Burned Out? Rise From the Ashes

By Sanya Weathers

Burning out is an occupational hazard for community people. We deal with a lot of negativity, but that isn’t actually the main cause of crumbling to ashes. The real problem is that we’re the ones who stand there and take the flak for the decisions of other people, while the praise goes elsewhere. That is actually as it should be. If you’re motivated by external praise and appreciation, you’re in the wrong job. If you’re the sort of person who has a visceral need to set the record straight, you might need a new career track. That’s not to say you’re a bad person. You’re just not a good fit in a job where you need to subordinate your own feelings and opinions to the company line, and where you’re the personal embodiment of that line for many, many people.

Still, even a good career fit doesn’t mitigate all the damage. If you feel yourself getting crispy, here are a few tricks that I can personally recommend. They must work – I still wake up every morning eager to see what “my” players said while I was AFK.

–    Put down your smartphone and step away from the keyboard. Pace yourself. You do not need to be plugged in 24/7. Really. You are not a brain surgeon. Lives do not depend on your answering every little tweet right away. Someone should have your actual voice line, because you should be available in an emergency. Your product’s Facebook feed at 11:45 at night? Not an emergency. (Unless you are in the six week launch window. Then… okay.) Outside a launch scenario, decide what hours you will read the internet and stick to them.

–    Use tools. Stop monitoring fifty sites every day. Seriously, if you’re doing that, have you noticed that it’s all starting to blur? Use Google alerts. Use volunteers. Ask the site owners to call you with major trending issues. After that, put all your bookmarks into a rotating calendar and check in monthly. And if you’re responsible for multiple feeds, use Hootsuite or similar.

–    Put the focus on the players. If you put out a screenshot every Monday, do a caption contest at the same time. Do customer spotlights. Congratulate your users on personal milestones. Focusing inward only speeds the burning out process. Focusing outward boosts your community and your own mood.

–    Do something new that isn’t community related. Unless you are working for the kind of company where people are more rigidly compartmentalized than prison inmates, your colleagues can almost always use a hand. Stuff envelopes for media outreach campaigns (unless you’re already doing that, as many community types are). Ask the business development person if there’s any usage data you can gather and analyze. Ask the content team if you can write or edit lore for the website. Ask a producer what she needs. Learn a new aspect of the company’s business – the bigger the picture you have, the better planning you can do, and the less likely you are to get frustrated.

–    Get back to the people. Nothing recharges a community person like contact with the community. Do whatever it takes to get back to talking with ordinary customers – not the ones with issues you need to fix. Tweet about something you love about the game and see what you get back. Bully the marketing people into letting you do a tradeshow. Host a live event/fan gathering at your local pool hall. Hang out in IRC.

This week’s theme, apparently: If you don’t stay in touch with your roots, you’ll never be able to grow.