I got a note via the blog the other day from a very nice woman wanting to know if she had the experience to be a community manager. She’s been a fundraiser for the last 10 years, and has an interest in the social media sphere.
I’ve got another friend that works in sales, and she wants to be a community manager, too.
The “how do I get to be a community manager” question comes up often. Really often. It’s one of those jobs that lots of people think they want. Many of them cite the relationships as what they love, the people, the connections, the ability to focus on that as part of their job.
Here’s what I tell them.
You Already Have a Community
If you’re in sales or marketing, you have a community of customers and prospects. If you’re a fundraiser, you have a community of donors. If you’re a teacher, you have a community of students. If you’re a bartender, you’ve got a community of patrons. If you’re a real estate professional, you have a community of home buyers.
See where I’m headed?
Community management isn’t just the ability to sling Facebook status updates. In fact, I’d argue that’s the last thing it is.
If you want to show that you have the chops to build, cultivate, and sustain communities of people online and build relationships among them, I challenge you to look hard at the work you’re already doing. Forget about the means – whether it’s social events or golf outings or tech forums – and consider where the people and relationships fit into your existing picture.
If you’ve been good at it before, you can be good at it in a new context. In fact, if you’re good at what you do now, you’re probably already doing it.
(Oh, and if you’ve never much been focused on the people part of your work to start with, no shiny job title is going to fix that for you, I’m afraid.)
This Isn’t That Different
If you – we – keep looking at community management as this alien life form that we’ve never seen before, it’s going to continue to struggle for credibility and substance in the business world.
If, however, we can do a better job of seeing the human side of all of the jobs we already do, we might not only be able to better translate the importance of building social frameworks in a business sense, but we’ll better empower the careers of people who have long been putting relationships at the center of what they do.
That goes for businesses, too. Leadership folks? You’ve had community people in your organization for years. You’ve just given them different titles. And many of them aren’t in management. Don’t get too stuck on inventing a new job to address the tech when it’s the human skills you need to nurture.
This isn’t really magic. It’s not even new. It’s a bunch of age-old ideas clad in shiny new clothes.
Our Job Is To Interpret
I believe in the value of community roles as they exist today, mostly because they help call attention to the need for a return to human values in business. Sort of like giving the problem a name so we can address its existence in the first place.
But I also believe our job is to reach back into what we’ve always known about relationships and business and bring that forward to the context of today. We need to use our collective renewed focus on “community” to have a discussion about what we’re already doing that fits that mold, and what we’re doing that works against it.
As individuals, we can translate community values into each of our jobs, no matter what our titles. In fact, if we’re doing our jobs right, we shouldn’t need separate community manager roles forever. That’s where I think things really start to change. But it takes each of us to recognize that what we’re good at isn’t something that’s just arrived in the last couple of years with the emergence of social networks.
We know how this is done. What it really takes. How connections between people win. What community is, does, is made of and why it’s good for business.
That community manager? The one you think you’d like to be?
That’d be you. Right over there.
Wow. I hadnt thought of it in that way before. Community manager always seemed a position for someone who was good with people, someone truly charismatic enough and organized enough be able to work with people.
But even though you say we all could share the burden of community manager (in a way), there are people with varying degrees of competence when it comes to dealing with people. It is quite likely that those who are better with people will become community managers after a time, but with more aid from those who arent as good socially, i guess. Am I rambling?
You note that this concept is nothing new but as things stand, there’s certainly no harm in revisiting it, that’s for sure. I’ve engaged in environments where the idea of community is nurtured and cultivated and in others where the idea of community falls so low on the totem pole that it’s in the dirt. It’s impossible to ignore the difference between these types of environments once you’ve seen how much more can be accomplished within en empowered community setting.
I definitely agree with what Seji is saying – some people are certainly more suited to take the community manager lead, be it as a official position or simply because that’s the type of people they are. Still, I also believe that we are all capable and can benefit from stepping up to the plate.
Thanks for the post, Amber!
I agree in theory, but my only caveat is that there are people who have been successful for years in an old style of business, who work in a style that doesn’t respect community. The people with enough understanding to ask if they can be a community manager have likely been successful because they appreciate the values of community and conversation, but I’m more concerned about the people who just want the shiny title and who think it’s all about channel or technology, not conversation and respect.
Superb post!! Especially like the quote “they help call attention to the need for a return to human values in business”. Thank you.
It’s awesome to open peoples’ eyes to the fact that community management is happening all around them in real life (by the way, I think the internet is real life too). However, when you talk to those people with bright shiny faces, dreaming of the cool community manager job (they probably already bought their smart-girl glasses)—-you need to be sure they’ve got some reality juice in there too. Community management is an often tough, thankless, and demanding job. Along with the great days when everyone is communicating and supporting each other, there will be days when they want you to walk the plank, tell you that “you suck,” and generally make your life crazy. And as you illustrated, those same things happen in your non-internet community too!
Amber, as someone who is aspiring to become a professional community manager, I found this exceedingly helpful: thank you!
This is particularly true for association staff who have always nurtured and managed member communities. But the frustrating thing is — association leadership doesn’t always see the need to devote staff time and resources to nurturing and managing their existing online communities, for example, appropriate salaries or people to do the work. It seems like a no-brainer but the connection isn’t always made. I bet your post will be making the rounds with association tweeps!
Here’s the thing guys.
Yes, there are plenty of businesses that don’t “get” why community is important.
Do you really think adding someone with that title is going to change the culture that underpins that problem?
The businesses who understand the value of personal relationships will adapt to this, and have already. The sticky point – and why I mention that community titles are okay for now – is introducing the idea to businesses who don’t. If leadership doesn’t get why cultivating their customer and membership communities is valuable, THAT is where we have to start. They don’t need community managers. They need culture change.
Do you think that with the development (and adoption and potential overreliance) of the technology that is seen as the only purview of the CM, we might be watching the culture start to shift on its own? Or do you think that once people get good at paying lip service to tech, they want to will return to things the way they were and community-oriented people will have to keep fighting?
I agree, and it’s true with the use of social media in business in general. A change in the mindset of companies/brands is needed in order to maximize the cultural change and put “people” at the center of these new media.
Great post. A reminder to those who may not be full-time community manager – continue to educate yourself through involvement in your personal communities (meetups, linkedin groups, forums that you already manage just for yourself).
I love your posts. They’re refreshing and logical. I just wish more business people would think the same way. Sometimes its an uphill battle attempting culture change. Worth it though.
Thanks for the post, Amber.
With the rise of new media, businesses are beginning to understand that emphasizing their human side can be very valuable. I applaud your conviction that we should empower the careers of people who have long been putting relationships at the center of what they do. However, I have to agree with Seigi and Sara that there are varying degrees of competence when it comes to dealing with people. Revealing a businesses’ human side is as dangerous as it is valuable and therefore a huge responsibility of community management is being able to appropriately deal with crisis. If a damaging statement is made about a brand, it is vital that the business has a well thought out response. This is why it is important to assign the responsibility of community management to one person, or a small team of people who work together to ensure just one clear response is delivered. As businesses are only just beginning to enter the world of new media and community engagement, I think that assigning this role to experienced community managers is still very important. What are your thoughts?
Here’s the reality, Alexandra.
Yep, some people are better with people than others. That’s always been so. That’s why some people are teachers, and some are analysts that never come out of their office.
But today – online – the community and your customers don’t care what your title is. Thought out response or not, your employees are all in marketing. They’re all in customer service. They’re all in community management. If we can’t learn to equip as many people as possible in our businesses to represent our brands, we’re doomed to repeat the same decades of stifled, bottlenecked (and untrustworthy) communication we’ve delivered from a corporate voice for ages.
We have to change that. So while I agree that “experience” is needed, it’s the *kind* of experience – one that represents a new mindset, not the old – that matters and can effectively change a company from the inside, out. And I don’t think recreating another silo and labeling it with “community” is the way to do it for the long haul.
What a great comment, Amber. Spot on.
Amber
Great comment as I was leaning to the experienced side or people person side but your comment here has swayed me a bit. I hope what we will see in business through the evolution of social media is the mindset that all employees are in marketing. I have thought this for years but never really got very far as companies wanted or maybe needed the differentiation of departments to fill positions with the one skilled worker. Now with the downsizing that we are seeing, we are seeing companies looking for the multi-skilled workers for specific tasks and not necessarily looking at one of those being marketing.
I think that companies should look deeper into this and realize that on or offline that every employee is there representing the company and the way that the company gains the trust and return customers is through the marketing aspect of every employee.
Love the comment as it gave me a better perspective to where I was really thinking and bringing that all together.
Hoping to bump into you again this year at blogworld.
@SuzanneVara
Awesome post. We are now moving towards business community management models and away from transactional database management….hopefully!
What a great article! For someone that is looking to land a FT community management position, this really puts everything in perspective.
A change in the mindset of companies/brands is needed in order to maximize the cultural change and put “people” at the center of these new media.For someone that is looking to land a FT community management position, this really puts everything in perspective.
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