By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable
If you haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy of The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes yet, or even if you have, you might not have made it all the way to the back page, where we asked the superheroes we featured in the Handbook about their community management heroes.
For many of them, the answer didn’t take long. And the list includes a great mix of longtime community managers and advocates, some rising stars, and even some who probably wouldn’t consider themselves community managers.
In the Handbook, we list those named by our 20 superheroes, but we don’t mention just why these heroes resonated with our heroes. So in a few installments, we’ll share those from whom our community superheroes draw inspiration – and maybe they’ll inspire you, too.
Community Superhero: Alex Blanton, Microsoft
His Superhero: Allison Michels (formerly Yammer and Hootsuite, now at Zenefits): “The energy and passion she brings to community management – she could drive so many things at once and in so many ways. She was helpful for me in conceptualizing what I was doing as a community manager.”
Community Superhero: Matt Brown, Fonteva (formerly at Salesforce)
His Superhero: Erica Kuhl (Salesforce): “She built the Salesforce success community from the ground up, and has been committed to that work for 7 years!”
Community Superhero: Charissa (Carnall) Cowart, Western Union
Her Superhero: Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library and Vaynermedia): “He’s a master of knowing how to connect with an audience that he may have never spoken with (before)… He connects with people in a way that is very hard to do.”
Community Superhero: Eileen Foran, Limelight Networks
Her Superhero: “Other than Rachel (Happe)? I’d say Caty Kobe (FeverBee) – She really approaches community from her core. As a millennial, community is a second language to her, she is someone to watch and someone I feel very impressed with.”
Community Superhero: Jerry Green, H&R Block
His Superhero: Lauren Vargas (Aetna): “I met her a couple of times in conferences and informal events, and she was fascinating… Super smart, I’m impressed with what she has done with community at Aetna. She’s a great person to model after.”
Community Superhero: Patrick Hellen, CloudLock
His Superheroes: Hillary Boucher (The Community Roundtable) and William Gibson (author) – “(Gibson) got this idea to start tweeting and blogging along with his novel writing process. He’s been able to turn feedback into a curation blog, and built a community around it on off-the-beaten-path information.”
We’ll share more of our superheroes’ thoughts in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, explore the superheroes and their superheroes, and tell us in the comments – Who are your #cmgr superheroes?
We would love to know and why not use this opportunity to recognize them?
