By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.
One of the most common frustrations we hear about from community managers is that they feel isolated from the rest of their company. Often, community managers sit on a communications or marketing team, sometimes they even reside inside an IT department – and all too often it is easy to feel like they are an island inside their organization.
Today I wanted to share some best practices for those lone wolf practitioners out there. It’s important to recognize and embrace your status as a one-person team and these strategies can help.
1. Take Time to Rest
This might seem counter-intuitive but social media professionals, especially lone wolves, must take time for themselves and disconnect from the community in order to recharge their batteries. To not take that much needed time could result in burnout. It is very healthy and very necessary to occasionally disconnect – and this time away from your community will result in both a fresh perspective when you return, and renewed energy for tackling challenges.
2. Set Up Processes to Monitor, Track Metrics and Share Your Successes
It is crucially important to keep track of community activitiy and share these findings with key stakeholders. Deciding on the metrics (which can be simple at first, especially for the lone wolf practitioner) that best reflect your objectives and then sharing those successes with executives and key lines of business is imperative. Do not be afraid to share those successes that align to organizational goals and help move the needle. The more you can show the community as being globally relevant and impactful the more your programs will gain increased internal traction and support.
3. Ask for Help
Just because you are the only person at your organization with the title “community manager” doesn’t mean you have to go it alone – asking for assistance from colleagues, executives and even outside experts can be a huge source of help for you and energy for your community. When developing new programs and projects, solicit community contributions from other staff members and be explicit about assigning ownership of tasks. Here we use the word “assign” purposely because when you ask people to do something specific, the likelihood of them saying “no” drops. Figure out what it is that people like (whether it is other staff or community members) and suggest something that matches those interests. This will increase their likelihood to participate and give you much needed help.
Are you a lone wolf community professional? How to do maximize your impact when operating solo? We’d love to hear your best practices and advice for other individual community contributors.
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Need community support but operate as a lone wolf at your organization? TheCR Network provides resources, expert advice and a network of community peers that is unparalleled in the industry. Learn how TheCR Network can help you go from lost lone wolf to lean, mean community management machine today!
