Last night I walked over to pariSoma to join a panel discussion on Community Management: what is it, where it's been and where it's going? The panel included moderator Thomas Knoll, founder of LaunchRock, and community managers Jenna Langer of Livefyre, Megan Berry of Klout, Maria Ogneva of Yammer, and Laura Gluhanich of about.me. 

Here are some quick tips deriving from the advice of all 4 panelists on what not to do when managing your brand's community:

Do not answer right away

When dealing with users who are voicing their problems through social media outlets, you don't need to answer right away. Some things to consider:

• Give your userbase a chance to answer on the behalf of the company. This is the very basis of a community - people helping people. 
• Acknowledge that you are listening. A simple "We are looking into the issue" or "Why do you feel this way?" of a complaint can help you in the long run and turn a complainer into a brand evangelist. 

Do not discriminate your lurkers from your champions

Learn to love your lurkers. Your lurkers are the ones who digest your content but ultimately do not sign up, leave a comment, or even use your service. Don't be discouraged if you don't have an immediate response - active lurkers do share with others. Megan Berry of Klout, a company revolving around scoring users on their influential power, never discriminates no matter how low a Klout score or Twitter following may be. A great point of "What if that someone was the neighbor of a leading influencer?" let me know that every user is important.

Do not try to do everything at once

Maria Ogneva made a good point that community management, as with any job really, can really burn you out if you don't pace yourself and take plenty of breaks. Community management is very thrilling and even addicting since your job revolved around satisfying your company's users. 

Do not do everything yourself

Let everyone on the team know of your community initiatives so everyone in the internal community is on the same page with the user community. If you take an extended time off, have someone ready to pick up the slack. 

Do not let your users steer your company's products direction

Especially true for earlier startups, don't let the opinions of your users dictate which direction your product or even your company is going. User feedback is great, but like Henry Ford said, if he asked customers what they wanted, they would have a "faster horse".

These are some quick tips on what not do as a community manager. If you have any additional thoughts on what not to do, feel free to share!