The job description that I posted in July 08 is another most frequently visited post. Here’s an update:

The Community Manager/Social Media Specialist position is a broad encompassing role.

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).

Responsibilities:

• Creatively and proactively assist customers.
• Serve as the initial point of contact for inbound requests from online company properties & the web at large
• 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
  • frequently asked questions noted
  • identifying user generated content
• Monitor online conversations and participate in them to build brand visibility and thought leadership
• Author blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos and screencasts – whatever media you want to use – to creatively communicate product uses.
• 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 interacting with peers and influencers & attending events.

Qualifications:

• People oriented
• 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.
• Ability to work cross functionally
• You like working hard and thrive on the excitement of a goal oriented team.
• Possess 360 degree leadership skills
• You enjoy learning & are curious!
• Excellent communication skills
• You love to write & enjoy sharing your ideas with others.
• Project oriented & creative skills – You are an independent, creative self-starter who loves running with things while keeping everyone inside and outside the company in the loop.
• Net savvy (addicted to social networking sites & all things Web 2.0)
• 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.
• Potential for working remotely
• This position lends itself to working remotely. The projects and ongoing work can easily be done independently.

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.

One of the most visited articles on my blog is a list that I posted in July of 2008 of Responsibilities and Goals for a Community Manager. This was what I envisioned the role to be in 2007. It has been referenced many times and is linked from Wikipedia’s definition of ‘Online Community Manager’.

Here is a long overdue revision. This forms the framework of much of my speaking & workshops this year.

Enjoy! and your thoughts are always welcome.

Responsibilities & Goals for Community Manager Role

1. Online Marketing, Outreach Strategies & Building Brand Visibility

• Contribute to the development of the Company’s online marketing and outreach strategies.
• Foster a sense of community around the brand at both the brand properties and on the web at large by building relationships.
• Contribute to the Company’s web strategy so that customer communications at all touchpoints are maximized.
• Monitor key online conversations and events to make sure Company is participating effectively & is being represented.
• Participate in social networking sites:
• Claim brand names on social networks by creating profiles to protect the brand.
• Identify & participate in social networks where appropriate for your brand & Company.
• 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
• Promote the blog by increasing awareness of the blog’s potential both within Company and externally

2. Public Relations

• Identify influencers in your industry. Establish relationships, partner & collaborate with them.
• Engage and motivate the Company’s most active online advocates & ensure that their efforts are recognized.
• Respond to crises in a timely and professional manner.
• 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.

3. Customer & Technical Support

• Become one with the product(s). Learn it inside & out.
• Listen to customers and gather their feedback. Thank them for their input.
• Route customer needs to the appropriate department.
• Be responsible for the administration of the Company’s online brand property(s).
• 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

4. Product Development & Quality Assurance

• Communicate customer suggestions and provide ideas for product improvement.
• Participate in discussions on product use.
• Report product defects.

5. Sales & Business Partnerships

• Identify and route potential sales opportunities to the appropriate teams.
• Be proactively strategic in building relationships that will result in mutually advantageous business partnerships.

6. Internal Web 2.0 Ambassador

• Encourage internal communication & provide leadership for cross functional efforts.
• Develop guidelines to ensure that Company’s online outreach is both effective and consistent with the organization’s image and overall communications strategy.
• Increase awareness of web 2.0 tools across the Company and provide training in their use.
• Teach, guide, & encourage those that are new to Web 2.0 tools and culture.
• Be available to staff across the Company to assist them in identifying & using online tools to help them achieve their goals related to their position.
• Advocate for the culture shift that’s required to be a customer-centric company.

7. Reporting

• Participate in creating the online community plan including a budget
• Track and report the following on a regular basis:
• Quantitative measures as outlined by business goals
• Amount of activity at community site(s)
• Qualitative report of consumer responses
• Suggestions & feedback for management & executive levels
• 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.

8. Goal Setting & Professional Development

• 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 emerging technologies.
• Participate in professional networking by interacting with peers and thought leaders in online arenas & attend events.

A friend said on the weekend that they want to leave their job & do consulting work.

My advice – don’t do it. This is not the time.
I tried long term contracting last year and it was a learning experience.

I have 3 outstanding invoices. On one I don’t expect to get paid. That is really disrespectful, but what does one do? It is the reality of being self employed though. The other is that I owe 49% of my income from last year as income taxes and that doesn’t include health insurance or retirement.

What was the question again?

If you have a position in a company seriously consider how you can help them evolve into this new world of interacting with their customers online. There are so many opportunities, but you really need to move within your organization.

I have a fascination with all of the aspects surrounding talent management in the evolving social media roles. My speaking this year is as much on that as it is on the community role.McKinsey Quarterly published an article in the end of December that makes suggestions to companies. I really like the suggestion of:

using cost-cutting efforts as an opportunity to redesign jobs so that they become more engaging for the people undertaking them.A job’s level of responsibility, degree of autonomy, and span of control all contribute to employee satisfaction. Head count reductions provide a powerful incentive to use existing resources better by breaking down silos and increasing the span of control for challenging managerial roles—thus improving the odds of engaging key talent in the redesigned jobs.

Isn’t that a great idea? Redesign jobs – I love it!

There is also the suggestion to strategically retain individuals that offer long term value:

They should assess which types of talent drive business value today and which will drive it three years from now, as well as which talent segments are currently available and which will be in the future—keeping in mind, for example, that new MBAs will be equally available in two years.

So your skills and knowledge of the culture of the company are very much assets that new MBA’s don’t have. Or if you’re like me I don’t have an MBA and didn’t have an MLS when I was at the library. But you know, it was ok.

So before you consider leaping into consulting take a look around your workplace. You should be anticipating your employer’s needs in regard to social media anyway. How can you help them? How can you reinvent yourself to better accommodate your employer?

Recently Jeff Widman wrote an article for TechCrunch on my company’s product, Techrigy SM2, as Google Alerts on Steroids.

This is an entrepreneur’s dream: To be featured on one of the heavily trafficked blogs/sites such as TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. I keep gaining new experiences in the tech world & this is certainly one of them. The article was posted on Thursday afternoon. Our co-founder, Aaron Newman, linked me to it when it was first published & expressed his anticipation as well as trepidation. I didn’t really think much about it.

On Friday morning I awoke to 1,175 emails the next morning. On Twitter someone retweeted my saying that opening my email was like a waterfall after heavy rains. (I could almost hear a roar!).

In 12 hours our number of Freemium users almost doubled. There were a few dicey moments. My friend in Tech Support put up a note on his IM: ‘Completely Unavailable’. They were busy at the home office.

Being featured is a great thing, but there it is also a test of how our service fares under close scrutiny by the masses. One of the main reasons that I don’t read those megablogs on a regular basis is that i don’t like how mean people get in the comments section. (Sometimes the content in the article is even slanted). We did ok and were able to mitigate the criticism with humor.

It took us awhile to recover from being ‘crunched’. We’re excited about the new opportunities that the visibility provided. The readership at TechCrunch is incredibly diverse! It was certainly a test of our infrastructure, but more importantly I was very impressed with how our team pulled together & navigated through an ultra busy event. It really underlines the incredible level of communication & cooperation that we’ve established. And ultimately we’re committed to providing our customer base with the best that we can offer. That’s what we’re building our company on.

I believe that we’re a sum of our experiences. And my present position is certainly an adventure in my journey. I think that what strikes me as most amazing is that my unique role has allowed me to experience these events. It makes me wonder what’s around the next bend? What are some outstanding experiences that you’ve had in this high tech world?