chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Pretty Faz — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:50:04 -0000

Great Observation! "Do not invent jobs that have been around for 100 of years, just because the tools you work with have changed. " Titles Change , the core principles are still the same.

Great Post Josh!!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Joe — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:14:09 -0000

Hi there.

I have worked in the hotel-business for many years.
And if i look at the Community Manager i find so much we at the Hotel Business have done for years. The tools are diffrent you use, but the goal is the same.

Read books regarding Front Office, Receptions and Concierges of Hotels and transfer it to the Community Manager. Done!

The Community are the same as Guests for Hotels.
The Forum ( Social Network) is nothing else then the Hotel.
Last bu not least the Community Manager is nothing else then the good old "Front Office, Concierge" trying to keep the guest coming back and loving his Hotel ( Community). :)

Do not invent jobs that have been around for 100 of years, just because the tools you work with have changed.

A good Front Office Manager at a Hotel has all the Skills a Community Manager will ever need.

Probably the Community Managers will earn more money.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Waynette Tubbs — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:23:41 -0000

We are just beginning the community manager roles. One aspect that I don't see included above is an understanding of the platform such that the manager knows when to innovate - add or remove features. I think it's very important to keep your eye on the metrics and on feedback you are receiving from the audience to decide about useability features that can be putting barriers to engagement where none should exist. Thanks for your tips, Chris!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

youtube downloader — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:06:28 -0000

hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

matty patterson — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:34:14 -0000

i love that ambassador and advocate rolled up into one.
no point working for a comapny you dont even like...
thanks chris.
matty patterson.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Brennan Deitsch — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:20:17 -0000

I recently applied to be a community manger. I am really looking forward to getting in this field. This article gave some nice tips on how to find success!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Angel — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:22:58 -0000

I became a community manager when I started a coworking space. My favorite part of this job is the tremendous amount of "interference" that I run on the front end. These are interactions that my community members never see (or rather didn't notice). They used to think that we just naturally attracted the most awesome, helpful, friendly & brilliant people into our space. Quite the contrary. For every member who makes it past me, the gatekeeper, there are 5 people that don't. Not because they didn't want to join but because I was artfully showing them the door.
Being a community manager is awesome and challenging in the most complex ways because there are no mathematical formulas for figuring out people....just good instincts and a nice robust social tool belt.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Keith Burtis — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:52:46 -0000

Chris, these are all good qualities and generalizations. They are also idealistic. Rarely are community managers in an ideal situation. What I mean by this is that often times a community manager must fight internally for acceptance, work hard to get data, and push/finesse internal developers and team member to help build infrastructure that is needed for them to do the proper reporting. Reporting in this case covers not only metrics, but also helping the internal team members to understand the importance of the learnings they come up with in the social space. Weights and Metrics need to be given to certain actions and findings and a community manager must be able to proove concept and validate their role in the organization.

so when a community manager says she would like to use twitter the boss is going to ask why? There has to be a better answer than "because it's good for PR or good for researching information" ROI needs to be shown.

One of the things I see when looking at the job descriptions for community managers I see that the role includes Marketing, PR, Biz Dev, and more. Depending on the organization you my have to slowly integrate with these departments that are already formed. Social media folks tend to be VERY idealistic. Yep, it would be great if organizations were fully transparent and none of them had internal communication problems, but when someone finds that company they NEED to let me know.

A community manager need to make small wins and build on those wins. Prove ROI, and validate their role. If the Social Media Sphere continues to say that ROI is unattainable in community management....the profession will die. It's just a bump in the road folks. I know were all smart enough to figure this out!

@keithburtis

Social Media Community Manager for @BestBuyRemix

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

George Soros — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:02:48 -0000

I'am your fan

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Sergey Brin — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:57:53 -0000

Good work guy!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

nikosson — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:43:58 -0000

Thanks, those are quite helpful tips. It seems that you have some experience in managing communities, as you are not just pointing out the usual marketing crap every first year business student without any live experience will tell you as if it was the bible.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

andar909 — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:50:42 -0000

hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you, sir.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

TMcGinnity — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:07:33 -0000

This is such a timely post as I've recently become a Community Manager so all of this is great brain food.

@Webconomist- I fully agree about the advocacy aspect. Thanks for mentioning this.

@Samantha- I love that you mention 'not looking like a poseur'. It's really those who are authentic people who can really thrive in the role of Community Managers.

@chrisbrogan- You rock. You just plain rock!

This post helped me to find Connie Bensen's great blog and helped to inspire me to create my own blog on the topic.

Thanks again everyone!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

rodica — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:03:34 -0000

Someone once said that the best quality to have in a community manage is "situational awareness". The term comes from the military, but it's referring to understanding the characteristics of the situation and being able to predict outcomes of your actions/other people's actions into the future.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

DanGTD — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:42:29 -0000

One of the most important jobs of the CM is to connect the right internal people with customers and let them work it out.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

David Murray — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:57:35 -0000

Customer service!

Having a strong customer service background can pay off huge. The skills you can learn in the customer service trenches - listening, solving problems, deligating and connecting - all come into play as a Community Manager.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Paul Acosta — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:58:25 -0000

Great post Chris. I'm also passionate about this great analogy by Heather Champ, Community Manager at Flickr that I found at Connie's blog:

"Being a Community Manager is like being a pinata. People beat you with sticks and you still need to give them candy".

Thanks again for your point of view. Can't wait to hear what my friends have to say when they see your post.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

AngelaConnor — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:06:16 -0000

@ Liz. I wonder though, if an ombudsman type would make it as a community manager. You've got the age-old newspaper culture at play there, which is counterintuitive to the needs of those on the web. I'm not saying that they couldn't fill our shoes, but there is a difference in skill-set in my opinion. There is an arrogance in that industry that has led to its demise. I was charged with integration as a multimedia editor at a newspaper, and it was a tough sell most days. There were people who "got it" and editors who were completely on board and then there was the rest. I bet that being immersed in that culture could have major effects and could take some serious deprogramming.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Jesse Kliza — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:34:32 -0000

@Samantha - Great point as well.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Jesse Kliza — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:33:08 -0000

@Pamela - Same here :-) !
@Peer - Excellent points! It's absolutely critical to have the company behind your efforts. The best community managers will also be change agents within their organization.

"In other words, there has to be an institutional change of emphasis towards a more honest and open regime otherwise (rightly or wrongly) any efforts by CM are seen by the community as little more than lip service." - Beautifully stated!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Liz — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:09:17 -0000

Actually, this position almost sounds like an ombudsman, a position that many newspapers use to have as a liaison between readers and the publisher. I attended a university where I had a conflict with a departmental decision and I spoke with a campus ombudsman who told me my rights and options as a student but also filled me in on the position of the university who, of course, was his employer. But he also acted as an advocate for student and staff who had grievances.

I think a community manager also has a difficult role, straddling two worlds: lean too much towards the business owner and there is the danger of being a corporate shill...take up the users' cause and one becomes a consumer advocate. The job sounds like it takes a great deal of finesse to avoid alienating either side of the "conversation."

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Have a Great Business Idea? Yo — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:43:33 -0000

Great info, thanks!

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

AngelaConnor — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:31:08 -0000

I think you're dead on in your assessment. As community managers, we have to genuinely care about the community and have an unwavering commitment to make it grow. An amazing amount of patience and high tolerance for drama are both handy attributes as well. Really, it's not a job that ends when you walk out of the office or leave your computer. You have to have ideas and find ways to execute them quickly. And I would also add that you have to take risks. Try something new every day until you find the right fit. Then, start looking for the next.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Webconomist — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:59:43 -0000

Great list for building Best Practices for building a Social Media practice.

I would only add;

An advocate for the brand, with an understanding of brand values, systems and the brand one is representing.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Peer Lawther — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:38:22 -0000

From my years as a community manager I found that it encompassed most of skills listed in Chris's post, but one important issue not mentioned was being able to go to internal stakeholders and get them to act, for the good of the community. We CMs can talk the talk (perhaps very openly and honestly), but the company behind us also needs to walk the walk for it to be a success.

Community Managers can listen, but a lot of the time they're seen as conduits to the people that the community *really* want to reach - and if the company at large doesn't react then the community isn't working, usually despite the CM's best efforts.

Yes, personal experience taught me this, but if right person (whether it's a director, a manager or heck, perhaps even a janitor in some situations) doesn't understand the power of the community then no amount of listening, party-hosting and bridge-building from the CM will help.

In other words, there has to be an institutional change of emphasis towards a more honest and open regime otherwise (rightly or wrongly) any efforts by CM are seen by the community as little more than lip service.

Great article though!