Business

Many businesses hire community managers because they hear one might be necessary, but once hired have no clue what to do with him. Is he a customer service person? Does he hang out with the marketing team or is he on board to help close sales?

What should you do with your community manager?

Customer Service: The obvious place for a CM is with customer service. Many business use the CM to talk with users via blogs and online networks. Therefore it’s a customer service experience, right? For sure the community manager should work with service or support so they know what the people who use their products or services are saying about them. They should know the areas in which they’re doing the best, and also the areas that need a little work. The community manager is an integral part of the customer service team..but that’s not all.

Marketing: The community manager should be part of the marketing team as well. Who else to better plan promotional strategies than the person who speaks to the people taking part? The community manger has his finger on the pulse of the people and will help plan the programs that best fit the community. Every good community manager also knows other community managers and could offer ideas and suggestions for cross promotions that would enable communities to mingle.

Public Relations & Editorial: See marketing. Also the community manager could assist with announcements and letters to the community as well as the company blog and newsletter. Most community managers moonlight as bloggers anyway.

Sales: Community managers aren’t there to close sales, but with their heavy social media presence they might be able to suggest potential advertising and business clients.

Social Media: A no brainer. Many community managers are  social media savvy and are the best people in the company to handle social media campaigns. No doubt they’re majorly into blogging and have a heavy online presence. Take advantage of this, trust me.

All of the Above: The most successful community managers aren’t departmentalized. They answer to the community, first and foremost, and also play parts in the success of several different departments.

If you’re not sure where to put your community manager, ask him. The answers may surprise - and enlighten you.

Tagged as: community building, Community Management, community manager

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Successful community managers know cultivating a community is more than just creating a Facebook group or spamming Twitter with some links. It’s about building relationships and touching on users’ wants and needs. The community manager truly is the voice of the community. This means she needs to be knowledgeable about all aspects of the business. Leaving a community manager in the dark, is leaving a community in the dark.

Here’s how to set up a community manager for failure. For your CM to be a success, do not do any of these things:

Don’t train your community manager or let her in on the workings of the various departments

Your community manager likes nothing more than to be clueless. Her favorite thing in the world is for her community to get frustrated with her for not knowing the answers.  Nothing gives a community manager more pleasure than to always have to ask other people for answers, rather than saving time by responding to questions on her own. Give yourself bonuses points if, when your CM looks to others for answers, they don’t answer for days - or not at all.

Don’t invite your community manager to departmental meetings or conference calls

To further ensure your community manager’s lack of success, make sure she’s never privy to any of the discussions pertaining to her community, especially customer service. The less she knows about anything having to do with the community the better.

Don’t keep your community manager apprised of new product and service launches

You know the best way to have your community manager look like a fool? Don’t tell her about any product or service launches. Don’t get her opinion on new applications or web designs. Don’t tell her anything until after the launch. She’ll love that, I promise.

Don’t let your community manager answer for herself

Canned, approved  by management responses only. Who needs a personal touch?

Have a community manager for appearances only

Just because it’s all about community nowadays, doesn’t mean it has to be about community. Go ahead and hire a community manager but don’t actually allow her to do anything resembling community management. Instead have her act as a glorified assistant handling paperwork, spreadsheets or web research.

Don’t ask your community manger for her opinion

What the heck does she know anyway?

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I’ve been a part of this social media thing for several years now. I’ve been blogging and working online for about a decade. I’ve been building up online communities in some form or another for at least ten years. While I won’t claim to be an expert, I think it’s safe to say I know a little of what I’m talking about.  I’ve come to two conclusions about community management. The first is that everyone has a different idea about what a community manager’s job entails. The second is that most people think a community manager is nothing more than a glorified forum moderator who only needs to worry about the social networks.

That’s not it at all.

Community management  is more than just Twitter. It’s more than FaceBook or Ning or MySpace. I’m even going to go as far as to say it doesn’t have much to do with those things at all, and anyone who thinks it’s about how many friends you have on Facebook or followers on Twitter, is clearly missing the mark. Community management is about creating a positive user experience. Yes, that does mean one should monitor the social networks to see what one’s community is saying about them, but that’s not what it’s about at all.

What I like to do is pretend there’s no Twitter or Facebook. How would I reach out to my community then? How can I find out what they think of our service? When I think about it, why would I want to create separate “groups” on the different social networks when the ultimate goal is to get them to socialize at their community’s home base. That just makes cliques, not communities.

Community management isn’t just Twitter. It’s being a voice for the people. It’s being a hands on customer service person. It’s finding out  what the people in your community are talking about and taking that information and putting it to good use. Community management is about creating a positive user experience. It’s about building up relationships with people and gaining their trust. When you think about it, that has nothing to do with Twitter at all.

Tagged as: Community Management, social networking, Twitter

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If your community has a forum or other gathering place, you’ll recognize the Chronic Malcontent. This is the person who never posts anything positive. Everything she (or he) writes is negative. She nitpicks the service, nitpicks the web design, nitpicks customer support and anything else she can think of. She knows the private email address of everyone on the support team but would rather take her complaints public because she feels she has a better chance of getting a response, plus she wants people to agree with her.(In most cases they don’t).

The Chronic Malcontent is probably the most challenging of all the community forum personalities because:

1. As community manager I have to be polite to everyone I come in contact with. Though I want to shake our chronic malcontent and say, “Get over it lady! This is a free service! If this free service is so much trouble find another silimar service that’s more to your liking. The fact that the Chronic Malcontent stays with us despite her daily laundry list of complaints is telling, because she doesn’t choose to go elsewhere.
2. One has to act quickly with the Chronic Malcontent because we don’t want others in the forum taking up the same tone and turning the thread into a complaintfest. Usually I thank Ms.Malcontent for her comments and assure her I’ve passed her information on to the folks who can best handle it, and give her the email for our services team once again so she can contact directly next time. Which she won’t.
3. I also have to be careful it doesn’t turn into a negative situation for the rest of the forum. Folks get sick of seeing constant whining from the same person and it’s only a matter of time before someone turns around and tells the Chronic Malcontent to shut up. Then others agree and before you know it you’re in moderation and delete mode.

Every now and then Chronic Malconent is worthy of an email or forum private message I’ll nicely ask her (or him) to please cool it with the negativity as it turns people off from visiting the forum. I’ll request she contact support directly for a quick response to her problems. She’ll send me a note back apologizing profusely and telling me how much she loves our service and how I’m the best community manager ever and she’s ever so sorry for any inconvenience. She really didn’t mean to be so negative. And then the process will start all over again the next week.

Does your forum have a chronic malcontent? If so, what do you do to diffuse the situation?

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It’s terrific so many businesses are starting to realize there are real people out there using their products and services. And while “community” and “social media” are this year’s buzzwords, some folks still aren’t quite getting it. Even though it’s all about “community” nowadays, doesn’t mean a business should treat folks as a collective or demograhic.

Most customer service or marketing teams treat users or consumers as a whole and solve problems based on averages and groups. It’s frustrating to know the people who we’re trusting for support are reading from a script or have a canned response. Though we’re building communities, each member of that community is an individual and should be treated as such. Toss the the script out and go with your gut, people will trust you more.

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I have a confession to make. I’m technically challenged. When it comes to blogging I can handle the writing end and maybe even a little widget and plugin installation, but when it comes to the nitty gritty, I haven’t a clue. I generally hire people to design my blogs and to handle the issues I can’t.

In November,  I was thrilled to be able to announce I was revamping my popular Freelance Writing Jobs blog from a single blog into a network of six blogs. Imagine how it feels watching a small blog grow into the number one online community for freelance writers? This was a thrilling and scary time for me. At the recommendation of my trusted tech guys, I moved over to a more reliable hosting company. It was a company that came highly recommended, received good reviews and they patiently answered all my questions when I called.

A tale of two servers

A couple of weeks after the move and upgrade, I received a notice from the host. My site is too busy, processes are running and it’s affecting the other websites on the server. Could we look into it? Indeed we could. My tech guys looked into it and fixed the problem. Or so we thought.  In mid- December the host sent another notice.  My blog network is too busy for the chosen plan, I had to move to a dedicated server. This must be done within 24 hours or my service would be yanked. Feeling I had no choice, I paid hundreds of dollars (that I couldn’t spare during the holidays) to get this done. Some of that money, by the way, had been earmarked so I could give my bloggers an end of the year bonus. Sorry, guys. [click to continue…]

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Every day I do a Twitter search to see who is talking about the business I work for. It allows me to say what folks are saying about us, and also if there are any users or potential users having trouble with the service. If I see someone using our service for the first time or asking questions about how it works, I reach out to them to see if there’s any way I can help. I also find the users who are having a bad experience and see what I can do to difuse the situation. Most folks seem to appreciate the Twitter presence, but I heard from someone today who thought it was a little too “Big Brother” for him.

Now,  regulars to Kommein know I believe businesses should have a heavy web presence. However, the gentleman who was put off by my Twitter trollage had a good point. It is a bit off-putting to know businesses are reading and digesting our comments. Comments we don’t expect them to see.

Here’s the thing, though. The guy threw out the information on Twitter. He has several thousand followers. So if he wanted the information to be kept private, he wouldn’t have told the world, right? And really, wouldn’t you rather know a business had a person on staff monitoring the social network to fix potential issues - it’s better than not getting a response at all, right?

So I’ll ask you. Is it crossing a line for a business to have someone on staff who monitors the social networks…or is it just good customer service?

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Here’s a scenario some community managers are facing: You’re hired by a business interested in building a web presence. Your superiors consider themselves hip pioneers for jumping on the social media thing, but they reality is they haven’t a clue. As a result, you can’t do your job properly. They question the amount of time you spend on social networks, shuffle you around to different departments, don’t think conferences are necessary, and don’t take any of your ideas for social media promotion seriously, and really, have no idea what to do with you.  Put on a brave face folks, and don’t pull your hair out. You can make it work.

You were hired to create an online presence using forums, blogs, networks and other social media tools. You know you’re good at what you do, and you know there are logical reasons for doing what you do. Now, you have to communicate it to your superiors. This isn’t always easy, and can be very frustrating, but if they didn’t want a heavy Internet campaign they wouldn’t have hired you in the first place, right?

Take a deep breath. Don’t get angry. If you find you’re getting questioned every step of the way or that folks don’t take you seriously, take some time to write up a proposal or outline. List all your social media strategies and why you feel they will benefit the business. Send it to all the players and request a time to discuss follow up.  Now gather data and statistics so you can make your case. You CAN make this work!

It’s hard for many old schoolers to embrace social media but it’s part of a community manager’s job to make sure they get it. Don’t let frustration give in to anger. Use your energy to create a rocking community instead.

Tagged as: Community Management, community manager, social media

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So I was having a conversation on Twitter today with @iFroggy (don’t you love using @’s instead of names?) about perhaps planning a Community Manger meetup in Austin during SXSWi, which is going on from March 13 - 17th. I’m trying to gauge interest, and if we have some takers I’ll see what I can do about finding a venue. I don’t know Austin at all, so I’ll have to enlist the aid of others there.

Will you be at SXSWI in March? If so, are you interested in meeting and talking with other community managers?

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