Online customer engagement

• I like to connect with people who have similar interests. People who share experiences, interests, communities, skills, preferences, likes & dislikes with me are just plain more interesting to read; don’t have to agree with me, but teach me stuff.
• When I am interested in a subject varies. For example, I am most interested in insurance when I have a claim (touch wood not) or a looming renewal. So I am often a “lurker” (read posts but do not comment) and less often a contributor. But when fired up I dive in. This seems true of most other readers, but there are often a few actives busy sharing their views. If these power-users are interesting, it helps a lot!
• Even when I lurk I prefer content from other customers over company input (sorry Buzz). But I want the Editors to be involved since they are the way to get things changed/improved for us customers. After all, the reason I visit The Buzz Exchange rather than form/join a Facebook group is the better chance us customers have to improve something here.
  

Comments by fellow customers are critical, but community managers do make a difference I reckon.

For me, engaging community managers:

• let me interact with real people, in natural language, not advertising-speak.
• regularly give me information that is new, early, challenging, conveniently presented to save me time and search effort
• understand that I know they have something to sell, but do not make selling the subject we discuss all the time!
• give me feedback, let us know they have been listening and are doing something with our input
• pop up in the places I read so they are easy to find when my interest swings to their subjects, places like twitter, LinkedIn and other blogs