community manager Archives

Ryan Paugh on Tone and Passion in Community

April 15, 2010 By Jim Storer

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.

Our third episode features an interview with Ryan Paugh, co-founder (with Ryan Healy and Penelo pe Trunk) and Director of Community for Brazen Careerist.com. From their web site:

Brazen Careerist is a career management tool for next-generation professionals. It exists to give everyone an opportunity to build and nurture a network of trusted peers. Think of it as a 24-7 virtual networking event, filled with people who can help you get ahead in your career.

Conversation highlights include:

The challenge of managing a community where the community is the product
How much attention to pay to “tone” when your community caters to a specific demographic (in this case, “Generation Y”)
The role of passion for your topic/category when managing a community
The freedom to mix in new tools and technology with a community of early adopters

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MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

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Tim Walker on Community Manager Vs. Social Media Manager

April 8, 2010 By Jim Storer

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.

Our second episode features an interview with Tim Walker, Social Media Manager at Hoovers. From their web site:

We deliver comprehensive insight and analysis about the companies, industries and people that drive the economy, along with the powerful tools to find and connect to the right people to get business done.

Conversation highlights include:

Knowing when to use what tools… Twitter, Facebook, email, phone or a walk down the hall.
A discussion of the difference between being community manager and a social media manager.
Understanding the balance between “on-domain” and “off-domain” engagement.
What community management and The Dating Game have in common. (!!)

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MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

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DJ Waldow on Scale Issues and a Day in His Life

April 1, 2010 By Jim Storer

Our first episode features an interview with DJ Waldow, Director of Community at Blue Sky Factory. From their web site:

Blue Sky Factory is all about your success (Blue Sky), and the idea that success isn’t luck or an accident, but something you make (Factory). Our chosen vehicle for helping you achieve success is email marketing.

Highlights include:
– DJ answers the “isn’t email dead?” question.
– We discuss the difference between social media and community management, and how DJ juggles the two roles.
– DJ describes a day in his life, from monitoring to outreach and response and even prospecting
– We discuss scale issues for smaller companies, larger companies, and franchises

*Special Bonus: DJ mentioned being an expectant father during this recording. Eva Claire Waldow was born Tuesday, March 23, 2010. Congratulations!

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MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

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Differentiating Between Social Media and Community Management

March 17, 2010 By Rachel Happe

By Rachel Happe, Principal and Co-Founder of TheCR

As someone who works with social media managers and community managers, it seems the line between the two types of positions is not terribly clear – and maybe doesn’t need to be – but I think it would be helpful to distinguish between the two. Why? Jim will often say that everyone is a community manager and he is right – everyone has a group of constituents which could be cultivated to drive better performance. However, not all companies want, need to, or can cultivate a community. I may see this differently than many and here is my take:

Community infers the following:

Tight interlinking relationships between a significant percentage of members
An acknowledgment of shared fate or purpose
A potentially wide range of topics/conversations within that shared purpose
A distributed leadership network – sometimes with a single leader, sometimes not
A core membership that is relatively stable and active

Social media on the other hand infers the following:

Socially- or conversationally- enabled content
A loose network with the predominant structure being a hub and spoke model of interaction between an audience and the content creator
Comment/response transactions

To me this means that communities and social media are good for different types of business outcomes.

In low complexity markets and use cases (think Sharpie pens) the focus is on social media because the relationships desired between Newell Rubbermaid and Sharpie customers does not need to be that deep – and the business model cannot support deep relationship development (i.e. spending hundreds on developing a relationship with a customer who buys $25 worth of products doesn’t make much sense). The goal is providing infrastructure and management that drives awareness and a sense of connection to the brand with tens of thousands or millions of customers. Furthermore, proactively connecting customers with other customers doesn’t do much for Newell Rubbermaid because customers don’t need deep references from other customers to make the decision to purchase or to use the product itself. This example is managed by someone who aggregates UGC, publishes content, and responds to people talking about Sharpie – either on the site itself or on a public social network.

Some common social media tools.

In high complexity markets or use cases, communities make more sense. If the decision-making process is
complex and long to reach a conversion, customers benefit greatly by interacting and building relationships with other customers – as well as getting introduced to affiliated product and service providers who can help them maximize their value. Adobe’s design tool communities are a good example of this – customers help each other maximize the use of the tool, creating better adoption and affiliation. Because the price point of the product is higher, the business model can support richer relationship development. These communities are managed by people who are connecting members to each other and to relevant content but may be doing very little content creation themselves.

The confusion comes because in both cases, the person managing the initiative is responsible for being responsive and conversational, for tracking the success of the interactions in driving desired outcomes, and sometimes they use similar tools.

I took a stab at articulating the primary responsibilities of social media managers and community managers.

Social Media Manager:

Content Creation (Blogging/vlogging/podcasting) designed to spur conversation/viral sharing
Responding to conversations about the brand and the content
Ensuring input/feedback gets channeled to the appropriate internal functional group
Curating and promoting UGC
Managing tools – mostly social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) and blogs
Reporting/measurement
Not every community manager looks like this, but some do!
Planning and developing strategies for increasing engagement and conversion

Community Manager:

Welcoming members to the community & acclimating them
Building relationships with key members of the community and influencers
Moderating conversation and encouraging specific topics
Promoting members, making introductions to other members, and encouraging relationship formation
Running regular programming/content/events
Finding internal resources to respond to specific community discussions and coordinating cross-functional needs
Enforcing guidelines/boundaries
Managing tools – might be a combination of enterprise & social networks (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
Reporting/measurement
Channeling input and response from community into other organizational processes
Planning and developing strategies for increasing engagement and conversion

Do you agree that there is a difference in these two roles and if so, do you agree with how I have differentiated them? Admittedly, there is a lot of overlap but I believe the intent and focus of each role is fairly unique. For companies looking to make a hire in this space, it is useful to understand whether they need primarily a content-oriented person or a relationship-oriented person.

If you’re looking for way to hone your community management skills check out the Community Careers and

Compensation research, our Community Skills Frameworks and more free community manager resources!

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Need community management resources? Check out our online training courses, our community benchmarks and TheCR Network – a private community for community pros.

Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD

January 25, 2010 By Rachel Happe

This is not our idea but we think Jeremiah Owyang is on to something with his call for a Community Manager Appreciation Day. Community Managers have tough and often under-appreciated responsibilities. They are the glue that often keeps a community from going off the deep end, metaphorically speaking. They are the person who offers and ear, finds a way to respond, and rallies various participant groups. At various times they act as a librarian, ombudsperson, therapist, writer, trainer, catalyst, evangelist, policeman, expert, or analyst – sometimes all in one day. It can be both incredibly rewarding and incredibly exhausting work. The people who tend to be community managers are those with limitless curiosity about people, a deep desire to be helpful, a willingness to play lots of different roles, and an ability to deal with a lot of ambiguity.

So here’s to all the community managers out there! If you have a particular community manager in mind, spend a few minutes today to say thank you, take them to lunch, or put a little surprise in their day.

Hiring A Social Media or Community Manager?

January 18, 2010 By Rachel Happe

We recently had a member call on Hiring for Community Management and also discussed the topic at last week’s #TheCRLive. It’s a hot topic for a variety of reasons. There is growing interest in the field and growing demand for community managers. Our members’ had some additional perspectives:

Community an social media management job descriptions vary widely with little consistency
There are a number of business functions and processes that community managers can support but often the specifics are also inconsistently articulated in job descriptions
Expectations of community manager roles and compensation are not very well aligned
Hiring organizations don’t necessarily know what is reasonable to expect from different levels of community managers or are not always able to identify the level of experience they need
The attributes of community managers are often more important than the skills or experience but that is not the way most organizations hire

Because Community Roundtable members like Rachel Makool, Dawn Lacallade, and Amber Naslund have more experience than most with regards to hiring community managers we think there is an opportunity to work with our members to develop baseline job descriptions and salary ranges for the following positions:

Social Media Expert
Moderator
Community Manager
Director of Community
VP of Social/Community

Like any other type of organizational role, as the position becomes more senior, more strategy/planning/management responsibilities are included and compensation should rise accordingly. We see a lot of job recs being posted that are looking for people with 1-3 years of experience compensated for at that level but also wanting those people to own the social strategy, policies, and internal evangalism. The effort to find a good match for that rec is likely to be frustrating – while there are plenty of young and ambitious potential employees that understand social software tools very well and are eager to take on an organization’s social initiative, they may not have the management and organizational experience needed to effectively champion and execute the strategy. Those young people who do have the skills to build and execute a new organizational strategy are like their more experienced peers in knowing that it deserves a higher level of compensation.

There are two problems causing even further frustration. The first problem is that many social initiatives right now are pilot or new initiatives that just barely have the funding for one junior position who may not have the business and management experience necessary to be successful. This is a chicken and egg problem – without an experienced community manager, the initiative may not be successful but the organization can’t afford an experienced person until the initiative is successful. The second problem is that for those organizations that realize they need a mid-level to senior person to develop and execute an appropriate social strategy, there is a fairly small group of individuals with that experience and very often not in the location needed.

There are a few ways organizations can manage this situation:

Hire consultants. Many experienced community managers have become consultants (Rachel Makool, Sean O’Driscoll, Jake McKee, Janet Fouts, and Dawn Foster are examples) and are in demand for helping companies navigate the transition from pilot to operational communities.
Outsource moderation and/or community management. eModeration, Tempero, LiveWorld, Fresh Networks, and Impact Interactions all offer some combination of moderation and community management. These services can help companies who are starting out, exploring, and experimenting. In particular, moderation is often outsourced completely as needs often fluctuate significantly over time.
Spend time seeking out and investing in understanding the most effective use of human resources. Human resources are critical to the success of a social initiatives but if the role and responsibilities are not clear and appropriately aligned, it can lead to a lot of frustration on both the part of the organization and on the part of employee. The more the hiring manager understands, the better off the outcomes will be. Consultants, training, and services like ours can help tremendously with understanding how to effectively hire and use community management.

Are you looking for a social media or community manager? While we are not a recruiting agency we do hear from a lot of hiring managers and individuals looking for jobs and it’s gotten too much to manage in an ad hoc way. However, if you fill out the form below we can match it relatively easily with a growing database of job seekers and are happy to make a connection.

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Looking for a Community Management Job?

January 12, 2010 By Rachel Happe

We’ve seen the community management discipline mature over the past year – both in terms of how well it’s understood and in the recognition by companies that their social initiatives are more successful if they have a dedicated community manager. Demand for community management skills has also steadily increased to the point where we are getting contacted regularly by both community managers and hiring companies and recruiters.

While CR members are happily employed, we do reach a lot of community managers through our larger social network that could use some matchmaking. We’ve seen a wide range of positions and backgrounds and feel like we have the experience to help connect people and companies that are likely to be a good fit for each other.

With that in mind, if you’re looking for a community management role and would like to be in our queue of individuals that we recommend to recruiters, please tell us a bit about your experience and what you’re looking for. We will share your contact information with recruiters and/or hiring companies as appropriate (let us know if if you’re ok with that below), but your answers to these questions will be kept private and will only be used to assess fit and/or shared in aggregate. We will not share your name for any other purpose.

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Hiring for Social Media: Part 1

November 13, 2009 By Rachel Happe

Dawn Headshot [This post is the first in an on-going series of posts by a members of The Community Roundtable, highlighting the voices of experienced community managers. It is cross-posted at Dawn’s blog, Under The Hood]

This is part one in a series on hiring a social media person or company.

One of the most challenging parts of this field I love is finding experts. I have seen people that look great on paper, but when you talk with them, their knowledge is only paper deep. I am going to tell you a story about John. John was absolutely fascinated with social media and worked at a company that did some in the space. He managed to get to work on a project! He listened and absorbed. In his next career move, he elaborated on his resume. Perhaps he was not just a participant on that single project. Perhaps he was the mastermind. Sure he knows all he needs to, he lands a position as a strategist for a medium sized company. Now that he is in the position, he is struggling because he is not the social media professional the claimed to be. There are plenty of “Johns” out there. Beware.

Ok, so at this point, you are like, ok Dawn. So how the heck do I know? Well let’s start with what kind of social media professional you are looking to hire.

Part 1: Strategist

Part 2: Faceman

Part 3: Moderator

Part 4: Technologist

Part 5: Vendor/Company

Community Strategist

This is a professional position that will manage the strategies, implementation and projects for your community. This person needs to be a seasoned professional with demonstrable successful projects to share with their resume. Ask for examples. When I say samples of their work, I am not meaning a personal blog where they explore their expertise area, but actual projects on behalf of a company. While a personal blog in the area of expertise might be a way to demonstrate their knowledge, it doesn’t show success. I could do enough research to have a medical advice blog, but that doesn’t mean I am capable of actually practicing medicine. Some of the people in this industry that I admire most are almost completely behind the scenes. The high participation members of their communities will know them, but from a passing glance, you would not necessarily. This person does not need to, necessarily, be an expert in your business area. You will have experts within the business. This person needs to be an expert in communities.

You should research this person. Look carefully at their implemented sites and see if they are actually successful. Are people participating? Is the site itself nicely done? Is the company participating? Use this research to drive questions for the interview. Ask to see the scorecard from there existing community. (there will be a future post on scorecards and metrics)

Other skills attributes and abilities: (in addition to the Social Media/Communiy skills above)

Organized with Project Management skills
Passion for Social Media/Community
Process oriented
Manages up well- comfort talking with, selling concepts to, etc.
Can lead a team from various departments that may or may not actually report to you.
Diplomatic
Creative thinker.

Interviewing questions:

Use the interview to do a deep dive into the sites they have done before. Ask the hard questions. If no one is participating… ask why,. Ask why they chose the tool that they did. Ask about corporate support for the effort. Ask what the budget was. Ask about the technology vendor. If you ask specific enough questions, even “John” should stumble and show his true colors.

Give a real life scenario that is currently happening at your company. Like say you are trying to engage a new audience and are not sure where to start. Ask how they would begin and the first several actions. It will give you a window into their skills.

Ask a scenario question (you make up) about an exec that doesn’t buy into the social media effort and the candidate has to convince them to join the movement. See if their ideas are close to your corporate culture and if the candidate has the right thought processes to sell and idea.

If there is no current social media program, ask them where they would start to create one. If they answer with a tool (before they even found out the corporate goals) this should be a big red flag.

Ask how they keep up with social media. If they don’t list several of the industry blogs and books, be concerned.

Finally and critically important… check the references carefully. I have found that while many companies don’t want their managers to recommend people, they will still verify the role and scope. I had a conversation recently about a candidate with a manager that readily told me he couldn’t talk about performance of the person. I asked if he would just verify the magnitude of the role. It turned out that when I read the role description from the resume, it was grossly over stated. The manager was HAPPY to tell me that.

Mark Wallace on His Experience with Community

November 6, 2009 By Jim Storer

Mark and I worked together at three different companies between 1996 – 2007. During that time we worked on social media and community projects of all shapes and sizes. When he told me he was leaving to take on a lead role in EDR‘s Commonground community I was thrilled. He has a deep passion for community and this just seemed like a great fit (it is!).

Due in large part to Mark’s hard work and dedication, Commonground was recently awarded a Forrester Groundswell Award for Outstanding B2B Customer Support Community. I congratulated Mark soon afterward and asked him to join me for a podcast to explore what he’s learned along the way. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with this brilliant idea. Another former colleague (and good friend) Aaron Strout asked Mark to do an email interview with him that same day! In the end it worked out better for you, because you get two for the price of one!

I had the chance to read Aaron’s interview before I chatted with Mark and took the opportunity to take our conversation in a little bit of a different direction. I think you’ll agree it’s a great listen. Enjoy!

Download this podcast (19 minutes/17.3mb)

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Cultivating the Community Managers

November 3, 2009 By Rachel Happe

Recently we’ve been hearing from a lot of recruiters looking for social media and community professionals but more than that we’re hearing from a lot of community managers who are getting laid off, leaving voluntarily, or considering making a move. While the social software market itself is going through the Trough of Disillusionment, one of the biggest risks happening right now is to community managers. What’s interesting to me is that a lot of the churn is going on with some of the best community managers in the business and the ones who have the most experience. They are restless, isolated, frustrated, and unsatisfied. They are getting more support and recognition for their work externally than they do within their own organizations. They are looking for really rewarding challenges and an environment where they can do innovative and ground-breaking work. They are in organizations that still view them as their social media or community outpost but they are not ready to think about social media or community as a business strategy that incorporates more of the organization – effectively leaving them in the desert with no water.

Community managers – as outposts – face a lot of stress. They are seeing on a daily basis how the business needs to change to support their constituents and yet they don’t have the internal decision-making chain listening to them at a high enough level to actually change the business. They are often seen as the person who will change the culture by making a company more ‘social’ but as anyone with change management experience knows, putting that responsibility on any one person is enormously unfair. In the worst scenario and particularly with Enterprise 2.0 initiatives started in IT groups, community management falls to a project manager as a ‘part-time’ responsibility and the person in the role has no realistic hope of tackling the responsibilities comprehensively – but not for lack of interest or enthusiasm. So social initiatives linger, fall apart, or create friction within the organization that it cannot be easily addressed because of lack of a broad strategy and commitment. Oliver Marks talks about this in his post Collaboration Strategy Shortcomings: Whack the Community Manager.

One of the reasons we put together the Community Maturity Model itself is to give organizations and community managers themselves a framework for thinking about how the business needs to change to incorporate more voices – not just how to manage the community itself. Community managers will always be a vital link to facilitate the conversation between the business and the consistent base – whether that is customers, employees, or partners – but they need an organizations that supports them and their role. They need peers and resources since this is an emerging discipline. They need executive sponsors who understand and champion a social business strategy – and protects the community initiative while it incubates because communities do not grow and mature in the same way as other types of operational programs. When those conditions are not present – and they are lacking in some of the very companies we champion as ‘visionaries’ in the social space – they risk losing the people who best understand how to execute community management. That loss can set companies back years. Supporting community managers – and giving them the resources to learn, experiment, and grow – whether that is internal mentorship at the executive level, budget for conferences and resources like The Community Roundtable, or more staff to help give them space to think more strategically, companies need to do better by their community managers if they want to succeed in this brave new information evnironment.

While all companies have challenges supporting and growing a new discipline we do see some great examples of companies thinking strategically about community – companies like SAP, EMC, IBM, Radian6, Zappos, and EDR. If you are interested in how business is evolving they are companies worth watching and not coincidentally, most of them participate widely in conferences and with us and the individuals involved are open and accessible so ask, listen, & learn from them. They are not without challenges but they are committed to learning and growing. And if you are interested in what The Community Roundtable offers, find out more about membership here.

What’s the biggest challenge you expect companies to face as they add community and social programs to their existing business processes? What can they do to better support community managers during that transition? What resources and support systems do you find invaluable?