Social Organization. Digest. Vol.7

Community Manager Дайджест№7 (2012)

Содержание

The Community Manager Role Unplugged - 15 Essential Roles ..................................................... 1

Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers? .................................................................... 2

Who Should Manage Your Social Media? ....................................................................................... 5

Community Manager Job Description ............................................................................................. 7

Social Media Jobs Salary Guide ....................................................................................................... 8

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The Community Manager Role Unplugged - 15 Essential Roles АВТОР: Nielsen ДАТА ПУБЛИКАЦИИ: May 19, 2009 ИСТОЧНИК: http://buzzcanuck.typepad.com/agentwildfire/2009/05/the-community-manager-role-unplugged-15-essential-roles.html АННОТАЦИЯ: мы продолжаем публиковать материалы, в которых затрагивается вопрос о роли и функциях комьюнити-менеджера, и предлагаем вашему вниманию необычную многоуровневую систему распределения ролей. Ее автор разграничивает 25 основных ролей комьюнити-менеджера внутренние, внешние и посреднические, и подробно характеризует каждую из них.

Community managers are the future host of your organization conversations - part corporate journalist, part PR person, part customer service, part likable, part sociable and enthusiastic face, part technologist, part Renaissance person and part brand fanatic, they are roles not easily configured inside companies currently. We've literally found hundreds of them with various titles (i.e. social media architect, community manager, web manager, product evangelist) and they've been nice enough to join us on Twitter @communitygurus. Jeremiah Owyang, Connie Bensen and Sascha Carlin have also built a Facebook headquarters as well. We've been able to interview 30+ of them over the last few months and have gleaned "what is it they actually do?" Having just left a conference last week, a number of top marketing executives approached me and were interested in how to bring a community-based strategy to execution and what laid in-between in pulling it off, I thought I would lay out the 15 essential roles that community managers perform

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in successful wiki-companies (from internal-focus to external and from the basics to the very tough-to-achieve). Each role is pictured above. Internal roles – Product Educator - being the guru, expert, historian and "details" person on the portfolio of

brands/products the community supports – Brand Evangelist - exuding passion for the brand and being a walking role model for the

type of people that company wants to attract, likely an active participant in the community of interest

– Research Filter - being able to synthesize community feedback information and analytics and make actionable insight that company executive can react to

– Internal Trainer - becoming the missionary inside a company and prevoking employee involvement, demonstrating success, communicating value and demystifying the world of tech and social media that supports the community

– Client Stir Stick - becoming the internal rally cry and the conscience of the community/customer inside the company, frequently at executive levels - practising change management and changing processes that hinder community success

Bridge Roles (between company and community) – Program Manager/Administrator - managing the day to day details or running the

community - staff, investment, activity tracking, communication, providing feedback...etc. – Content Developer - whether it be video, pitcures, forums, updates or blogging - creating a

fresh supply of interesting news from the company and about the community – On the Ground Responder/Liaison - playing the intermediary role between company and

community, whether it be planned or crisis communication and highlighting emerging issues – Events Host - existing as the face of both online and offline events, creating a sense of

presence and leadership at all communal occasions – The Strategist - developing new applications, platforms and course corrections for

community engagement that also benefit the sponsoring company External, Community-Minded Role – Problem Solver - answering directly or providing a forum and process to solve

member/customer break-fix problems or more ingrained issues with company, product or community

– Moderation - playing the role of ombudsman, rulemaker, conversation starter and referee in user generated forums and community debate inside and outside the community

– Social Networkers - recruiting new members into the community wherever they exist – Expert Listener - tracking to what's being said and where about the company inside the

community and in the external world and reacting to it – Personal Concierge - incubating top performing community members, highlighting key

member contributions and giving the kid gloves/VIP treatment to key industry and community stakeholders

Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers? АВТОР: Marshall Kirkpatrick ДАТА ПУБЛИКАЦИИ: July 15, 2008 ИСТОЧНИК: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hiring_a_community_manager.php АННОТАЦИЯ: в современных крупных компаниях должностью комьюнити-менеджера в штатном расписании уже сложно удивить, однако для небольших или начинающих компаний вопрос о привлечении специального человека для работы в социальных сетях является одним из сложнейших. Автор статьи предлагает преодолеть стереотипы в оценке функций комьюнити-менеджера и подчеркивает, что возможно именно в стартапах затраты на управление сообществами позволят получить максимум полезных эффектов от использования социальных медиа.

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You know what little startup companies need these days? They need to hire more people! It may be a frightening thought, but in an increasingly social world - being social is becoming an important full time job. "Community Manager" is a position being hired for at a good number of large corporations (see Jeremiah Owyang's growing list of people with that kind of job) but what about smaller companies? We asked a number of people what they thought and the following discussion offers some great things to think about, pro and con. What Is a Community Manager? A community manager can do many things (see below) but the most succinct definition of the role that we can offer is this. A community manager is someone who communicates with a company's users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to clarify and amplify the work of all parties. They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for. True believers can't emphasize the importance of the role enough. John Mark Walker, the Community Manager at CollabNet articulates this perspective well: "I firmly believe that the community manager should be one of the first hires - right after a solid engineering group and before you invest in corporate marketing people." Not everyone sees it that way, something that causes substantial distress for people in the supply chain who are advocates for the CM role. "Start ups and all companies that exist online need to be looking at a community manager as a salaried position," said Dylan Boyd of eROI. "We have been working with big brands and it kills me when they just give 'social media' to someone that already has 10 other roles...At Omma Social last month in NYC that topic came up asking all the people in the room from Big brands if they had a community manager. 90% of them did not and are still trying to find out how to spec out a job description in order to hire for it." Dissenters: Community Management Does Not Need to Be a Full Time Job Others see community management as something that doesn't need to be a full time job. "Community management is essentially a public relationship issue, so whoever picks up that gauntlet is on point for representing their company to the rest of us," consultant Peat Bakke told us. "It doesn't have to be a specific person or a full time job, but it is part of starting and running a business, almost by definition: if you're in business, you're doing community management whether you like it or not." Some would go so far as to call an explicit community manager position a bad idea in the early days of a startup. Darius A Monsef IV, Executive Editor & Creator, COLOURlovers.com told us he thinks that in the early days founders need to be in the thick of managing their own communities. Jonas Anderson voiced concern about community managers being caught between loyalties to the company and its users, while being tripped up by employer nondisclosure agreements. (Others though, such as former BBC blog producer Robin Hamman, point out that having a community manager can greatly reduce legal risk when a company engages extensively with its users.) Startup founder Sachin Agarwal splits his time between community and other work. Though he wishes he had more time for this kind of work, a full timer isn't necessary, he says. "Our contact us page encourages people to ask each other and post on other sites before coming to us - we're happy to help, but I'd wager that other users know how to get the most out of our site better than even we do." Similarly, Twine's Candice Nobles says after some consideration being given to the position, her company found that their users have been incredibly self-organized and regulating so far. While those thoughts might seem valid, consultant Dawn Foster emphasized that for some companies - making one person ultimately responsible for community work can be essential. "For startups where community is a critical element of the product or service," she told us, "I think that a community manager should be an early hire. Without a community manager, the frantic pace of the startup environment can mean that the community gets neglected simply because no single person is tasked with being responsible for it. This neglect could result in failure for the startup if the community is critical." Can Founders Manage Their Communities?

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We talk to a lot of CEOs on the phone here at ReadWriteWeb and we'll try to be polite in answering this question. Andraz Tori, CTO at Zemanta answers this question diplomatically. "The [community manager] role can be played by one of the founders early on, but as the project grows you need a person that knows how to listen," he told us. "Founders have a vision and might be a bit stubborn about what their product represents and offers (that's why they are founders). Someone a bit more distanced might be much better community manager since he has a lot more empathy for users and their problems and can relay that to developers and managers. And vice versa." Pete Burgeson, director of marketing for online marketplace crowdSPRING says that a good community manager can help raise the voice of the users themselves. "We want to be able to build a platform for our community to have a voice, showcase their talent and become as active in speaking for crowdSPRING as we are speaking for ourselves." Still others believe that users may not want to talk to the founder or a community manager, but some one with tech chops and focus. "I think a startup should put a developer in the community as opposed to a 'community manager'", Rob Diana told us. "Even though the developer may not be as good of a communicator as a marketing guy, there is a different type of understanding of what people want." What Does A Community Manager Do? There are many ways that a community manager can benefit a startup company and it often varies from company to company. Eva Schweber, co-founder of CubeSpace says "it depends on the community and what needs to be managed...the style and distractability of the folks in the startup, how they like to collaborate with peers and how they define their peers." It's a complicated job, but one that can help bring cohesiveness to the life of a company. "Any opportunity to interact with the community forces one to think about the product/feature considerations and ramifications of one choice over another," says Nagaraju Bandaru of SmartWebBlog. "In many ways, community manager is the evangelist for company's products and the voice of the customer in internal discussions. It's critical to react to online discussions with skill, consistency and aptitude; The role is hard to understand from outside but impossible to miss once a startup is in execution mode." This coherent communication can have business development benefits as well. This seems to us to be one of the most important benefits of the position. Graeme Thickins, VP of Marketing at doapp explains: "Their world includes the online community that represents both prospective customers/users, as well as strategic partner companies, possible future investors, future employees, and more. Perhaps thinking in terms of a 'listening manager' would help a lot of startup founders better come to grips with what this job is all about." Carol Leaman from AideRSS says investing in a community manager position has helped her company "gain maximum benefit from our early adopters and growing base of users, as it's a key link between them and our development team. NOT having someone on this full-time would impede our growth and success. We consider ourselves fortunate to have both realized this need early, and to have found an amazing Community Manager to fill the role." Does that have to be one person in particular? AideRSS's Melanie Baker explains that specialization is as appropriate in this role as in others. "While especially at startups there's a shortage of bodies and it's all hands on deck, not all hands are best suited to all activities," she said. "No one would want me writing code, and I wouldn't necessarily want just anyone talking to frustrated users, for example. It's also totally a hybrid role. My background involves marketing, web, QA, and writing, and I use all of it as a community manager. Someone with a more specialized background can certainly learn what it takes, but might have a hard time wrapping his/her head around the customer service/marketing/business analysis/tech support/software testing/documentation/journalist needs of the role." "You need someone who understands the fundamental distinction that while you want to grow your user base, a user base does not equal a community," Baker said. "The best success involves growing the former while making every effort to evolve them into the latter. Because communities grow themselves organically a lot more easily than user bases do."

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Isn't it ultimately about marketing? Kim Bardakian, Sr. Communications Manager, at the wonderful music site Pandora put it this way: "Pandora just created this position about four months ago and it's been INVALUABLE to our company, in such a short time! It's opened a whole new world of communications for us! Lucia Willow fills that role for us and she's great. With the iPhone/Pandora launch on Friday, the Twitter network and followers were making tons of buzz! It was very exciting.. " Is Community Management the New PR? Hutch Carpenter points to an example of community management leading to extensive new media press coverage and saving money on PR. Others see PR evolving towards a community management type of role in this increasingly social world. "I particularly liked the reference to PR as 'public relationships', interjected Kathleen Mazzocco ClearPR. "[That] conveys the directness and transparency of today's new PR. How can it not be given the open conversations going on? That's why Community Managers are the critical new PR position." PR has long got a bad rap, though, and if PR pros are going to get into social media (they are already here in large quantities) then there may be some challenges to their ability to play a community management role. "The idea of a 'community manager' is a good one as long as that person has the freedom to discuss the negatives as well as the positives of the company's efforts," says Dave Allen of Nemo Design. "If we consider all the aspects of social media as PR 2.0 then I would argue that it is a very important position given that companies would hardly have gone without PR 1.0. I posted a top 10 list of what you might call a 'community manager's' activities might be like here." (Disclosure: the author has a consulting relationship with Nemo) Is This Worth Paying For? Why would a busy little startup spend precious money on this kind of role? "While a Community Manager isn't the same as a traditional PR role, ideally they should work together," says Meredith from A Little Clarity. "Startups are in a blur; often they're being run by engineers with VCs looking over their shoulders -- they don't know from community managers; so there should be some accountability, and that's the tricky part. Do you measure connections? Responsiveness? Transparent 'public relationships?' Whatever it is that your company will value, get it out there and agree on it, because one thing startups don't always have is time to do it right after getting burned." You want tangible? Semantic web researcher Yihong Ding will give you tangible! He says that community managers are tasked with tending the most precious asset that many startups have staked their future on - user content. "As we know, most of the Web 2.0 companies are built upon user generated content," he told us. "Philosophically, User Generated Content is embodied human mind. This embodied mind is generally the fundamental asset for the company. Maintaining a proper community so that users may embody their mind with high quality is thus a central issue for the growth of the company. The duty of community managers is to supervise and maintain the high-quality production of the fundamental mind asset used by the company. Therefore, I would say that community manager is a critical job title for most of the Web 2.0 companies." We agree with Yihong. User data and community content are the foundation that web 2.0 style innovation and company valuations rest on. Failing to focus meaningfully on tending those assets is a foolish choice. Thanks to everyone who participated in this conversation. We hope readers will contribute their thoughts in comments below.

Who Should Manage Your Social Media? ДАТА ПУБЛИКАЦИИ: август 2011 ИСТОЧНИК: http://blog.tkographix.com/post/8226015537/who-should-manage-your-social-media АННОТАЦИЯ: статья посвящена определению и структурированию основных вопросов, которые должен задач себе руководитель, стремящийся продуктивно использовать потенциал социальных медиа в своей компании. Вполне возможна, что на один из вопросов – «Кто будет тем человеком, который сможет извлечь преимущества от использования социальных медиа? – можно ответить: «Комьюнити-менеджер!»

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Whether you currently use social media in your organization, or you’ve realized you should be using SM — I believe the first question is… “What do YOU hope to accomplish?” · New business, leads, customers · Donations, sponsors, volunteers · Branding and name recognition · Product and services introduction · Customer feedback and service The second question is,“Who can do this social media marketing stuff?” The following should be considered: · A passion for social media · An advocate of your organization and an understanding of your mission · Basic knowledge of how the organization functions · Marketing skills · Ability to write and edit (could be more that one person) · Outgoing person who enjoys networking · Can devote ½ to 2 hours, minimum, every day Who This Person Isn’t: · The intern who loves social media, but is a temporary employee · Someone with great PR, marketing, and writing skills – but they don’t like social media · Anyone who will try to make time · Shy, quiet, introspective people · Anyone who feels they have to do it, not, want to do it… including you. What’s Your Budget? Despite what you may have heard, social media marketing is not free. While it may be free to sign up for a twitter or facebook account, you’re at least committing to paying an employee 3-10 hours per week to manage your social media. As your company evolves, you should expect the number of hours to rise—and possibly, your SM team’s personel to grow. Blogging, administration of several networks, video, and posting photos can easily be a full-time job in a small to medium-size company. I recently chatted with a social marketer for a larger firm who was part of a 15-member social media marketing team. One More Option Should you consider outsourcing some or all of your social media? IMHO—yes. Whether you do or not, outsourcing should be considered if: · It’s more cost-effective to pay someone outside to do it · You have no one within the organization who is qualified · You need help in some areas, but not all

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Community Manager Job Description АВТОР: Jake McKee, Community Guy has a number of articles on hiring & finding a job. ДАТА ПУБЛИКАЦИИ: February 2009 ИСТОЧНИК: http://conniebensen.com/2008/07/17/community-manager-job-description/ АННОТАЦИЯ: Статья, описывающая основные требования к знаниям и навыкам КМ, для качественного выполнения работы. Перечислены и основные обязанности, которые должен выполнять КМ при построении и управлении сообществом. Например, поддержка активности, написание блогов и статей, отслеживание возникающих проблем и FAQ, коммуникация с другими КМ.

The Community Manager position is a broad encompassing role. And it really should be! My definition of the position: A community manager is the voice of the company externally and the voice of the customers internally. The value lies in the community manager serving as a hub & having the ability to personally connect with the customers (humanize the company), & providing feedback to many departments internally (development, PR, marketing, customer service, tech support, etc). A hat tip for Ning for many of these. I have added additional points. Responsibilities: – Creatively and proactively assist customers. – Serve as the initial point of contact for inbound requests – Identify and analyze issues, patterns and trends in customer requests & product performance – Transfer the information to the appropriate departments so that they can respond

accordingly. - bugs to quality assurance - new ideas to product development - messaging effectiveness to marketing

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- frequently asked questions noted - identifying user generated content – Author blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos and screencasts – whatever media you want to

use – to communicate creative uses of networks on Ning from the simple to the very complex.

– Establish metrics & report on them on a monthly basis including recommendations – Identify & engage advocates – Proactively escalate issues, observations, opportunities, and insights to the executive team. – Communicate issues, opportunities and insights to the company at large. – Stay up to date on new social media tools, best practices and how other organizations and

companies are using them, so that the company can continue to be an early adopter of these technologies.

– Participate in professional networking by following the prominent bloggers and online writers & attending events.

Qualifications: – You love helping people and find it rewarding to solve people’s problems. Then you love to

proactively use that experience to make the whole service better. – You like working hard and thrive on the excitement of a goal oriented team – You are an independent, creative self-starter who loves running with things while keeping

everyone inside and outside the company in the loop. – You love to write & enjoy sharing your ideas with others. – You spend a lot of time online and stay up-do-date on new, fun things out there for web savvy

users as well as regular people. – You enjoy learning & are curious! Now you can personalize that for what your company needs. My recommendation is to make sure that it’s open ended enough to allow the position to grow. The type of person that you’ll hire will want to be continually challenged & motivated to keep the community growing.

Social Media Jobs Salary Guide АВТОР: Onward Search ИСТОЧНИК: http://www.onwardsearch.com/Social-Media-Salaries/ ССЫЛКА ДЛЯ СКАЧИВАНИЯ ИНФОРГАФИКИ: http://www.onwardsearch.com/Social-Media-Salaries/Social-Media-Jobs-Salaries-Guide.pdf АННОТАЦИЯ: Onward Search – одна из крупнейших рекрутинговых компаний США – подготовила интересный гайд по структуре занятости и размерах заработной платы работников в сфере социальных медиа, из которого мы можете узнать, насколько уникальна профессия комьюнити-менеджера на американском рынке труда и на какой размер зарплаты он может рассчитывать (в тыс долл. в год до вычета налога).

Social media job opportunities continue to grow as more companies focus their hiring on skilled professionals who can drive business by through innovative social media marketing. This gives job seekers and seasoned social media pros a wealth of national career options, and now they have a resource to help them find their next social media jobs even faster. Introducing the new Onward Search Social Media Jobs Salary Guide - a comprehensive look at the best job markets, the most in-demand job titles and salary ranges for social media professionals in the top 20 U.S. cities. This free guide makes it easy to take your social media career to the next level, so download it below, link to it and share it with your fellow social media pros! To give you the most complete information about developing your social media career, we’ve also gathered career tips from those people who’ve helped shape the social media industry. Check out our featured Social Media Career Advice for professional guidance from social media experts!

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