Q&A
- User moderation
- Coordination with Help Team
As someone we often call our "super sleuth," Keri likes to know everything that's happening on the site at all times. My appreciation for her goes well beyond her keeping tabs on the community for us. She cares for Moz and our entire community to her core. She lives and breathes TAGFEE, and holds all of us at Moz to the highest standards, constantly reminding us to focus on our community.
This year in particular was a special one for Keri, as she welcomed her daughter Eloise to the world. I'll throw in a big thank you to Eloise as well, who has brought so much love and happiness to Keri and her husband. :)
Erica McGillivray - Sr. Community Manager
Between the time Erica accepted the role of "Community Attache" in October 2011, and the time she actually started just a few weeks later, her job had completely changed. Lucky for us, her background is diverse: Not only has she been an SEO in a previous life, but she's managed email campaigns, writes killer copy, and was once the President of GeekGirlCon. She accepted the changed role, and focused on marketing communications for a while. However, it didn't take too long for her to find her true calling back on the community team!
Erica quickly proved her prowess at managing speakers and events, and took over our bi-weekly webinars (a.k.a. Mozinars), as well as speaker coordination for our annual conference, MozCon. Plus, with her knowledge of SEO and social, she took over the management of our social media channels, and helped Keri with on-site work as needed.
Today, as our Senior Community Manager, she's in charge of the following areas:
- Speaker management & promotion for MozCon, LocalUp Advanced, and Mozinars
- Event project management (ensuring pages are created for events, videos are ready to sell, etc.)
- Handling of escalated social or on-site issues
- Community strategy
- Team management backup
This year, I'm extremely thankful for Erica stepping in and helping with bigger strategy items, and being my backup! Ok, that really just means she ends up going to a lot more meetings, but still, it's been great. :)
Christy Correll - Q&A Associate
Christy and I worked together many years ago in Denver (in what feels like a completely different life). When we realized that Q&A was getting more active in early 2012, and we needed an additional set of eyes in there, I knew just who to turn to. Christy was running her own online marketing agency, so I knew she had the background and ability, and I was pleased to find out she had the time as well!
What began as a possible 10 hours/week job has grown into at least a half-time gig. We count on Christy's insights and smarts in Q&A every single day. She and Keri use a spreadsheet with all of our staff and Associates expertise to know who best to assign things to. She's also been helping out more and more with the editing of YouMoz blog posts.
Christy, thank you for your continued excellence in making Q&A an amazing place to give and get answers to all kind of online marketing questions.
Megan Singley - Social Community Manager
Megan had been working on the Help team for almost two years, when we stole her over to the community team in January of 2013 (yes, that means she just hit her 4-year mark!). She was more knowledgeable about our tools and how to help our customers than any of the rest of us were. Her love has always been in social, and she initially worked with Erica on managing our social accounts. It didn't take long, though, for her to take over social management, and she is currently the go-to person for all things social media. At this very moment we have some fascinating social tests happening on Twitter thanks to her work. (Now, if only I could get her to write a blog post about the tests!)
She's also the one who can always put a smile on someone's face if they're having a grumpy day. (She once sent a guy cookies because he tweeted @Moz saying the latest Whiteboard Friday had made him hungry for cookies.) And with this kind of work, you run into some grumpy folks now and then (usually me). ;)
Megan is focused on these areas:
- Daily social management (everyone helps with this, but she does the scheduling and is the resource for escalation)
- Social testing
- Product feedback liaison
- Weekly metrics
- Community Chronicle (a monthly email about community metrics)
- Community College (internal training on all things community)
Right? That's a lot! Megan has stepped out of her comfort zone, and helped us to create some great internal processes, and keeps us all on track on social (a place where I usually get in trouble!). I'm grateful to her for taking on this new role and striving to make our social marketing the absolute best in the industry.
Melissa Fach - Social Associate
Melissa began as an Associate in 2013, to help us manage the growing YouMoz queue. As a well-known SEO and previous editor at Search Engine Journal, YouMoz made perfect sense for her. During MozCon that year, we asked her to help us manage social while we were busy with the conference, and we quickly realized that social was her true calling for Moz.
With our growing international community, we had been looking for someone to manage all our social channels during our off-hours. Melissa to the rescue! Not only did she already know the industry, and had been a part of the Moz community for years, but lucky for us she lives in Florida, three hours ahead of the Mozplex.
I'm not exactly sure what we'd do without Melissa these days. Her role of managing all the social things during the wee hours of the morning is essential to Moz. She alerts us if there are multiple tweets about a tool not working, or if a certain post is doing exceptionally well (or exceptionally poorly, for that matter). She's the eyes and ears of Moz while those of us here in Seattle are still fast asleep. (Unless we're talking about Keri being up with her newborn at 3 a.m.)
Melissa has the difficult job of working from her home in Florida, yet staying on top of everything that's happening throughout the day at Moz. She does this well, so that each morning she knows how to respond to questions on Twitter, and knows when there's something going on. A huge thank you to her for always making us look so darn good!
Trevor Klein - Content Strategist
Trevor is the lucky guy who gets to edit posts for the Moz Blog. Yep, he edited this one too, and when he gets to this part he's going to feel really weird for a few seconds. :) [Editor's note: It's true.] Trevor is a part of the Content Team here at Moz, but because content and community are so closely tied, his job often crosses roles.
Trevor started managing the blog in May 2013. He's upped the ante on our blog content, and quickly realized that content doesn't end upon publishing a post. We get tons of comments and thumbs on posts, and he helps Keri and the rest of the team to moderate all the things. He'll email a member who's posted too many spammy links in their otherwise well written comments, or reply to a comment reminding a member to stay TAGFEE in their responses.
Personally, I'm grateful to have someone on the team who cares so deeply about Moz and the community that he's willing to stand up for his beliefs, and for the community. (Even if he is standing up to or disagreeing with me. ;)) [Editor's sarcastic note: That never happens. Ever.]
Charlene Inoncillo - Community Brand Manager
Although Charlene started back in September 2011, and had been handling all our event details for a while, it wasn't until 2014 that she became an official part of the Community team. She initially started as the Marketing Admin, and swiftly worked herself into a full-time events manager. Over time this role has changed as she's increased her skillset, and has continued to break her own goals.
Charlene works closely with Erica on all of our events, plus she's in charge of any sponsorships or speaking engagements we have throughout the year. Here's the high-level list of Charlene's roles:
- Event logistics & promotion for MozCon, LocalUp Advanced, and MozPlex events
- Conference sponsorships & promotions
- Swag Management
- Social branding
- Brand monitoring
With her addition, we've completely upped our game when it comes to branding. Charlene works with our design team to create beautiful swag, have a perfect brand experience at MozCon, and essentially make us look good, consistently. It also helps that she's the most organized person I know, and always considers even the tiniest of details. (Which is really great for someone like me who dislikes dealing with details.)
What am I most thankful of Charlene for this year? It's the little things, actually. She ensured that every blog post, webinar, event, product launch, etc. has branded images that we share on social, and in blog posts. These things make a huge impact!
Danie Launders - Marketing Specialist
While Danie isn't officially on the Community team, we pretend as if she is. We started stealing her time early in 2014, and just keep pulling her in farther (shh, don't tell Annette, our CMO). Danie's ability to jump into any project and willingness to learn all the things have had a great impact on the community team this past year. She's an absolute natural with the Moz "voice" and manages our social channels several times per week (in 4-hour shifts).
She's crazy-organized, so it makes sense that she helps Charlene with all the events, sponsorship, and swag tasks. This year, I'm thankful for every single thing Danie does. Whether making sure our Associates get paid, sending swag to an active member, or just replying to a Facebook message, she does it with grace.
Ronell Smith - YouMoz Associate
Ronell may be our newest member of the team, but his impact has been swift and grand. While Keri was on maternity leave, we needed someone to help manage YouMoz posts. It had to be someone who knows the online marketing industry well, plus has great editing skills, AND is a great writer. When Keri went on leave a bit sooner than expected, we had to throw Ronell into the YouMoz fire without a ton of training.
If you've submitted a YouMoz post recently, and have worked with Ronell, you know what I mean when I say he's kicked royal butt for us. He cares deeply about ensuring that posts are of the highest quality, and he works with authors (I've seen email threads between him and an author that were 65+ emails deep!) to help improve their writing. This is why even after Keri returned from leave, we asked him to continue making YouMoz awesome.
My thank-you to Ronell is for helping us to not only improve our process, but to up our YouMoz game. Heck, the entire community thanks you.
Now it's your turn.
Impressive group of folks, right? Please help me in thanking them for all their amazing work every day for Moz. Also, I bet after reading about them you may even have a few questions of your own. Well, lucky you! Each one of them is on stand-by today to answer any questions you have about their roles at Moz or how we manage all things community.
Go ahead… ask us anything! (about our jobs)
Jen,
When people ask me what it's like to work with Moz, I always say two things:
Personally, while I'm amazed at how great of a job Moz does for their community, I'm saddened more brands have not made a sincere effort to replicate the brand's success.
Having a strong, active community adds a steady gust of wind to the sails of marketing, sales, social media and content amplification. A commitment to community pays dividends in all areas of the business.
I feel fortunate to work with such an awesome bunch of people. Jen, you don't give yourself near enough credit. You're the glue that holds this thing together.
RS
Thanks Ronell. :) I really think this sentence here is the key to making our team work like a well-oiled machine: "They are a testament to what can get done when folks don't clamor for individual credit."
Individual team members do get credit for going above and beyond, but we're a much stronger team when we're constantly working for the betterment of the team and community, instead of solely looking out for ourselves.
And I think I get too much credit for all the great work the rest of the team does! This is why I wanted to highlight the specific work each person does to make us all so successful. :)
Hi Ronnell - I love your point about other brands replicating Moz's success. I have been a huge Moz fan for the last 6 years & while the blogs and tools are always great/helpful/amazing, I have to say that I've learned the most from just watching how Moz functions as a company! I'm constantly inspired by what you guys are doing & I very frequently reference Moz (as well as my other favorite: REI) with clients & my team as an example of how to do things right. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? ;)
I am new to this amazing community and already got inspired to open my own agency "Down Under". Having read all the insights about this team I must said I feel proud of you and all the people who make this corner of the web possible. Thanks you all!
Since so many of you are curious about Jen, here you go:
Photo: https://imgur.com/RAbZ01M
Jen has been at Moz for 6 years! She started out as an SEO consultant, and when we started making software, she decided to stay on and try out this community thing. Back in the day when there was only one, Jen managed all the things: Q&A, Main Blog, YouMoz, all the comments and thumbs, social media accounts, events, Associates, etc. Even though the community was smaller than, you all kept her very busy.
With an entire team, Jen's current responsibilities are:
I like this community and seeing people behind is great pleasure for me. I think that i know some of them using Twitter and/or mails. Here are mine questions:
And where is this picture is Jen?
Also why only 3.7 of YouMoz are published? What causing non publishing - low quality, spam, not related to community?
For YouMoz, about half of the submissions are straight-up spam, and their account is banned. We also get a lot of low quality submissions and submissions that have already published on another site. We get some submissions that just aren't a good fit for our audience, but would do fine on another site.
We also get submissions that have the potential to be a great YouMoz post, and we spend time writing to the author with suggestions to get the post ready for the site. More than half the time, we never hear back from the author and the post is not resubmitted.
As for me, I manage the team and keep us all on track and working on the right priorities and such. But today isn't about me, it's about the amazing team. ;)
I've met several members of the community team -- online and offline -- and can attest that they are truly a group of wonderful people who care about the community.
Here's what I would ask. There are only so many people and so many hours in a day to manage an ever-growing community -- how can we (the community) help all of you to do your jobs better and thereby strengthen the community as a whole?
Addendum: Oh, forgot one thing -- Jen, what's YOUR story? The leader of the team was left out! :)
Great question Sam! I feel like Gianluca should really be answering this question though, he's the epitome of a wonderful community member. It was his diligence as a community member that made us realize he'd make a perfect Associate. :)
Since he's in Spain, he's often awake while we're sleeping. Even before he was an Associate, he would reply to tweets asking questions, reply to blog comments, and email us about spam and such. Essentially he took it on himself to help us ensure TAGFEE without us asking him to.
I really encourage the entire Moz staff and any community members out there, to jump into a conversation if someone has a question or needs help in any way. That's the best way to help us out, plus it helps you because people get to know you better as well. It's really an all around win!
As for me, I feel like my story often gets told, and I wanted to be sure to highlight the excellent work of the team since it's Community Manager Appreciation Day, and they deserve all the kudos!
Great questions, Sam. Q&A is an area I've only peeked in on, but it has immense value to the larger community, beyond SEO. I remember talking to a friend in 2010 about SEO, which I knew very little about. I would come to this site and read the comments and learn so much that I could put to use on my own site.
Education is so crucial in the online world, no matter what area you work in. And the Moz community are amazing sharers.
As Jennita call me out, here my humble opinion about being an active Mozzer.
Being a Mozzer is, first of all, believing that TAGFEE is not just a Mozzy thing, but possibly the best definition not only of how a company should act, but also a person should be, both personally and professionally. I am very serious about this conviction of mine, and I found TAGFEE very resonating with my own vision of things, so you can imagine how this helped making me deeply Mozzer since the first time I read it some years ago.
TAGFEE, though, does not mean not being able to propose a critique to Moz itself when it is the case, but always trying to do it from the respect and always with a constructive spirit. I think Jen or others Moz's staff members remember some of my critiques :-)
Being a Mozzer, for me, means:
For instance, if I see someones asking about Moz tools or stuff when the USA people are still sleeping, and if I can answer, then I do it. And you know why? Because that guy asking maybe needs an answer immediately and not after 2 or more hours. But that's me and I don't do it just about "Moz things". For the same reason, if I see that I can add something to what the post's author wrote, then I thing that the best things to do is sharing it with everybody;
If someone says something I don't agree with, I don't like to simply thumb down him.
I mean, I find it quite "vile". I prefer to reply and present my disagreement and start a civic confrontation of ideas.
Why? Not because I am a "face snapper" (even if I play with that role), but because from good discussions everybody win and what was a "good post" can become a wonderful piece of content.
And if the other is able to convince me, I win for sure, much more than just having thumbed down a post or a comment.
All this, and surely something more, is what being a Mozzer means.
Hello Jen, I am so Glad that you brought this up and I am convinced that Moz community is not really a magic it’s the result of much more hard work that no one ever considered…I can say this because from the last 6 to 8 months I am spending more of my time on QnA instead of blog comments :)
I especially wanted to thanks Christy and Keri for their hard work and reading all the answers and choosing the best out of them.
Christy, Keri, Jen and the whole team you people are best and keep up the good work!!
Q&A also sees the active involvement of many others Associates too, all coordinated by Christy. So, also us have the duty to monitor the quality of the answers in our given areas, correct them if needed and endorse the really good ones.
The Q&A forum is one of the world's largest communities of online marketers, and it takes a massive team effort to keeping it running smoothly, including Moz Associates like Gianluca who answer and endorse questions in their areas of expertise. Many thanks to everyone for making Q&A the invaluable resource resource that it is, and for keeping it TAGFEE! :)
Great introduction... you people are doing a wonderful job!!
Thank you for the kind words, Moosa! I always enjoy seeing you in the Q&A forum, and really appreciate your generous contributions of time, energy, and knowledge. :)
Wanted to leave a note of appreciation for all that y'all do! You set the bar extremely high for the rest of us, and for that I'm eternally grateful. Always something to learn, which is humbling. Thanks for everything!
Aww thanks Alison! I'm giddy that you're now focused on Community as well. Be careful though, it's addictive! ;)
Thanks, Alison! Excited that you're diving into community. :)
Hi Jen!
I know from the inside the amazing (and stressing, we should admit it) job you all do.
It would be interesting, though, if you may tell us how you personally saw the community - the 10th hero of this post - evolving along the years, as you literally saw the Moz Community growing from a relatively small (considering the actual numbers) group of people, who almost knew one each other to something so big and multi-faceted as it is now.
Thanks Gianluca! I think it'd be interesting to put that together as well. I could show lots of data and such as well about how the community has grown, changed, but in many ways also stayed the same. :)
Jen, thank you for taking the time to write this post. The team wouldn't be where it is now without your support and dedication. We are very lucky to have you as our manager! <3 hugs <3
I second that! ((Hugs))
Nice post. I would like to say thanks to all moz community managers for such great work dedication.
Cool! :) The best phrase of the article: "a spammy comment is being written on the Moz Blog" :)
My best Moz Community moment was the first "Beep" I ever sent from the Moz Twitter account. Along with the first tweet I sent that had a spelling error in it.....
Aww Casey we miss you! And by "first tweet I sent that had a spelling error..." I assume you mean all tweets? hehe just kidding!! ;)
For reference, Casey used to be on this team, and was in the last post about Community back in 2012:
https://moz.com/blog/a-peek-under-the-hood-how-we-manage-the-seomoz-community
To all of you who help manage and moderate the Moz community, thank you for what you do and keep up the damn good work!
Hi Moz Community Managers!
Big thanks for keeping Moz running smoothly and spam free, and of course TAGFEE!
Best moment for you working with Moz?
Worst moments?
Any why?
Thanks again and keep up the amazing work
Best moment? Coming into the office to see that Erica had built me a blanket fort at my desk. I spent all day in the fort, and had an awesome day.
Worst moments? When all I'm noticing are people trying to game the system (whether the system be Moz or the search engines) and I'm missing on all the good that is happening in the community.
You've kinda made me want a blanket fort now :S
It was pretty epic. Erica makes a great fort!
Best Moment(s) - Every time I feel like I made a difference for someone and really helped them in some way. I also REALLY enjoyed getting a Death Star tea infuser from the community team as a gift :-)
Worst Moment(s) - When I see unnecessary insults aimed at staff members of Moz. We all have feelings. The people insulting don't know the people they are attacking personally, yet they go for the jugular. This negativity is not productive in any way and it accomplishes nothing.
Best moment(s): When I reject an authors post and make them aware that I'd be happy to help them get another post across the finish line, then they send me a blow-my-doors-off-good post. Those are the best.
Worst moment(s): Seeing people "hate" on Moz staffers for no other reason than they are jealous of the success of others. In a weird way, that's also part of the best moments. I love seeing good people prosper as others look on with eyes of envy.
RS
Best moment: All of MozCon, every single second of it! I love celebrating face-to-face with our community and being part of the team that produces MozCon. Also that video we have of Ronell singing Itsy Bitsy Spider from MozCon. :)
Worst moment: Sifting through anonymous "feedback" from MozCon that's trolling, rude, or straight-up offensive as if no one actually reads it or it's read and report on and report to robots. :( To be fair, this is a small minority of feedback, but still incredibly jarring and unfun.
Best moment: Just one? I don't think I can narrow it down that much. :-) As mentioned in the post, I spend a lot of time monitoring our social media accounts and I love interacting with our community. You all send us a lot of creative, hilarious, and thoughtful comments that can easily put a smile on my face. I even save some of them and put them at the end of our Community Chronicle, which we send out monthly to show our community metrics. Here's the latest one if you want to see some of the awesomeness from December!
Worst moment: It seems to be a running trend in these comments so far, but I have to agree with Ronell and Melissa and say it's when I see my coworkers getting personally attacked on social media. I think that people are much more open to saying hateful things when they're behind the safety of their keyboard. I can't imagine some of the things I've read actually being said to someone's face. It just makes me sad.
I already wanted to work for Moz, but this has just completely confirmed it for me! Great group of people by the looks of things :)
OMG, it's awesome to know the Moz community manager. The faces in the communities! ;)
I've gotten to know many on the list from Q&A, Youmoz & other forums. This team has always been so great to all of us in the community, regardless of the issues we may be facing. Appreciate the support in Q&A and also the editing of our otherwise not-ready-for-public blog posts.
Appreciate all the team does! Thanks!
This is the largest community in the SEO world, which proves that all of you are doing a great job. Congratulations and happy #CMAD.
Special Mention for Keri Morgret ( sorry about grammar in my comments, I know is far from perfect. I'm trying to keep them short ).
Fact that only 3.7% of all YouMoz posts submitted were published is proof about high quality requirements which posts must meet in order to be published, which makes strange Google's decision to evaluate links from some of posts as spam ( dear google links from youmoz dont violate your quality guidelines ).
Question for Charlene Inoncillo: what means "swag management" (Google translate wasn't of much help here) ?
Hey Stellian,
Good question! Swag management entails ordering new swag (branded merchandise such as shirts, coffee mugs, stickers, etc) for conferences and our community members. I also keep track of inventory and reporting to make sure we stay within our allocated budget.
I hope that helps. :)
Charlene
I think I understand now. Swag are actually kind of gifts, and you as a manager choose them, taking care not to cross the budget foreseen for them.
Thanks
I'm sure that Moz team is a big group of fantastic people! I just have to see the photos and comments ;
So I have to ask the question...do women make better content managers than men? Sounds like a great blog post and I remember an infographic on Entrepreneur last April that compared men and women that was really good:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233184
I suppose this is a bit of a touchy topic too, and I could get a lot of thumbs down for even bringing it up.
Greg, thanks for the comment -- just so you know, the community might not like the comment because it's a bit off-topic. The post was about community management, not content management.
Good sidestep.
Keri is also very active on inbound.org . She must be super woman! So many roles and yet finishes with perfection.
Thanks Keri for giving so much time to community. People like you making our community awesome and helpful.
wow, that is one powerful system management process
Great to know the faces behind this amazing community :), I am waiting eagerly to be a part of Q/A section, have not gotten enough points though.
I wasn't surprised to see the statistic regarding percentage of submitted YouMoz posts vs successfully published. In my singular experience, there are a variety of factors which likely contribute to such a low success rate from the community. Here's how it went for me.
-Submitted post
-Waited a month, heard nothing back
-Sent an email asking for a status update, heard back that the queue is long
-Waited another month
-Post was rejected. There was a two sentence "editor's note" accompanying the rejection. I'm paraphrasing here, but it basically said, "Great piece, solid writing, reads well and entertaining. However, the post did not deliver on the title." This is where I became disheartened. The title of the post was "Why You Shouldn't Be Link Building Yet + a Comprehensive Pre-Flight Checklist". The first ~1,500 words clearly listed all of the reasons I felt you shouldn't be link building yet, and the second ~1,000 words were quite literally a checklist, accompanied by in depth explanations of every bullet point listed.
I wondered to myself. Had anyone from Moz actually read this post, that I poured ~30 some hours into creating? This wasn't worthless dribble, it wasn't spam. I had 5 editors in my office look over the piece, and another editor friend outside of my office who is completely uninitiated to SEO. I had them weigh the piece against Moz's own rubric, located here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amxje...
I also had the editors read this piece before they judged my work:
https://moz.com/blog/inside-youmoz-how-to-guest-blo...
They had some edits for me to help the piece meet these guidelines. I worked harder at it, before risking submitting a sub-par piece.
Custom graphics were created specifically for this post, by a graphic designer in my office. Community quotes had been gathered. Actionable takeaways were present. Every fact I listed was accompanied by an authoritative reference. Etc.
I wasn't willing to give up quite that easily, so I followed up with [email protected].
This is where Ronnell and I crossed paths. I had written a bit of a novel length email to Moz (outlining what I mention above), and defending the legitimacy of my piece. I wasn't really expecting a response, or at least I figured it would be a couple more months until I heard back from anybody.
That was not the case! Ronnell replied the same day, and with much more legitimate editor's advice. I began to get the impression that YouMoz is a walled garden with deliberately placed tests and obstacles blocking the path of entrance. They exist specifically to challenge potential authors, and separate the wheat from the chaff. I walked up to the golden gate of entry, where Ronnell stood guard. Finally, someone told me in plain English what needed to happen for me to be granted access. However, I walked away.
After 3 months of wait and negotiation, my available time had dissipated. When the post was originally created, I had more dedicated time for content production. By the time I found my way to Ronnell, the prioritization of responsibilities in my organization had shifted. Bummer. The YouMoz post sits in a draft folder, waiting for rebirth.
In the interest of transparency, I think YouMoz could benefit from some additional information regarding the publication process, and what it really takes to actually be successful.
The 3.7% publication success rate of all YouMoz posts is a telling metric. What other data points can you share? Here are a few I'd be interested in:
-Average turnaround time from post submission to editor's first review
-Average turnaround time from post submission to publication
-Average word count of successfully published posts
-Most successful topics and post formats based on number of thumbs ups, traffic, social shares, comments, etc.
-Are there other telling metrics that might help give potential authors a better picture of what level of dedication is required to become a YouMoz author?
If these numbers come across as bleak, there are some other data points which could be valuable motivators. Might be worthwhile to gather some data from Google Analytics pertinent to the successfully published YouMoz posts, and present them as to why several months may be worth your while if you want to attempt a publication on YouMoz.
All that being said, I'd much rather struggle through a difficult submission process and know that spam has no chance of making its way through. Hats off to Ronnell and the rest of the community team for ensuring quality prevails.
Even though Keri and Ronnell, as the ones who are the more involved in everything YouMoz, are the ones, who can answer better to your question, I can try to give some reasonable answers as I too take part - when time lets me - to the YouMoz review process.
The posts are usually read relatively quickly. Maybe not on the same submission day, but no later than 36/48 hours later. A first fast read is enough to thumb down the clearly spam submissions, the not-spam but yes low quality posts and for putting on hold on the few once that pass the screening.
Some of these post on hold on, then, receive a second or even a third in deepth review. For instance, it's in this phase that Staff or Associate people expert in the topic of the post are eventually asked for an opinion about the validity of the post.
To calculate an average is quite hard, because every post and every writer have a very personal story. I saw post submitted, for instance, in August and having passed along a very long and complicated review process, so much that the online version of the post and the first submitted one could be considered two very different things.
But I also saw posts that were submitted, approved and needed just very few reviews, so that the time between submission and publishing was very short.
Word count is not a major "publishing" factor. Said that, micro-posts (from 0 to 500 words) usually are a thumb down by default, because it's not a lenght that really let someone to present a reasoned theory or case or tactic/tecnique.
This is something you can do yourself, as all these data are public. Said that, it is quite clear, even without checking metrics, that the most successful posts are those ones that present a solid statement proved with very practical action, which everybody can put under his personal test.
Obviously, actionable posts are not the only ones working, but the represents the majority of the successful YouMoz (look also what YouMoz are promoted to the main blog).
Yes, and they are publicly available too under "Post Analytics" at the end of every post. I especially look at Traffic Metrics as Visits, Views and, especially, Time on Page, because if I wrote a 3,000+ words long blog post and I see 1.25 as average Time on Page, then or something is wrong with my post or my readers did a course of fast reading. Valuable is also seeing the posts have earned backlinks, and if it yes, from where.
Thank you for the illuminating response Gianluca.
I have not noticed nor clicked the "Post Analytics" data button before - very cool! Thanks for the heads up.
Nicholas,
First, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I mean that sincerely.
When I came aboard to help with YouMoz, Keri, Jen and the team were as open-minded as can be about ways of doing things. There were/are processes in place, but they made it clear that change is welcome.
So I jumped right in wanting to make an impact.
What most folks don't realize--and neither did I--was Jen and the rest of the team make YouMoz a priority on top of their other daily responsibilities.
And there is no way to tell how many submissions there will be at a given time, which can result in delays that extend far longer than anyone initially expected.
It's a true team effort to get submissions into and through the pipeline. It's one that I sincerely enjoy, but it can take an inordinate amount of time.
You bring up several questions that I get quite often from authors and potential authors:
* What takes so much time: Surprisingly, it's not getting to the posts; it's getting through each post. Many of the posts are wordy, in the 5,000-plus-word range. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it stands to reason that a lengthy post is (a) likely to need a lot more work than, say, a 3,000-word post and (b) if it does need work, it's likely to take quite a bit of back and forth with the author. Due to time constraints on either side, getting a post from in the queue to on the blog typically takes longer than any of us would like.
* Best length: I'm a believer in shorter-but-better content, meaning the writer jumps right in with the meat and doesn't make readers wait until 2,000 words in to get the needed details. If I were to guess, I'd say the majority of the posts that have gotten approved since I've been involved have been in the 2,500 to 3,500 word range. I do not resist accepting longer posts, but many times writers "refuse" to cut posts to the needed length, or they do so only after months of back and forth.
* Best piece of advice: Outline, outline, outline. A sizable percentage of the rejected posts simply tried to do too much. They sell one idea in the title, three others in the opening paragraph, then go on to detail elements that were mentioned in neither place. Try to focus more on depth than breadth. Come up with a central idea, then think of what readers need to know to execute that idea themselves. The details matter.
* The No. 2 reason posts are rejected: The No. 1 reason is poor quality and/or poor fit. But posts lacking the essential actionable, how-to element are the second-most rejected. I'd rather a post have too many details than too few.
These are simply some random tidbits. Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Ronell, thank you for your in depth response. These are all excellent bits of advice. Perhaps a 2015 YouMoz FAQ could be a good evergreen post to refer contributors to. If these questions are indeed frequently asked of you, I'm sure it would be beneficial to be able to reference. As you mentioned, processes change; a fluid and evolving set of guidelines may be appropriate?
In order to keep your community of contributors better informed on some of these nuances that influence turnaround times, perhaps a "queue status" indicator could be kept up to date by YouMoz staff. When the volume is high, a longer wait could be expected. When the volume is low, the opportunity to submit looms. If the volume ever is low? Kind of sounds like it isn't.
If that option isn't viable, would it be unrealistic to presume it could be possible to send a quick email to contributors upon "first read"? Gianluca indicated above that submitted posts are typically read no later than 36/48 hours later. At that point of reading, would it be possible to touch base with the contributor with an ETA of next communication?
It may even be beneficial to make a small request from them at that point; further weeding out those who will not put forth the effort to make their post great.
Anyhow, thank you for your hard work to make the Moz blogs great. It is individuals like you that keep me returning to Moz for the consistency in quality.
P.S: Sorry for double n'ing your name every time I mentioned you in my comment above :moonface:
Thanks for your interest and concern about YouMoz. I was on leave for much of the time that you had your post in progress, so I'll instead give a major shoutout to Ronell for his work, and address some more of the overall process.
In 2014, we had over 2500 posts submitted. Over 1400 of those were outright spam, and the user was banned. We declined about 1000 posts. These posts are usually posts that aren't a good fit for our audience for a variety of reasons, posts that have inaccurate information, and posts that have already been published on another site. We published 93 posts to YouMoz, and promoted 23 of those to the main blog. Not included in the 2500 post count are about 800 posts for the year in draft mode. These are posts that the author never submitted, or posts that we returned for edits and were never resubmitted.
One of the tensions we face with YouMoz is how much feedback to give to authors. I have personally had many cases where I have spent considerable time writing to an author, giving them feedback about their post, suggestions for what they need to make the post viable for YouMoz, and so on, only to never hear a response back or have the post resubmitted. A few weeks later, I'll see the exact post on another site, often without a word changed (same typos even). This doesn't help the queue move along at a speedy pace. If we give more brief feedback, we hear that people don't know what was wrong. I wrote the post about what makes a good YouMoz post in an attempt to give people more information while not increasing the workload of the editors.
Our standards for posts on both the main blog and YouMoz have increased over the years, along with the number of people submitting posts to Moz. What I used to be able to take care of as one person, with much of the procedural knowledge in my head, has now grown to need more attention. As Jen mentioned, I had a baby this past fall, so I really needed to get this information codified and made so that several people could review and posts and have them come to similar conclusions, as well as have the process be more transparent to people submitting posts. My time this summer was spent getting YouMoz, Q&A, and the other aspects of on-site community ready for other people to take over, and the queue did suffer for it.
For statistics, check out Trevor's post last month at https://moz.com/blog/the-best-of-2014. He gives a lot of that information for the main blog, and some of it for YouMoz. If you add /stats/ on to the end of any post, you can see individual stats for posts too. I'm working on collecting more stats over the coming months, and making the stats easier to gather, so hopefully we can have a YouMoz-specific roundup post in the future.
I do appreciate your dedication, and look forward to your future contributions, both in comments and in blog posts.
Hi Keri, thank you for your insight here. Those numbers are telling.
This in particular stood out to me:
"One of the tensions we face with YouMoz is how much feedback to give to authors. I have personally had many cases where I have spent considerable time writing to an author, giving them feedback about their post, suggestions for what they need to make the post viable for YouMoz, and so on, only to never hear a response back or have the post resubmitted."
I can imagine this becomes wearing, especially as the number of submissions have increased with the ever growing reputation of Moz.
To be clear, I do not mean my comment to berate the editing team. I mean it to serve as a testament to the quality control enforced for the YouMoz blog. After reading Rand's tweet expressing surprise at the low percentage level of accepted YouMoz posts (https://twitter.com/randfish/status/55977639151259...), I was compelled to share my story. Not to say that working with the Moz editorial process is frustrating, but to provide some context to a data point.
I appreciate the hard work that you and the rest of your staff put forth to ensure Moz is at the top of their game.
Nice Community Management you got there. :) You guys are all so different, yet focused on one and the same task.
Love the article!
Best,
Community Manager of PopArt Studio
Great stuff!!
The Moz community team is the best in the world.
i agree with @jennita.. great team can achieve great things. and when it comes to talk about SEO and online marketing. this is one of the best team.
A well written post, very nice thank you so much for sharing this with us.
Oh no, the staff has outright told us in the past that feminist values were the values of the Moz community. Sorry if that was something we didn't wish to expose? I have a bias toward chocolate, I wasn't insulting the community for it but I can see where it stems from most likely. Clear majority in female staff would likely have own gender preference as a value system. Understandable.
The use of moustaches suggests a more egalitarian viewpoint which is nice, I too like moustaches. Either way, great services and thanks for being awesome Moz.
As one of the men listed above, I wanted to say a quick thing or two about this. Moz's staff having feminist values is by no means simply a result of there being more women than men on the community team. We're all quite proud to work for an organization with core values like TAGFEE, and if we hold ourselves to empathy and being the exception to the rule, I don't think there's any doubt in our minds that the core values of feminism line up well with those tenets. I'm a feminist because I see things and hear stories that should never happen in our corporate world, and I support an environment where we can transparently tackle those issues in an attempt to make them disappear.
In the spirit of #CMAD, I'm quite appreciative of working at a place where that's not only respected, but encouraged. =)
"Feminist activists campaign for women's rights – such as in contract law, property, and voting – while also promoting bodily integrity, autonomy, and reproductive rights for women. Feminist campaigns are generally considered to be main force behind major historical societal changes, particularly in the West, where they are near-universally credited with having achieved women's suffrage, gender neutrality in English, equal pay for women, reproductive rights for women (including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts and own property."
~~~
Um... as far as I'm concerned, the Feminists won over 30 years ago. But perhaps Wikipedia's grasp of history is crowd sourced on this one...
~~
So... Feminist values? No such thing. Try Constitutional values based on equal rights for all citizens. 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, 19th Amendment.
Worth noting that the like most technology companies, the majority of Moz entire's staff is actually male. The community team is actually an exception. By my rough count, women make up slightly more than 1/3 of Moz's staff. (Not everyone's on the company page, btw.)
Most companies hire people who are willing and qualified to do the job. Diversity isn't really a topic worth discussing in the work place. If you're choosing to hire a "diverse" workforce, you're choosing to discriminate against SOMEONE based on their race, culture or heritage by definition. Even considering any of the 3 factors I've just listed in the interviewing/employment process is discriminatory. Justice is blind, so should be employment.
School teachers are 80%+ female and no one's demanding more diversity in the teacher workforce. Politicians are 80%+ rich and white, but no one's demanding more diversity for people elected to office. Stay at home moms are 99.99% female, but no one's demanding more stay at home dads. Diversity isn't a topic to praise yourself for or hate on yourself for... it's just a number. Move on.
If you're qualified and can do the job, you deserve it. If you aren't, you shouldn't get the job -- regardless of your skin color, heritage or culture.
Hey Scott,
This comment is completely off-topic. We're trying to have a nice conversation about what an amazing job our Community managers do. Please stick to the topic at hand.
Hey MrSEOGuy,
Let's stick to the topic at hand, which is how amazing our team is. It doesn't matter what their gender is, they kick major butt. :)
Heavens, I was on topic don't you think? I praised Moz and simply pointed out that the values of the company come from the majority displayed in this very post, the team. I hope my comments weren't taken as hateful for merely stating the obvious. Ms. Bird also seemed to concur that the company was feminist and I don't think we can have a higher authority than her. Not saying gynocentrism is a bad thing, you have to be on the right side of history. Time to get more women into technology!
3 cheers to Moz! Keep up the amazing work you guys! TAGFEE! I agree, love that concept! Keep pushing the best marketing tools and online publication there is (hands down). What an amazing team indeed!
The Moz community team is the best in the world. I know, I know... I'm biased. :)
They are the best in the world not because of their physical characteristics. They are the best because of the strength, passions, and values of the community they foster. That community is TAGFEE.
The Moz community is a collection of people working to create a world that evaluates people by the impact they have, and not on their physical characteristics, economic status, or personal belief systems.I'm proud to have a culture and a team that is feminist and TAGFEE.
And today, like everyday, I'm proud of my community management team. Keep rockin!
Gee, to think I was previously wondering why Moz had such incredible feminist bias. Not anymore, thanks for clearing that up for me! :)
You make/maintain great products and have the most fabulous hipster spokesperson. Keep it up, you guys are priceless.
I would not say that Moz has a "feminist" bias. Rather, Moz supports the equality of opportunity for people of either gender as well as members of minority groups to publish articles, speak at conferences, and otherwise contribute to the community. It's also ensuring that all people -- of any gender or minority group -- are always treated with respect and never denigrated because of their genders or memberships in minority groups.
If there is a "bias," it's just towards being TAGFEE in real life -- and not only on a website.
(Note: This is just my personal observation. I don't work for Moz and cannot speak for the company or its staff.)