Connie Bensen

How did you celebrate Community Manager Appreciation Day today? #CMAD

After having spent a couple weeks in Europe I had planned to catch up on email and get ready to go to Chicago for this week. That was promptly disrupted by interruptions. My people needing things. Some are colleagues and others are external. But that’s what I thrive on! frequent interruptions.

Welcome to the day in the life of a Community Manager!

I’m very pleased that the Community Manager role has gotten such a good foothold in organizations. We have been working hard to evolve a role that works holistically and cross-functionally. It is customer-centric and provides a unique value.

It is not without it’s challenges and those filling the role deserve to be applauded. The following are some of the realities:

• being a change agent isn’t always easy. Leading a culture shift sometimes can be a burden.
• the web is 24/7 and never shuts down. It’s important that people in this role empower their community and be able to have some down time. Unplugging is essential. It’s a delicate balance that needs to be maintained.
• measuring the ROI of brand awareness is difficult, but it’s become apparent that a lack of brand visibility and positive word of mouth can be quite damaging to a company
• fostering communication is an ongoing task – lowering silos and encouraging teams to work together is always needed
• driving results and working cross functionally across an organization is not for the faint of heart. Some days it takes a lot of energy
• being a customer advocate is gratifying and absolutely necessary. Consumers expect the highest level of customer service and companies need to deliver that.

Here are some statistics of how far reaching the role of Community Manager has become.

If you would like to peruse more in-depth, Jeremiah Owyang is curating the many posts, slide decks and photos that were created for the day.

One of my highlights each year is Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. What I love about it is that it brings together everyone that is passionate about social media. Spending time with peers is invaluable!

Blog World has a special place in my heart because it was the first event where I met all the people who had mentored and supported me as I established an online presence. I had spent over a year interacting with these people on their blogs, Twitter and Facebook and had come to know them very well. But meeting them in person took it all to a new level. Working remotely is ideal because I accomplished more than I could have dreamed of, but you really do need to meet the people behind the blogs. And Blog World Expo offers that opportunity. Each year at Blog World is better than the last one.

This past year I wanted to capture the best on video and share it here. Blog World is all about reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. It’s an experience that can’t be duplicated anywhere else.

This video features Deb Ng who organized Blog World this past year. She was a very busy lady as she worked to make sure everything went smoothly. Ingrid Tappin is a new friend that I met at lunch. She is from Amsterdam and I will reconnect with her when I’m there in January. Liz Strauss talks about the difference between drive and passion. Shashi Bellamkonda is an old friend that asked many questions about the Community Manager role back in 2007. He took my suggestions and implemented them at Network Solutions. In 2008 he invited me to work with him. That’s a case of: ‘What goes around comes around’ in the most positive sense! And finally, the Betsy’s … Betsy Weber is the amazing community person at Techsmith. And Betsy Aoki manages social media for Bing.

Every month we have a webinar. Last month my topic was Best Practices for Monitoring Social Media. You can view the past recordings here.

This month, my colleague, Marcus Tewksbury has the stage with ‘How to Implement a Social Media Strategy’.

Marcus will be talking about how to add social media channels to your lead generation efforts. He will also be providing ideas on how social media marketing can be integrated in with traditional marketing efforts such as email marketing, PPC campaigns, and search. The webinar is on Thursday, December 17th 10:00am Central / 16.00 UK

Register here

Here’s a sneak peak on what he’ll be presenting.

It’s a busy time of year! Next week I’ll be in San Francisco for two events. I’m doing a 3 hour workshop at Enterprise 2.0 on Frameworks for utilizing social media. The diagram in my last blog post outlines the potential that a community manager offers an organization.

I will share how to use social media to: