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.

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!

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?