Heather Champ, Director of Community at Flickr posted an oh-so-true presentation slide regarding passionate online communities. If you do it differently, you’re only creating more work for yourself. Being a community manager is never about you, the community manager or the company you work for. It’s always about the community member or site user, who we like to call the customer.

Nice one Heather!

If this slide doesn’t sit well with you, it’s important you get comfortable with it, or never get into the service business. The only exception is if you treat your customers like dirt, which has also been shown to lead to dedicated followings.