We are thrilled to have a guest post today from Dawn Lacallade, a recognized thought leader in the social marketing and online community space. She is a long standing member of TheCR Network and has taken a lead role in helping to develop the community management training program we are delivering in conjunction with WOMMA & ComBlu starting January 24th. As someone with years of social media and community management experience, we asked her to share her thoughts about why training is an important part of the community management mix:
I have been lucky enough to have been playing in this Social Media/ Community thing for years. I am a career convert because…. In my previous life, before Social Media and Community, I was a manager at Dell. I had several roles… as a call center manager, project manager, training manager and even an EH&S expert. I started many of these roles with little knowledge of the role or the business. I was very lucky to be surrounded by incredibly smart people that were willing to teach me. Things I didn’t learn through peers and team members, I could find in formal training programs.
Social Media and Community is one of the hottest growing fields. There are many people that have been either thrust into the field by their companies or are excitedly beginning their careers in it. Those of us that have been practicing for years have an IOU to fulfill.
Give. Knowledge. Back.
Just like the wonderful teachers that helped me so much in my career at Dell, those of us who have been working with communities are the pioneers and have a duty to help those that follow. I can rattle off a few BIG learnings that were scarred into my memory. Some of these are my own and some I’ve watched as large companies flail to get their footing. These are the easy lessons to share. The more difficult ones are the nuanced how-to learnings that we learned over time and with experience. All of these learnings must be shared.
The sharing of knowledge in this space has been gaining momentum. It started with a few of us talking at a few conferences and gatherings. It gained huge momentum when The Community Roundtable gave us a venue to share and learn. We are at the beginning of the next great way to share knowledge and drive forward the practice that we all love so.
Many of my fellow practitioners have joined TheCR, WOMMA and ComBlu to create the first Community Management Certificate Program. No training program could replace work experience completely or hope to cover every topic, however, we hope to formalize the learnings and best practices and to standardize the terminology. For those of us experience practitioners who have created this training, it is the payment on our IOU.
Why this is critical.
It is critical that we ensure the upcoming professionals are educated and share as many of the learnings as possible. It’s our job. I hope you will join with us to bring this program to life with your knowledge, experiences and support.
For more information on the program visit the website: https://womma.org/communitymanager/
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The Community Roundtable is committed to advancing the business of community and being a valued resource to community and social business professionals. We offer a monthly subscription report, a membership based peer network, a community management training program and advisory services for corporations and individuals.
