Community Manager Responsibilities & Goals

July 17, 2008 | Job Description | Connie

Note: This post has been updated & the 2.0 version is here.

This goes along with the Community Manager job description. But these are more task oriented. This may provide a good check off list in orientating a new community manager. It could also start as a talking point for deciding on priorities.

I’m not sure if I should admit to this or not, but I compiled these in the summer of 2007 before I became a community manager. I was still an evangelist with ACDSee & had decided that I wanted to work as a Community Manager! I’m sharing that information because I know that there are many of you that passionately want to work in this space. So take a few minutes & outline the areas where you can provide service. You’ll have it ready then!

Responsibilities & Goals

1. Ensure that Company continues to remain strategically opportunistic by continually evaluating & revising Company’s online marketing and outreach strategies, including both tools presently being used to emerging technologies.

2. Take primary responsibility for executing Company’s outreach strategy to create, build & maintain brand:

Dive in and create profiles and making posts
Increase awareness of the use of web 2.0 tools across the Company.
Foster a sense of community that encourages customers to purchase as well as feel comfortable in requesting support.

3. Monitor key online conversations and events to make sure Company is participating effectively & is being represented.

4. Develop strategies to:

Engage and motivate Company’s most active online advocates & ensure that their efforts are recognized.
Maximize customer communication at all touch points – web strategy
Encourage internal communication & embracement of customer principles
Provide a business plan for 2008 online community plan including a budget

5. Coordinate the efforts of evangelists, forum moderators, & advocates so that affected Company projects are executed efficiently & in a timely manner.

Provide leadership to motivate & maximize the impact of online community’s efforts
Encourage WOM: teach them how to start the conversation & sustain it
Establish the goals, identify objectives & timeline
Break down the goal into tasks, deadlines & manage the projects to meet the goal.
Ensure that projects are completed & those involved are compensated & recognized.

6. Develop and teach guidelines to ensure that Company’s online outreach is both effective and consistent with the organization’s image and overall communications strategy.

7. Track, report on and evaluate Company’s success at being visible and influential online.

8. Responsible for the administration of the Company’s product forum

Ensure that a positive environment is maintained that reflects Company’s commitment to excellent customer service.
Work closely with Company’s IT manager to ensure that the goals of the forum are met.
Monitor online forums, identify potential problems & issues & promptly communicate them to the IT Manager as appropriate
Practice excellent judgement in communicating with customers about potentially controversial topics.
Advocate for the customer’s needs but balance that with the needs of the company & diplomatically communicate that to both customers & Company

9. Manage, maintain, and ensure the success of the Company blog

Ensure that it becomes a viable tool for communicating to Company’s customers
Encourage, recruit and provide Company & outside “experts” with the resources to blog
Increase awareness of the blog’s potential both within Company and externally and promote the blog

10. Identify & offer solutions for breaking down barriers between customers & corporate. This includes identifying needs that aren’t being met from the customer’s perspective & being involved in the discussion as to whether the needs are valid, can be met and if they will benefit the organization as a whole.

11. Be available to staff across the Company to assist them in identifying & using online tools if it can help them achieve their goals related to their position. Teach, guide, encourage them & provide support if they are new to Web 2.0 tools and culture.

12. Stay up to date on new 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.

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

What would you add or remove? Have the needs changed in a year’s time?

I also have information on salary, ROI, advocates, & some of my favorite topics to write on are branding & networking. My categories on the top right offer a variety of community related topics. And please subscribe to my blog.

This post has been updated & the 2.0 version is here.

10 Responses to “Community Manager Responsibilities & Goals”

daniel martin says:

July 18, 2008 at 10:22 am

Great Post – I am using this with a few other of your and Brogan’s posts to continue refining my personal goals and responsibilities. Keep it up!
Dawn Lacallade says:

July 18, 2008 at 2:00 pm

One more to add: “Real Person” face of the company
1. Ensure that company has a human face to communications and the community strategy
2. Engage with the community to validate the strategies you build
3. Actively respond to and interact with the consistent community members.
Lewis Howes says:

July 22, 2008 at 9:32 am

I am not sure if you mentioned this but I want to emphesize the importance of building a fan base and an email list.

You mention forums, but building an email list is just as important in my mind.

You can build this list for email marketing campaigns and to ask for feedback from your most passionate customers, and this is all helpfull information.

Thanks Connie
Ron McDaniel says:

July 24, 2008 at 7:17 am

I agree that email is as important, but great post.

Staying up to day on tools also does not mean burning time trying every single thing that comes out. You have to be strategic with what new things you try.
Sean McDonald (Dell) says:

August 21, 2008 at 9:34 am

Connie and readers
Great list and it works well for companies with a primary or solo community manger. Have you witnessed or read about companies with many community managers? Here at Dell, we have established our community managers by topics or focus areas (Kara for Small Business, Amie for Channel Partners, Vida for IdeaStorm/Idea managment). If you are interested or know of other community manager models, would love to engage further.
Sean
Axel Schultze says:

October 12, 2008 at 10:13 pm

Excellent list Connie. I take the liberty and add it to the “Community Manager Responsibility” project on the wiki https://communitymanagers.pbwiki.com/ with reference to your blog.
Wolfflow says:

December 7, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Dear Mrs Bensen,

I had the great joy to discover this article. I am a beginner in Community matters, but after had an experience as a volunteer and after a while nominated as a site Maintainer on Drupal.org I got disappointed and a bit frustrated. I felt that the registered members who do not be very confident with the English language and are surely no English native , do not have very much chance to be supported fairly. So I started searching in Internet about possible group of interest that could give me a support in the field of “Code of Conduct” for Community. I honestly did not search very intensively yet but I did not find any interesting Sites. So I found your Blog that with this article gave me the Idea to start from scratch. I allow my self to try to interpret your article and adapt it for building a plan for a personal enterprise. Of course I am quite far from expose my motivations and goals in a manner that may really interest the broad audience on Internet but I will put my efforts in this because I think that it may be the right time for starting something like. I ask you to excuse me if I did not ask you before to use parts of your articles, but you surely will understand that I wanted first to edit something readable and show able for you so you may support me. Of course if you are of the opinion that I did violate or in any way offend your rights, I will prompt delete every thing. Please forgive my bad english and of course any misunderstandings that may arise from my comment. You can see the result of my last day on working on this matter on my site at http://www.adaccs.at/drupal

Kind Regards
Wolf Zirbs
Jono Bacon says:

January 28, 2009 at 6:47 pm

Hi Connie,

Great insight!

I myself am a community manager: I manage the worldwide Ubuntu community that builds the popular Linux Operating System.

I just wanted to let you know that I am working on a new book called the Art Of Community. It will be published by O’Reilly and also available under a free Creative Commons license. You can can find out more at http://www.artofcommunityonline.org

Thanks,

Jono
Twitter: @Scotti20
Birgit Hapfelmeier says:

September 28, 2009 at 10:57 pm

I am a Master student at the QUT in Australia and I study a unit called Enterprise 2.0. We have only few remaining lessons until the end of the semester and I thought Community Manager might be an interesting occupation for some of the students. So I wrote a guestpost at http://www.digitalorgs.net/wp/?p=150 and used some of your thoughts about community management. Thank you very much for this great input.
Ganry48 says:

October 23, 2009 at 6:30 am

Putting results to work in therapy. ,