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?

A month ago I received an email from someone asking where to find a community manager. Look at the posting they did up!

Note the location – Anywhere in the World! & the option to telecommute!

The trips to the home office would be great too! I had a lovely time in London last year.

Is this job for you? The biggest question is does the topic fit your expertise & passion?

The community manager role is quickly gaining acceptance. For companies that are doing the majority of their business online, it’s a role that’s imperative to their success. For larger enterprises the term, social media strategist, is frequently used.

It’s time to look into the future. The adoption rate for community building is gaining momentum. Some companies that have a very successful community manager are wondering how to scale the community building role with a team of people.

There are many companies that are empowering their employees to utilize social media to build community. And they range in size from start ups all the way to Fortune 500. I foresee the role of Chief Community Officer.

When I was rewriting my Goals & Responsibilities post from 2008 I removed some of the language. But for the CCO position, these should be included in the role:

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 (and engage with customers & identify potential markets).

Why do I feel that this position should be at this level?

Community building is going to become an integral part of operations. If the role is implemented across the organization it offers the opportunity to contribute to marketing, customer service, product development, etc. The question I hear so often is, Who should the community person report to? And a bit more troubling is that it’s a leadership role that requires a lot of responsibility & commitment, but not recognized as a management position.

When I was doing some research for this post I found a white paper by Chuck Brymer, CEO of DDB Worldwide. He suggests that a CCO is the new marketing role. He suggests moving from the 4 P’s (product, price, place & promotion) to the 3 C’s (conviction, collaboration & creativity). His paper is definitely worth reading. I like how he talks about the need for creative leadership to develop more interactive relationships with consumers.

In this world a Chief Community Officer ideally oversees the relationship between brands and their communities, not just in the narrow confines of how a consumer interacts with a product at point of purchase, but also in how consumers interact with each other…A Chief Community Officer implicitly understands how to align all areas of marketing to influence consumers and engage their communities around brands.

He outlines 4 areas that the CCO would be responsible for:

1. Build community around the brand using multiple channels & ensure that the organization is living its message

2. Know the community’s wants, needs & lifestyle & use that data for marketing efforts

3. Monitor, respond & interact with the community to build relationships

4. Facilitating & nurturing an environment that empowers the community to uplift the brand.

The Future is Now

It’s an exciting time for community builders. My speaking & workshops this year focus on the role, implementation of it & the strategy. I look forward to discussing these ideas at New Comm  Forum, Community 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0! (More info on the speaking tab on my site) This past week I joined two panels in the Twin Cities focused on community building. It’s exciting to hear people discussing & exploring the concept.

Deb Schultz uses this phrase that perfectly envelopes the concept of a CCO: Think Community Manager meets Senior Executive.

There are already a few with the title:

• Bill Johnston, Forum One Network’s Chief Community Officer.
• Amy Muller, Chief Community Officer at Get Satisfaction.
• StartUpNation has Joel Welsh as their Chief Community Officer.
• Douglas Atkin, Meetup

Do you have what it takes to be a Chief Community Officer?

You can apply to be the CCO at Autism Speaks.

(If you talk with them, gently explain why ‘exploit’ isn’t a good choice…)

Exploiting the new media of social and community networking in the not-for-profit sector

What are your thoughts?

(Image made with free 3 modeling program)

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.

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.

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!

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!

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?

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:

1. Dive in and create profiles and making posts
2. Increase awareness of the use of web 2.0 tools across the Company.
3. 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:

1. Engage and motivate Company’s most active online advocates & ensure that their efforts are recognized.
2. Maximize customer communication at all touch points – web strategy
3. Encourage internal communication & embracement of customer principles
4. 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.

1. Provide leadership to motivate & maximize the impact of online community’s efforts
2. Encourage WOM: teach them how to start the conversation & sustain it
3. Establish the goals, identify objectives & timeline
4. Break down the goal into tasks, deadlines & manage the projects to meet the goal.
5. 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

1. Ensure that a positive environment is maintained that reflects Company’s commitment to excellent customer service.
2. Work closely with Company’s IT manager to ensure that the goals of the forum are met.
3. Monitor online forums, identify potential problems & issues & promptly communicate them to the IT Manager as appropriate
4. Practice excellent judgement in communicating with customers about potentially controversial topics.
5. 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

1. Ensure that it becomes a viable tool for communicating to Company’s customers
2. Encourage, recruit and provide Company & outside “experts” with the resources to blog
3. 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.

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
  • 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.

What have I forgotten?

I also have a post on specific tasks/goals & 2 other posts about job hunting

Jake McKee, Community Guy has a number of articles on hiring & finding a job.