Like most types of jobs, only a small portion of Online Community Manager positions are posted online in popular places where the right people will find the job. I found my Community Management position on the Problogger Job Board, and while they wanted someone with blogging and new media experience, the board wasn’t specifically for Community Managers.
If you really want to become a Community Manager, I suggest thinking about the products, services or companies that you really enjoy and sending your resume to them. Find ways to get in contact with them to pitch them at either creating the position, or giving you the job. Many companies might have marketing managers and product managers, but they completely neglect the online community at this point, not seeing it as a smart use of their time and resources, and as Dell and other companies have proven time and time again, these companies would be wrong.
While at Blog World Expo, I was fortunate enough to talk to the various people working on building out the online marketing and communities for various well known brands and companies. These people came mostly from a marketing background, with little understanding of the web. One even mentioned that his previous experiences barely scratched the surface with regards to the depth of the web community and its tools, services, and different ways of connecting.
If you already have that knowledge, sell that ability to your favourite company, and get yourself a Community Manager position. What have you got to loose? The worst the company can say is “no”.
To address the question in the title of this post, how can you tell if the company needs a Community Manager?
Well, if they are doing business and are looking to expand that business to a nation wide or international audience, then they’ll want a Community Manager, but they may not realize it yet. Having a full time Online Community Manager might be too much of an expense for them at this point, but if you learn to market yourself well, you should be able to come to some sort of agreement.
Nearly all companies should be looking at hiring an Online Community Manager to help with the various things they need to do online: from blogging, to responding to e-mails. Community Managers can truly separate the companies worth noticing thanks to their dedication to engagement from the companies worth forgetting about due to their lack of consideration. I consider companies hiring a Community Manager as a sign that they value their community. Don’t you?
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