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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Excellent post! It drives the point home well that a community manager is the face of the company and has to build real relationship with the customers and hence needs to be involved in the real company at many levels.
It also makes a subtle point about the skill set of a community manager as being more than managing social mediums like facebook pages, twitter and forums but a person with great inter-personal skills to work inside the company.
Agree - great post. Has made me think alot about what is and isn’t working in the community space right now. Trying to figure out a way to share this with the rest of my company without them thinking it is a dig or a complaint.
For some reason, content like this gets seen outside the community world as “Community wants its fingers in everything” where the truth is really that “Community has its fingers in everything - whether they want to be there or not.” Not communicating with the community team doesn’t just make the team members dissatisfied, it also makes it hard to keep the community itself involved!
Great piece. Companies who hire CM’s need to read and digest this. If they want a community they MUST listen to the Community, and they MUST have their finger on the pulse regarding the needs of the community. A CM is the key to this. The CM is the link between community and company, and the company needs to ensure the CM has the tools to ensure its a “strong” link.
I wish I could send this to my boss. Amazing post Deb - you hit the nail on the head, my friend.
Isn’t this called “Plausible Deniability” or some such thing? If you don;t know you can’t tell and can’t tell you can;t promise or help or things that cannot be delivered or some such thing. I assume when a company hires a CM they did not know what they were getting in the first place, or knew and decided as you said just to give their assistant a cool social media sounding title.
Couldn’t have said it better! The same tips apply for anyone involved in your brand/company’s social media effort. Excellent, excellent callout!
I think community managers are so new many businesses have no idea what to do with them, to be honest.
Deb (& Jim)-
For me, it’s the community manager’s responsibility to verify what can be shared publicly or not. It may be as simple as asking, “any concerns with my blogging about this?” after the conversation. If there are concerns, it’s worth questioning them — great chance to educate.
Thanks.
-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter: @dimdim
facebook: dimdim.com/facebook
@kevein Yes there is some accountability on the part of the community manager I agree completely. My advice to my people is to let the horse run a little and wait for them to get reigned in by management. Then they can test those lines and find where they are. Obviously, trade secrets and other information is off limits. An editorial calendar at the first of the week or on Friday if you are a weekly employee type is a good practice. It also helps the blog get updated frequently etc.
You have spurred in me a blog post it seems.
..and just to plug Kevin, I am using dimdim to work on Blog World Expo’s speakers with management! Yay dimdim!
@Jim & Kevin - Agreed, the community manager should be proactive and take initiative - and that includes discussing the editorial calender with superiors. And while I agree that certain trade secrets are to be kept under wraps, I also believe that a little transparency goes a long way in gaining the community’s trust.
I also feel that since community management is such a new thing, a community manager’s job means different things to different companies. I imagine more than one community manager is a little frustrated as their places of employment try to work out exactly what it is they should be doing.
Deb that is a good point about the newness of the job.
In a side note make sure you guys read and coment on Amber Naslund’s post on her blog about some of the myths of community management.
http://altitudebranding.com/2009/06/five-myths-of-community-management/
I want this to actually be a point of discussion at Blog World! Keep up this discussion!
Not sure if this showed up or not but check out Amber (or Amanda…LOL) and her latest CM post.
http://altitudebranding.com/2009/06/five-myths-of-community-management/
Nice post , Jim. Just recommended it on Twitter too. One thing I come across a lot is how people perceive community managers to be high paid Twitterers.
It’s so important to stay involved of all aspects of the business, even if you think it won’t be useful. If you’re going to truly develop a voice for your brand and community, you need to know how to walk the walk and talk the talk!
@Deb, I think the assumption for a lot of companies is that CM’s haven’t been around for very long, we are in our teens now as a role (I’ve been doing it for 10 years). I think the blurring between the assumption that SM and CM are the same type of roles, is starting to change as well, as people see the value in the CM as a longer haul race. In time, I think the distinction will be that people will say “I use Social Media as a tool, but I am a Community Manager”, and that differential is the one we need to educate about.
@Heidi - This is so true - I especially see it on the job boards every day where businesses are looking for student interns to be community managers. CMs aren’t just social media for sure but I believe most businesses don’t know what a community manager is - just that everyone else has one and they should too. They basically feel it’s managing Twitter and Facebook. Thanks to bloggers, maybe we can change that.
Incidentally I met with a bunch of CM’s at SXSW and most were indeed younger than me. I believe I was the only 40-something CM in attendance.
I don’t tell too many people that though, because they think I won’t “get it”.
Excellent post and love the discussion in the comments afterwards. Does any one know the percentage of companies that have full-time community managers on their payrolls? Are these positions usually in-house or outsourced?
@bnpositive
As a company that does this as an outsource feature I can assure you that this is becoming more of an in-house position now than it was before. Many people are making this a position themselves. I just met with a company that had a person in their customer service department that was actually doing many of the things that we provide as a commnuity management outsource company and didn’t even realize what she was doing. With a few tweaks and a couple of lessons later and they now have their community manager. Look at Craig’s List and many other recruitment sites and this is a job that is becoming a really mainstream idea. So to answer your questions. Yes. The percentage is not clear as yet as many company already have them and don;t really know that is what they are doing. Some want it in house and others want to test drive the position and get some ROI numbers in order to sell it to management.
@bnpositive - As Jim stated, many companies are realizing the benefits of hiring an in-house - but others are outsourcing and hiring consultants to do the job. Either works. I do some consulting and community building on a contractual basis. I think the biggest problem is when businesses look at it as an internship or entry level position. They think it’s only a Twitter or Facebook presence, when that’s the smallest part of the job.
Expect to see a huge growth in community management jobs.
Great now you guys have sparked a blog post. I hate it when that happens. I think it owuld be good to develop this further to determine some of the things that Community Managers are doing and how their jobs are shaping up. I am going to post this and will let you know. In the meantime, maybe you that are following here can include your list of features of a community manager and I can include them.
@Jim - It actually sparked a post with me. I’m going to try and get together a comprehensive CM survey together (using survey money) and I’ll post the results here. I’ll be polling to find out what duties community managers undertake, what departments they work for, what level of employee/managment they are,e tc.
I’ll send you the results as well.
Deb,
Your idea of a survey sounds awesome. When I posted my earlier comment, it came out of a shock that others felt the same way I did about how to ensure community managers fail. It has been interesting to see the ongoing commentary.
One of the things I would love to see asked in your survey is whether community managers are seen as “managing the interface with the community” or “managing the community team - moderators, etc. and the community interface” or both things.
Love the dialog. Can’t wait to see the survey and the results. Hope you post both!
Great post. I can just imagine young, fresh-outta-college IT managers having the same concerns 20 odd years ago - everyone’s heard we’re supposed to be the next big thing and we’re going to change the way people work, but nobody quite understands what we do, and they sure as heck don’t want us sticking our noses in territory where we don’t belong.
But take this analogy and see where it’s gotten the people involved - those computer nerds are now IT Directors with plush offices right next door to the CEO.Wait a minute before you start ordering your diamond crusted name plate for the office door though, there’s still a long way to go. A good start is to practice what we preach; be entirely transparent with what we’re doing and explain why we need to know certain company info that may seem out of bounds to a sceptical staff. It may be tough, but.the onus is on us to be proactive in helping people understand the value of what a good online community can offer.
In the past I’ve found if you send out a handul of emails a day to staff members, containing threads or comments that are directly aimed at what their job involves, people get interested. Give it a try!