Connie Bensen

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?

I have come to realize that as community managers may be doing ourselves a disservice by choosing that title. We are all in agreement that we’re not managing anyone. But do organizations understand the term ‘Community’?

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

My most frequently read posts are:

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:

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