Connie Bensen

I was happy about the Wikipedia entry for Online Community Manager because awhile ago someone posted links to a couple of my blog posts as ’suggested links’.  I was going to blog about it this week.

But today I found this note there with the proposal to delete the entry for Online Community Manager due to lack of Original Research.

So to prevent that I reworked the article & replaced what was there with Jeremiah’s 4 Tenets of Community Managers. That seems appropriate as Original Research, don’t you think? Please add your ideas. It’s Wikipedia.

But let’s not be deleted, ok? I mean let’s not let the entry be deleted!

Today one of my ongoing searches on community brought Chris Pirillo’s Geek Community Building project to my attention. I think we need to take notice. And you’ll probably enjoy yourself at the same time!

What makes his new community so outstanding? He started it four days ago & has over 2800 members. And he is inviting people to come, join & create groups within his community. Although as you browse the following links, you’ll realize that created new issues.   One thing I noted & really appreciate is that Chris likes good grammar & spelling.

He has some great ideas here. The videos have more information in addition to the text. (I really appreciate having both, because I don’t watch videos much.)

• How to Build an Internet Community

• What Information Should You Put in a Social Profile?
• What’s the Best Way to Write a Forum or Blog Post?
• How Can You be an Awesome Commenter?
• Do You Need Community Group Leader Tips?
• User Generated Contentedness

And join the community if you want to watch it grow. I’m hoping to interview Chris & find out more about this project. But in the meantime I just joined it to experience it.

Finally, voyeurism has went to a whole new level! Chris has live video streaming from his home office space 24/7. Twitter makes it easy to keep up with where people are at & where they’re going, but I’m not sure that I would be comfortable with a video going all the time. I’ve had it open tonite while I browsed the links above & Chris stopped in to check on something. Someone was with him & they talked about the location of a monitor. Very trippy, but I suppose if you get used to it…

Annual performance reviews are a necessity and a part of every organization. If they’re not, then you really should make it so. My experience in a leadership role found me doing 25 each year. At first it was a challenge to provide constructive feedback to my staff & goal setting was even harder. After awhile the goal setting became my favorite part & the feedback was easier because I had my employees provide their accomplishments. So if you’re a community manager or supervising one I hope that you find this helpful.

Timeframe

The online world is changing so quickly that I think the traditional 6 month orientation & annual performance review should be shifted to a 3 month orientation & 6 month review. If that mixes up HR too much then do the 3 month intervals informally.

Performance Evaluation

As a Community Manager (or in any position really) keep track of your wins. Once a month take some time to log what’s went well & what didn’t. If you provide this to your supervisor it will provide you both with topics to discuss. In a perfect world there is ongoing communication & job coaching, but that doesn’t necessarily always happen. This should prevent surprises from either side.

Ideally if you’re submitting a monthly report of stat’s with feedback on what’s going well & suggestions of ideas then those reports would be excellent talking points.

Goal Setting

The Community Manager role is rarely listed as supervisory but it really is. You’re leading a whole community (both externally & internally). This means that if you’re truly engaged in your position then you should be setting goals on an ongoing basis and adjusting them as needed. I see that expectation in the job descriptions all the time. The type of person that fits this role is also very self motivated.

So goal setting should be a concerted effort with your supervisor. It is your job so take responsiblity for it’s direction. As a community manager you can influence your direction by providing your goals & then the goal setting can be a discussion of how they fit into the company’s mission.

I’m thinking that some are going to suggest that I’m a bit idealistic. I came to enjoy the process with my staff. Goals are so important. Without them how will improvements happen? Change is necessary so you may as well be a part of it or it’ll happen around you.

A quick note about the best advice given to me by my Director after my first year in a supervisory/leadership role. She said, "Choose the two activities that are the least successful & drop them." Every once in awhile I need to remind myself of that. My supervisors generally don’t have the problem of needing to find work for me, it’s more of helping me deal with the frustration of my self-inflicted "too much to do". So I hope that helps if you’re an over-achiever. I think it’s fairly typical of people in the community manager role. So that puts a totally different twist on goal setting, doesn’t it?

What are your thoughts on performance reviews & goal setting? Is it something that you find helpful? What’s your best advice? I’d love to hear it!

Last weekend’s blog reading brought me to this post. Someone has a new role as a community manager. That’s exciting! And he also asked some questions.

I’m cool with this new role and loving the challenge but I’m having a hard time learning how to quantify my efforts and set goals. I’m sure I can come up with some simple goals to start such as:

• # tweets per month
• # blogs per week
• # comments on other blogs/communities per week
• increase site traffic to # by some date

These are goals I can set and I know I can hit, but what about goals for internal efforts?

Those are the ones I want to determine but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.
Should my internal goals be on getting employees to blog? to answer questions in the industry? Or should they be focused on more internal culture building?

Those are some great questions! I think that too often people assume that there is nothing to do internally. They do their job with the customers externally & all is well.

There is so much that can be done internally. And if it’s done well it will make the community manager role that much more effective.

Here are my suggestions for goals in regard to working internally:

• meet with managers from cust. service, marketing, dev’t, qa, etc
• talk about what your plans are & ask if they have ideas & questions?
• encourage an open dialogue in the future
• as you identify issues (or have) – suggest & establish procedures
• informally survey your co-workers to find out what their knowledge is of social media tools & how you’re using them
• share your ideas & be a proponent for your own job internally
• dispel their wondering about what you really do
• encourage them to share their ideas
• help establish internal communication efforts
• does your organization have a collaborate space?
• do they have an intranet? how can that be improved?
• join efforts that are cross-functional
• identify colleagues that are interested in blogging & your social media efforts
• invite them to guest blog
• teach them about your tools (Twitter, blogging, etc)

So just as much as their are many PR activities that can be done in the community & beyond, treat your internal staff as a community too. Identify what their needs are & then address them. The return is that management will support your efforts. You’ll also have greater job satisfaction because then the position has truly become a team effort.

What would your goals be internally?