People have been avidly interested in pursuing this type of role and want to know how they can gain the necessary skills. Back in June of 2008 I offered 2 training programs to meet that need. It went great until I got sucked into the tech startup world and social media monitoring. Since then I have continued to mentor and scale the reach here through my blog.

Periodically people would request my courses when they came across the old posts referencing training. I always felt bad when I had to explain that my day job was busier than busy. So, I’m really pleased to see that WOMMA and the The Community Roundtable are offering training courses that are specific to Community Management (in contrast to Social Media in general) and they are created by credible people in the industry. Earlier this week Jeremiah Owyang covered the pro’s and con’s of the certification aspect of the Community Manager Training courses.

These courses will:

• fast track your knowledge base on the expectations of community management
• open your eyes to aspects that you didn’t realize existed and cause you to have even more questions
• be excellent for those of you that have been assigned or are spending a portion of your time in this new role

They probably won’t:

• make it easier to get a job (employers are getting 100’s of app’s per position) or more pay
• ramp a company’s adoption of social media (ie: embrace the value of community & related culture shift)
• replace the value of volunteering and showing leadership in an online community and the related experience.

If you’re interested in exploring community management and strategy these courses are a good place to gain the skills and an overview.

I would highly recommend connecting with like-minded people in one of the following communities:

• Facebook group Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelist

An active group that has new people joining everyday. There is a doc with social media jobs there.

• Community BackChannel

Membership is free, but there is a process for requesting it.

• CommunityAdmins.com

These active forums are a part of Patrick O’Keefe’s iFroggy network. Patrick is the author of Managing Online Forums.

• Community RoundTable

Jim Storer & Rachel Happe are the founders of this peer network. They have built a very active community that is based on resources, research and regular activities.

Seeking a job? Check out this Facebook group of Social Media Jobs

If you’re a practicing Community Manager, what resources have you found the most helpful?

Over the past few weeks we have been in the process of hiring community managers. Here are some tips for those seeking this type of role.

Resume

• Your experience needs to be relevant to the position (it needs to be obvious)
• Include metrics for the impact that you had in previous positions

For example:

• Increased sales by X %
• Increased the community by X %
• Increased participation in the community by X %

Tip: Do not represent consulting as if you were an employee

Your Social Presence

• Google your name: What online presence do you have?
• LinkedIn – Some key aspects:

Do you have a complete profile that is public?

Do you have a number of references from previous employers?

Have you written references for others?

• Twitter presence – quality of tweets and a balance of followers to following

Preparation for the Interview

Research the company that you’re interviewing with. What talking points can you take with to your interview?

Research the person that you will be interviewing with. Do they have a personal blog or are on Twitter? That insight provides great conversation starters.

If your LinkedIn profile set to show  your activity, then the interviewer will see that you’ve viewed their profile.

All of the above interactions happen before the interview ever happens. They are all items that can be used to qualify candidates. If you’re applying for a social media role, take some time to ensure that your application stands out from the crowd.

If you’ve recently hired for a social media position, what additional tips would you give?

The online community manager position has become mainstream. Many have referenced my outline for the Responsibilities and Goals for a Community Manager. I have been evolving that definition since 2007 and it remains my most read post. But the concept of having one person doing all things social is limiting.

Companies are taking community to a new level by empowering staff. Many brands are realizing that their social media strategy requires an internal position to guide and champion it. The Community Strategy position provides organizations with a role that works holistically and cross-functionally in ensuring that all departments are leveraging social media in a way that meets their team objectives.

Definition of Community

Many consider community in a very limited way. My definition is very broad and encompasses everyone that is interacting from both the company standpoint and the public.

• Internal Community – All corporate stakeholders including staff, management, executives, board members and shareholders.
• External Community – Brand owned properties; Corporate presences on social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn); Social channels (blogs, Wikipedia entries, forums, Nings, Google & Yahoo groups, YouTube, Flickr); Mainstream media that allow comments; Ratings and review sites (Amazon, TripAdvisor, etc)
• Anyone searching for information

The last one is key. You want to be found by everyone needing your products and resources. Community building creates invaluable organic SEO.

Meeting Business Objectives

The role can’t be justified without having goals and metrics associated with it. Every organization has some form of ‘sales’. Even non-profits have some type of conversion needed. Those could range from increasing the number of donations, the number of volunteers, and brand visibility.

The community strategy role will work towards:

• defining a plan to empower staff
• review all customer touchpoints and ensure frictionless engagement
• review all departments and provide recommendations and training on ways that teams can utilize social to meet their objectives

The diagram below has the sales funnel on it’s side and shows how community building assists in moving customers through the sales funnel over time. Social channels can be used to build brand awareness and enable the conversion. Once the sales is made customer service is of utmost importance. There is a new opportunity to cross sell & up sell. Crowdsourcing the social web will provide feedback for product development.

The ROI of social media!

Over time the following benefits will be realized.

• Increased word of mouth means that consumers are sharing the marketing messages. This results in a reduced need for PR, marketing & advertising spend. Acquisition costs are lower.
• Higher quality leads that have a higher percentage of converting. Warm leads mean a savings on cold calling
• Providing excellent customer service in the channels where consumers are at means a lower abandonment rate of products and the brand and a much higher loyalty.
• Overall a shorter sales cycle can be realized and a longer customer life cycle.
• Product development costs can be reduced by utilizing feedback from the social web.
• Creating products that consumers WANT will mean increased sales and demand.

Challenges for integrating community building into a company’s culture

Startups have the advantage of not having an established culture. The people are passionate and very agile. It is easy to create a team approach with a focus on content marketing and connecting directly with the customer

Existing organizations have a much bigger challenge. Community management is almost an intervention. In order to achieve the objective of applying social media across the enterprise and create a social business, one needs to identify the barriers, encourage cross-functional collaboration, and assess incentivization in order to reverse engineer the problems to find solutions,

It’s important to have executive buy in along with support from management. This role needs to be empowered to provide training, identify problems and work with front line staff.

The larger the organization the more challenging it is to shift content from the intranet to be public facing. The business of the future will have the majority of it’s content not only public facing but also generated by consumers. Present day intranets are largely siloed which creates challenges for a community strategist.

The web has removed the barriers of geography but this creates a challenge for global companies. Many are geography based and teams need to revise how they operate. Listeningn to the social web is also challenging because of geography and languages.

What have I forgotten? What else do you need to sell this position to your executives?

It seems that the larger the organization, the bigger the challenge. Small businesses and start-ups understand the value of having a community manager. In the last few years it is in vogue to add the position. And if the brand has a product support site, then the role is defined as a forum moderator. Oh how narrow that view is!

Let’s start with a definition for Community Manager:

The person in an organization that is the social media specialist and works cross-functionally and holistically to ensure that the business objectives in regard to social media are met. The primary objective is to serve as a translator between customers and prospects and the company and vice versa.

And what is the definition of their community? It depends on what the objectives are. But in general:

A community manager needs to support customers, prospects and colleagues. The three constituents have very different needs. Customers require excellent service and appreciation shown for their support of the brand. Prospects require information about the products and services that the company offers. Both will appreciate from information about additional services that will benefit them. And colleagues need training and support in best practices for utilizing social media to meet the objectives of their roles.

Both of those definitions are open to discussion. But do executives understand the term ‘community’ and ‘community manager’? Should they? or should we be speaking in their language?  

Should the role of community manager include the words Social Media Specialist? Would that better state what a community manager does?

Are we hurting ourselves by using words that traditional organizations aren’t familiar with? Is it arrogant to expect them to learn our vocabulary? Is it seen as vogue and trendy? or should we be speaking in terms of their business objectives? Will we get more respect if we do so?

This diagram summarizes what I have learned over the past year about how my role as a Community Manager influences the sales funnel. We are in agreement that social media efforts need to be measured. I will contend that the role of community manager or social media specialist requires you to show how you contribute to your organization’s business objectives in order to justify your presence (and paycheck).

I created the diagram to help us as practitioners describe our position and influence in the sales funnel. The concepts apply to B2B sales as much as to B2C. Too often I think that Community Managers are viewed as caretakers of forums and having the voice of the company. I will argue that it is so much more.

The Community Manager influences the sales funnel in a three dimensional way. We are everywhere: before consumers enter the sales funnel, assisting them as they move through it, holding their hand as they convert, and providing ongoing service after the purchase.

Building Brand Awareness before consumers enter the sales funnel:

This is where everyone sees Community Managers interacting with everyone. They make social media marketing look easy while they build brand & positive PR. They truly are the voice of the company as they deal with the positive as well as the negative. And they’re at events making things happen!

Assisting with the Conversion as people move toward the purchase decision:

A Community Manager is the industry expert. They have in-depth knowledge of the products and their application. And most importantly they’re very connected with the customers. Community Managers can be the Salesperson’s best friend when they need some extra assistance for the challenging questions. A Community Manager can also help with customer support issues both before and after the sale. This builds trust and confidence about the product/brand. If people know they’ll get good service they’re much more likely to purchase.

CrossSelling and UpSelling:

Our culture requires that we provide excellent customer service after the sale. So that’s considered to be assumed. The cone gets larger for a specific reason. Community Manager’s have many opportunities to educate customers about new features, additional products and provide resources. Many customers appreciate hearing about additional products or higher levels of service. It’s easy to work hand in hand with sales to provide for customer’s needs.

Product Improvements:

The opportunity to influence product development is a very important aspect of the Community Manager’s role. Working directly with the customers and sales provides much feedback as to what’s working, what’s not & ideas for improvement. As a Community Manager interacts with thought leaders and others involved in the industry they are well prepared to advise the executive level. And the final area is staff training & HR. A Community Manager needs a team. HR has the ability to empower the organization so that they can interact with customers. This will require staff training and the Community Manager to lead that & be the go-to person.

This is not to say that we need to forget social media best practices and push our message. I believe that Community Managers need to work in synch with Sales and provide assistance as needed. My experience has been that we had so much to teach each other. Once we hit our stride and realized how the two roles complemented each other we were able to run with it.

What are your thoughts? Does this help justify a Community Manager/Social Media Specialist in your business?

If you’re interested in reading more:

Responsibilities & Goals of the Community Manager Role

How We Grew Our Startup 840% in a Year

Community Manager Responsibilities and Goals

Updated Community Manager Job Description

And I speak about the role from both the employee and employer’s perspectives. So over the past year I’ve been sourcing jobs. Recently people have been asking that I write more. I only have so many hours in a day, so I decided to shift the job sourcing out of my inbox and let it be self serving.

My sister has created a simple job board that allows you to post your information if you’re seeking a job in social media and also post a job if you’re hiring.

To access it, you’ll need to click on Job Listings and register the first time using the Join button.

It’s free and I hope that you’ll make a connection with the many that cruise thru my site. I only ask that your postings be social media related.

I’ve said many times that people should: “Love what you do and do what you love”. So I hope this resource will help you achieve that goal.

If I can work remotely from rural Minnesota and make a difference, then you can too. If you know what unique values you provide, then you too can do so similarly. It’s just a matter of connecting with the right opportunity.

Other job boards:

Jake McKee

Jeremiah Owyang

• product marketing
• brand building
• product development
• training (team & customers)
• quality assurance
• customer service
• new business development
• sales (high level augmentation)
• operations

My vision is that the Community Manager should work cross functionally. As you can see, Aaron Newman, CEO of Techrigy, gave me much freedom in that regard. Our startup grew so fast (over 800% in 10 months) and I enjoyed taking the lead in scaling and putting processes into place as we needed them.

Now it is time to evolve my new role within Alterian. This past week I was introduced to people in many departments. It felt a bit like I was working cross functionally across two companies! Tomorrow I will travel to the UK to meet the various teams and start planning the integration.

I was asked to choose a title and they encouraged me to be creative. Does it matter? Well it does to me when I have to explain what’s on my business card. My friend & previous employer, Shashi Bellamkonda chose ‘Social Media Swami’. That’s a great conversation starter! And if you know @ShashiB, you know that it totally suits him!

I almost chose Director of Community Strategy and Choreography. Choreographer provides a nice visual of one leading a dance. But I wondered if it was too abstract?

So I went with ‘Director of Community Strategy and Architecture’. The ‘Community Strategy’ aligns with my personal brand. I think that that’s important. I’ve invested a lot in that & it’s equated with Connie Bensen.

I will put ‘Community Strategist and Architect’ on my business cards. Architect is a nice solid word for community builder. You know how I dislike the term Community Manager. I’m continually building community within my organization and without. Community Architect also encompasses the work that I’ll be continuing with SM2 as a product and my involvement in the social media industry. I’ll also be contributing to the integration of SM2 into Alterian’s products.

Is your title representative of what you do? Does it matter? What if you could choose one? What would best suit your philosophy and attitude?

Last week we announced that our Techrigy family had been adopted (acquired) by Alterian, a company with analytical products for marketers. They intend to bring SM2 into the mainstream. It’s time for SM2 to come of age. Alterian’s three hundred strong has assumed our vision and will take it to the next level!

Before the announcement some of Alterian’s executives joined us at the home office to share their enthusiasm and vision for bringing us into their company. David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian summarized it best by saying that he wants to revolutionize marketing. If you’ve used a social media monitoring tool you know the power of bringing in online conversations and viewing the information in a variety of ways. There’s a learning curve but that’s part of what I enjoy so much about my job! There’s also a sense of unknown being on the leading edge. We’re going down a road that hasn’t been mapped yet!

Friends have asked me a number of questions & it’s easier to answer them here:

1. Will I have to relocate?

No! Alterian is a global company with people living where they live. When I was asked how I felt about travel, I said, “We have airports!”. I didn’t confess to not having iPhone access, but they use Blackberry’s. I am now connected with a global Tour! And I now have lots of motherships to visit.

• Techrigy headquarters will remain in Rochester, NY
• UK offices in Bristol & Newbury (I’m traveling there next week! )
• US office in Chicago – a one flight hop for me (I’ll be there last week of August)
• and they also have other US offices

2. Why did they choose Techrigy?

Alterian researched many companies and chose SM2 for a number of reasons:

• similar corporate culture (I love this one! more coming on this topic)
• similar selling geographies & use of partner channels
• similar approach to software innovation

And I must say I am so excited & pleased about the first & third. I’ve written about our culture at Techrigy & my contributions to that. And in the third case I’ve worked closely with customers to evolve SM2 to their needs. So I’m really proud of Techrigy’s being chosen & believe that it underlines the value of having a community manager. I’m also excited to join Alterian as we continue to evolve SM2!

3. Why did Techrigy choose to be acquired by Alterian?

We have built our brand and reputation on our technology & excellent customer service. We see a lot of potential in joining with Alterian’s sales channels & partners. Together we can do more and continue to offer a leading social media monitoring product as well as integrate it with Alterian’s products.

Mike Talbot, CTO at Alterian summarized it in his tweet last week:

4. What will my role be?

I wore a few hats at Techrigy (and no I can’t say that without smiling). My concern in being adopted by a new company was that I would have to ‘sell’ the use of social media. It’s apparent that I shouldn’t have been concerned at all! Everyone is very enthusiastic about getting involved in utilizing SM2 and social media so I have a new challenge of how to transition a B2B company into online engagement. The VP of Marketing has agreed that I can blog this journey, so you’ll get to learn along with us. How’s that for transparency?! I’m impressed that they not only want to lead the revolution in marketing, but also walk the talk. So we’ll do that! Stay tuned …

5.  How will this affect our customers?

As mentioned previously, our customers are our number one priority. There are going to be so many benefits! We are already offering more resources:

• http://training.techrigy.com Check out the downloadable workbook! It rocks!!
• Webinars on SM2 starting next week – come see what it’s all about
• Faster evolution of the product to meet customer’s needs

So our Techrigy SM2 is growing up! And I’ll be taking the community building strategy that has been working well at Techrigy and applying it at a corporate level. I always enjoy the  challenge of taking things to a new level!

What questions do you have?

I think that the community manager role is like parenting. Parenting has it’s challenges and there are no specific instructions. Each family has it’s own culture, routines, traditions and expectations. As a parent you wonder about things. My daughter is 20 and I’ve went thru many phases.

Here are the parallels that I see.

• a continual worry – are you doing the right thing by everyone?
• are you treating everyone fairly & not showing favoritism?
• are you encouraging everyone to spend time together & participate?
• are you giving the community space to grow independently?
• are you empowering them to be individuals? yet encouraging them to learn together?
• are you ensuring a happy, safe environment for everyone to participate in?
• are you introducing new ideas and encouraging the community to grow, thrive and contribute to it’s own success?

And I view my colleagues as my work family. And that’s just as important as the community/customers.

• are you encouraging your team to learn new things about social media?
• do you encourage them to work cross functionally and build on each other’s knowledge, share new ideas & grow the company together?
• are you sensitive to to other’s needs and support your colleagues when they need it?
• do you work to identify & break down barriers in a constructive way?
• are you introducing innovative ideas that better your workplace?

I’m sure that you can think of more! And if it sounds like the position is part social worker, psychologist and parent there’s probably a reason for that! Those of us that thrive on this type of work enjoy the challenges of working with people, leading, teaching and empowering others.

Do you agree with my analogy?

I have one of these pins. They gave them out at a library conference. I kept mine on a bulletin board in my office. It suited me!

Community means relationships and that’s as much with coworkers as it is with customers. Over the years I have learned some easy ways to initiate change.

1. If you can make a difference – do it! People will appreciate your initiative.

2. Don’t just complain about an issue, offer solution(s). You’ll be amazed at how quickly things will be resolved if you do some homework and offer the solution. (As a bonus your ideas will either be used or kick off the discussion).

3. Plant seeds of your ideas and grow them. If you have an idea, do some research and present it. Sometimes the adoption of an idea depends on the amount of change & how well you can sell your idea. After working with two library boards I realized quickly that it sometimes took many months to convince my stakeholders of the importance of the idea. This was a valuable time that allowed me to consider it from many angles and create a more complete project. It was always sweet to see it come to life.

How do you effect change at your organization? I’d love to hear your tips & tricks.