thumbnailFair warning: this post is long. Really long.

But I have LOTS of questions I get asked on a regular basis around my job, and it didn’t seem right to split them up somehow. I wanted to keep it as one solid reference, hopefully that you can show your boss or just chew on to write your job description or whatever (this one might help too). It’s okay if you tune out. Better yet, bookmark it and come back later.

But for those of you who are in it for the long haul, grab a bevvy and let’s go. Either way, I hope it’s really useful.

1. How many hours do you work?

I don’t have a particular schedule I stick to, because things move fast and I need to adapt to shifting priorities. I usually work about 10-12 hours per day on average, but that’s broken up in chunks and sometimes during non-traditional hours, like in the evenings or weekends.

Evening and weekend hours are mostly because that’s when I get some of my best and most uninterrupted thinking done, but Twitter and blogs are still active outside of business hours, so I try to be responsive there when it’s reasonable and I’m able.  I probably spend 2-4 hours working and managing stuff on each weekend day. Much of that is self-imposed, because it’s how I work best. Your mileage will and should vary.

2. How do you prioritize your tasks?

I use a rather simple but effective triage system for most of what I do.

Engagement

  • negative/support/concern posts first, no matter the medium. ASAP.
  • specific company/brand inquiries that indicate a lead or customer service opportunity. Twitter first, because of it’s short lifespan (within 15 minutes if possible). Blogs next (within a few hours).
  • compliments and kudos, including review blog posts (as immediate as possible)
  • industry discussions (social media monitoring, social CRM, community management, etc)

Do I respond to every mention? No. I can’t. I respond mostly to things that are catalysts for discussion, or invitations for connection. You’ll know the difference, and it will evolve over time. Nothing here is ever static or set in stone.

Priorities

Engagement with the community is always first. Then comes internal, longer-term priorities and projects that further our community needs. For example, we’re building a resource library on our website, and modeling a listening grid for our organization that can hopefully help other companies build theirs. We’re also doing a lot of work on the subject of articulating social media ROI. I’m involved in all these projects, because our community has asked for them, and our whole team is involved.

General insights, industry discussions, and ongoing relationship management tuck in for the rest of the time. That includes all channels, including email, social networks, and phone calls. Everything from helping someone out with a monitoring question via email to vetting event and speaking opportunities, participating in a chat on Twitter, or being part of a professional network like the Community Roundtable. Does it scale well? No. But I do the best I can to get to everyone.

3. How do you decide where to spend your time on social networks?

Professionally, I base that purely on where our customers and potential customers are. Because we monitor these conversations closely – about our brand specifically, our competitors, and our industry as a whole – I know that most of our active discussions take place on Twitter, blogs, and forums (in descending order).

Twitter is like the phone to me. It’s up constantly, and it’s a key channel for us, so I use that the most. I spend several hours on Twitter every day, some of it passive (listening) and about 2-4 hours interacting. I spend about 2 hours a day commenting on blogs, and woven in to all of this is routing posts that need others attention, that are sales leads that require follow up, and the like.

All in all, I spent 3-5 hours engaging online, and another hour or two routing things and analyzing our work. But remember, this is my JOB. If you’re doing this as part of your role it’s going to be a lot different. And your customers might not be where mine are. That’s where the listening bit comes in at the start.

4. What else do you do besides social network stuff?

I manage our company’s event presence (sponsorships, speaking opportunities, and the like). I probably put about 30 min. to an hour into logistics each day, and I have help on that front with our awesome coordinator, Dave Clark. During heavy event season (March-June and September-November), I spend about 50% of my time on the road at or face time with our community and doing speaking engagements on listening and engagement and community management. When I’m traveling, I have members of our kick-ass team that help me respond to timely needs on Twitter or blogs when I can’t be as immediately responsive, and assign stuff to me that I can engage with later on.

I also create tons of content, including writing for our blog, podcasting, website content, case studies, and other resource material for our community. This typically comes in waves, and probably totals 1-3 hours a day on average. I write. A lot.

Lastly but not least-ly, I do strategy work, including considering what’s next to support our community, continuing to broaden our social media presence as an organization, helping frame out community and engagement best practices for us and our clients, measurement and tracking of our community outreach efforts. That’s a few hours of solid work each week, and several nights scribbling in the notebook beside my bed.

5. Where does your job live within the organization, and how big is your team?

In our company, our marketing/PR/community team is kind of all one thing. We don’t draw lines, because we think it all blends together. In many other organizations, this type of role reports into a communications department, like marketing or PR, and sometimes even customer service. Depends a lot on the goals of the organization (as do all things). For us, it makes sense as a unified group.

My role reports to David Alston, our VP of Marketing and Community. We also have Mike Huggard, our Community Analyst who does a lot of biz dev support as well, and Warren Sukernek our Director of Content Marketing, who drives the creation and promotion of our content. Also on the content creative side, we have Bob Beaton, our awesome design and UI dude, and Andrew Embury, our video rockstar.

We’ll be adding more people as our engagment and content development model evolves, and several  members of our executive, support, and business development teams participate and engage on a regular basis as part of their overall responsibilities. And because they get it.

6. What metrics do you use to justify your position?

This could be a long answer. But for ease of conversation, let’s say that we look at:

  • Our ratio of posts/mentions/discussions engaged vs. not, and how much time it takes to respond. In essence, how engaged and converstaional we are as a brand.
  • The trending number of posts about and around our brand over a 30 day period (awareness and reach)
  • Our share of conversation in social media, both within our industry and as compared to our competitors, and tracked over time
  • The overall sentiment of posts about us, and the ratio of positive/negative/neutral (brand affinity)
  • The volume of leads generated through social channels, and their conversion rate
  • How many customer support issues are initiated (and resolved) through social networks
  • The breakdown of types of posts about us: support, reviews, passing mentions, compliments, complaints, etc.
  • Discussions, referrals, and mentions that come from different segments of our community: customers, prospects, specific events, etc.
  • How our website traffic from social content converts and behaves

There are tons more things I want to be tracking, and we’re working hard on lots of best practices in this arena. Community positions impact all these areas and more, because the relationships they forge affect every bit of the business. Stay tuned for more as we learn and evolve, and as I get more relentless about justifying the existence of folks like me to the c-suite.

7. What tools do you use?

Radian6: Yes, surprisingly, I do all of my monitoring, measurement, tracking and engagement, and reporting through our own platform. It works. For a list of how I might do it manually, look here.

Twitter: for ongoing conversation with friends and colleagues, inquiries about our platform, customer service inquiries, and industry discussion. I use TweetDeck and our own Twitter engagement capability through the Radian6 platform (which helps me track and capture responses). I use Tweetie when I’m on the go on my iPhone.

Adium: for IM. I use this more internally than not, and rarely at that. IM tends to get overwhelming.

Yammer: We use this as our internal Twitter/chat stream, to share news about ongoing company activities and goings-on and talk amongst ourselves.

Google Docs: We use collaborative calendars, spreadsheets, and word processing docs. Especially important because I work remotely.

Google Reader: My RSS reader of choice. I subscribe to about 75 blogs, and I’ve pared that down. I click “Mark All As Read” probably once a week. I scan liberally, read about a dozen or so posts in depth every day, share what I can, and have to skip the rest. There are only so many hours, and information overload is mine to control.

Entourage: my email client, which is the lesser of many evils. I get about 100-150 emails a day across two main accounts, and they’re about 60% internal. Twitter has dramatically reduced my email volume in day to day work, probably by half at least.

Facebook and LinkedIn: We’re just starting to really build a foundation for our community in these outposts, but I have accounts there. I don’t keep separate personal and corproate accounts. It’s all one and the same to me. I’m part of my company and vice versa. Argue with me on this later.

WordPress: My blogging platform, both at Altitude and for Radian6.

Books: I read. Voraciously. Analog isn’t dead. I have about three books going right now, two of which are business-related.

8. How did you get your job?

I started my professional career as a fundraiser for non-profit organizations, beginning in performing arts (symphony orchestras and music conservatories. I was a music performance major in college). I did that for about seven years and was recruited into corporate marketing/communications, and did that for four-plus years, including branding, PR, and corp communications.

I’ve always maintained an interest in the online world, blogging (journaling) when it was nerdy and even trying my hand at programming (I don’t have the attention span). I was a chat room nerd, too. My nonprofit days lent well to community building with donors and volunteers, both online and off. And I always tried to infuse this stuff into my corporate job, whether I was successful or not. 🙂

When I decided to go it alone in 2008 and leave my corporate gig for solo work, Radian6 was one of the first companies I worked with. Lucky for me, when it came time to hire someone full time to do community and social media work, they trusted me with the gig. So here I am. It was much less about some elusive “skill set”and more about understanding the role of online social stuff inside a business environment. Maybe David Alston will tell us in better detail in the comments why I was the right fit.

9. What do you love about your job?

The people. I meet and talk to the most amazing people, every day. And I am so very lucky to work with a company that lives and breathes social media as a business model, not a “channel”. Yes, I realize how fortunate that makes me. Is it always roses? No. It’s hard work, but nothing worth having was ever worth less. And it’s the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

My job is to connect with people, and make them as passionate as I am about the potential of this universe. Does that suck? Heck no. Do I wish that kind of job for everyone? Yes. And I’m going to keep stumping on my soapbox for their benefit, and for the establishment of more jobs like it, until you all tell me to shut up.

10. What would you change?

The barriers to understanding, and the blinders we’ve managed to put on the corporate world for the last several decades. The focus on the tactics and tools instead of the underlying (and rather basic) tenets of relationship-based business.

I’m much less frustrated by a temporarily disgruntled person on a blog than I am by a business person who still isn’t seeing how important and revolutionary this stuff is, and not because Oprah is on Twitter. I’d like to elevate the discussion from “how do I monetize Facebook” to “how do I change my culture to return to the basics of good business and tie this to my overall goals” (which is really all this is, in techie clothing).

I know I’m an idealist. But dammit. Revolutions were never started because someone decided something was “close enough”. ROI doesn’t have to be that complicated. I’m here to change the status quo.

11. How do I convince our company we need a community position?

If you have to do too much convincing, they’re probably not ready. But, that being said, there are a few discussion points.

This job is the evolution and marriage of customer/client service, PR, marketing, and business development. It’s a bridge builder between your internal and external communities, and a liaison. A relationship builder, message deliverer, content creator, hand holder, educator, rain maker, and brand steward, both internally and externally. It’s the hybrid of online and off in all these areas, but without the trappings of outdated tactics that are likely not relevant to your customers anymore.

If your company doesn’t see the value in that and can’t tie some specific deliverables and metrics to the performance of that person, then the discussion is probably too soon. And if you or they can’t imagine that a person like that exists, you’re definitely not ready to have one.

Bonus Round

12. What music do you listen to while you work?

I have crazy eclectic music tastes. Faves right now include Nonpoint, Shinedown, Eminem, Nine Inch Nails, Nickel Creek, Sick Puppies, Shiny Toy Guns, Massive Attack, Josh Kelley, John Legend, Flyleaf, Emilie Autumn, Breaking Benjamin, and some Shostakovich thrown in for good measure.

What Did I Miss?

My (sort of) plan is to keep updating this post as new questions arise, because I know my position and those like it will keep evolving. I know I haven’t answered everything, and I’m happy to keep trying. Just leave your questions in the comments, but remember that there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all. And your answers and insights are just as valuable as mine.

Does this help? Share, won’t you?