Managing Being a Community Manager
Community Manager. What is it? Well, AdAge just called it the "Hottest Job in Marketing" this week. But that might be a bit of a generalization, since after all the position does include PR, IT, and Sales aspects. Basically the job is a jack of all trades kind of position and I don't really believe just anyone can do it. But it is safe to say that it is the hottest job in social media right now.
The position requires a tremendous amount of project management skills stretching over many departments. You kind of have to have a cursory understanding of virtually everything - and I'm kind of not kidding. You have to be up on your game at all times about Social Media - especially because some new program or network is being developed everyday. But once you nail THAT down, you now have you know your business even better, and what tools will best help that business reach who it needs to reach? I find B2B to be an interesting challenge.
Community Managing Qualities?
One must be extremely organized, and have the ability to see way out in front of a project in order to field questions and concerns from all sides. Potentially the strongest quality a community manager needs to possess is resourcefulness. You're approached with dozens of requests per day and you have to know where to go and immediately, at that. And it goes without saying - you kind of have to like people.
Managing Twitter
As from all the varied responsibilities of a Community Manager, I find managing the twitter account (and to some extent facebook) portion of the job to be of real interest. In my case, I run the @RelocationAlly account for my company, and when I assumed it 1 month ago, it already had 6,000+ followers. I don't know who those followers are, I have not interacted with most of them, and since I follow back, I find it extremely difficult to keep up with 6,000+ people and their tweets. Not impossible by any means, but difficult. It's a work in progress trying to get to know all of them!
As with any good social media plan, we have specific targeted audiences we're hoping to reach. A few of those targets I interact with daily on my personal account, @JPedde, so I spend as much time, if not more, tweeting on my personal account throughout the day. I follow <1000 people, but they're all value adders and interact for the most part. I balance it out by tweeting from @RelocationAlly and retweeing it back out to @JPedde especially if it's just news and tips. You never want to solicit your personal network for much. Is it Really Managing?
Not really. It's more about creating and building. The managing part just kind of means that you're keeping things going, coming up with new ideas, and making sure all of the departments you have your hands in all work together. When you've got a community, you're interacting and engaging and offering services that they could use.
The position requires a tremendous amount of project management skills stretching over many departments. You kind of have to have a cursory understanding of virtually everything - and I'm kind of not kidding. You have to be up on your game at all times about Social Media - especially because some new program or network is being developed everyday. But once you nail THAT down, you now have you know your business even better, and what tools will best help that business reach who it needs to reach? I find B2B to be an interesting challenge.
Community Managing Qualities?
One must be extremely organized, and have the ability to see way out in front of a project in order to field questions and concerns from all sides. Potentially the strongest quality a community manager needs to possess is resourcefulness. You're approached with dozens of requests per day and you have to know where to go and immediately, at that. And it goes without saying - you kind of have to like people.
Managing Twitter
As from all the varied responsibilities of a Community Manager, I find managing the twitter account (and to some extent facebook) portion of the job to be of real interest. In my case, I run the @RelocationAlly account for my company, and when I assumed it 1 month ago, it already had 6,000+ followers. I don't know who those followers are, I have not interacted with most of them, and since I follow back, I find it extremely difficult to keep up with 6,000+ people and their tweets. Not impossible by any means, but difficult. It's a work in progress trying to get to know all of them!
As with any good social media plan, we have specific targeted audiences we're hoping to reach. A few of those targets I interact with daily on my personal account, @JPedde, so I spend as much time, if not more, tweeting on my personal account throughout the day. I follow <1000 people, but they're all value adders and interact for the most part. I balance it out by tweeting from @RelocationAlly and retweeing it back out to @JPedde especially if it's just news and tips. You never want to solicit your personal network for much. Is it Really Managing?
Not really. It's more about creating and building. The managing part just kind of means that you're keeping things going, coming up with new ideas, and making sure all of the departments you have your hands in all work together. When you've got a community, you're interacting and engaging and offering services that they could use.