The rights and wrongs of implementing a community manager

Community managers are on the rise – and how. Recent research by EPiServer reported that 89% of businesses have either appointed or plan to appoint a community manager in the next 12 months.
According to the study, which surveyed 250 UK marketing decision-makers, almost three-quarters (73%) of businesses now run online communities or are looking to do so in the next year, meaning that the demand for the specialist knowledge and expertise of community managers is soaring.
 
Little wonder, then, that business and technology staffing company ReThink Recruitment has reported that social media specialists have seen their pay rocket by almost 70%.
 
“As communities start to evolve and platforms for engagement become more diverse, brands are starting to realise that they must have community managers to look after them,” says Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration. “As the EPiServer research shows, managing social media can be challenging and time-consuming, so it’s vital to put a dedicated resource in place to manage it.
 
“To use an analogy: if you’ve just spent a fortune designing and landscaping your garden, you’d be foolish to sit inside with the curtains drawn and let all those lovely plants wither and die. Communities, like gardens, need a lot of care to keep them productive. You’ve got to hire an experienced, dedicated professional to keep garden looking its best and eradicate those weeds or risk the place being ruined and all that money going to waste.”
 
The proliferation of community managers also emerges at a time when organisations are increasingly acknowledging the value of having dedicated resources serving the social media channel. Brands have historically used marketers or PR departments to communicate with customers, something that has continued since the emergence of social media. But this mindset is changing, says Simon Quance of Equi-Media.
 
“In the past businesses have believed that these are the people best placed to communicate brand messages,” he explains. “But as social channels become more prominent, community managers with the appropriate knowledge and skill sets are a more natural choice.”
 
And what skills in particular should businesses require from community managers? Key tasks include:
 
•    Being the bridge between the community and the brand/business. “Their strategic approach and the practical application thereof will determine how people perceive your brand, and how they interact with it,” says Maria Wasing, VP of marketing at EPiServer Europe.
•    Nurturing the community, through membership growth and support. “Community managers need to ensure that they are doing everything possible to encourage engagement and participation in the community that they manage,” suggests Littleton. “They need to be adept at building and managing communities, engaging with people and maintaining their interest,” adds Wasing.
•    Being a brand ambassador. “A community manager needs to be a brand ambassador who can work within the guidelines of the business, whilst behaving in a human way and responding tactfully to potential negative sentiment. The value here is clear, for it heads off potential manifestations of negative sentiment before it spreads to a wider audience. This discipline is well known and well-practiced, and can be summarised as a sort of macro public relations, therefore fitting the skill set of a good PR,” says Tristan Rodgers, CEO of concrete.
•    Generating and sustaining ‘buzz’ across social networks through content creation and sharing.
•    Being a ‘translator’ between the company and customers. “They need to be able to identify and relate the needs of the customer to the business and effectively communicate the values of the business back to its customers, whilst constantly evaluating the functional and technical changes of the host environments and explaining them to their management team,” suggests Quance.
•    Being a chaperone for platform development. “We are seeing the appointment of a community manager as a sort of chaperone of platform development, liaising with the different teams within the business on the evolution of their respective areas,” says Rodgers..
•    Creating processes and breaking down barriers within the organisation. “B2B communities using enterprise collaboration are trying to break down departmental and geographical boundaries for the betterment of time to market, quality of output, and ultimately, profit. Most activity in this area is around ideas management, knowledge forums, expertise requests and innovation. These disciplines, however, can often be contextual to the business unit, and so can keep to the departmental silos that so many businesses are restricted by. The trick then, is for a Community Manager in a B2B community to attempt to break down these silos and create value through cross pollination of expertise,” adds Niklas de Besche, executive director of Meltwater Buzz

Community manager qualities
So if you’re installing your first community manager, what qualities should you be looking for from a candidate? The EPiServer research asked respondents to suggest the most important qualities a social or community manager would ideally need, with enthusiasm (35%), writing ability (31%), experience (31%) and patience (29%) topping the table.

“A community manager needs the ability to multi-task and write,” adds Wasing. “He or she also needs patience, people skills, technical expertise, a sense of humour and, above all, needs to be flexible and open minded.”

“A community manager must have a keen appetite for social media and be willing to spend the time and make the effort to effectively listen to conversations happening in the social community to establish one-to-one relationships,” says de Besche. “Community management is not a 9-5 job, and the individual taking on this role should be prepared and willing to maintain an online presence, always listening to what their audience is saying.”
Quance adds: “Good organisational skills, determination, passion for the media, a willingness to learn and a decent helping of humility are also key qualities.”

But he also has a warning of what to be wary of in a candidate too. “A business should try and avoid anyone who leads with a claim to be an expert or guru in social media.  It’s perfectly possible to have deep working knowledge of key networks and channels and a POV on many of the new and  constantly evolving social spaces, but describing yourself as an ‘expert’ shows a basic misunderstanding of the test and learn culture necessary to be effective.  Nobody has all the answers in social media.”

Getting community management right
However, making the role of community manager a success isn’t just down to finding the right candidate. There are other factors that organisations must be aware of. Most importantly, it is vital that the community manager receives the full support of the business, from the bottom to the very top. This can require specific organisational change and commitment in terms of time, money and resources.

“You have to have buy-in from senior management if you want to see your social media strategy have the desired effect,” emphasises Wasing. “Once this mindshare is acquired you need to allocate proper resource to the project, which includes getting the right people for the job. The next steps are probably the most important. You have to put a proper process in place, from responsibilities to guidelines, everyone involved in your brand's social media activity must know what they have to do to ensure your strategy has the best chance of succeeding. Once all of this is done you have to keep on reviewing. Social media is fluid - things change at a drop of a hat and your brand or business needs to be ready to roll with the punches.”

Structuring the business to properly accommodate the community manager is another key consideration. “By appointing a manager dedicated to managing the outbound and reactive conversation, this person needs to be ‘department neutral’ which is why brands are looking for a dedicated individual, as opposed to shared roles from within different departments,” says Sandra McDowell, managing partner at Amaze PR.

Quance agrees: “When a business is structured properly, a community manager should sit right at the heart of a business, answering as directly as possible to the CEO or COO.” But he adds: “In appreciating that in many businesses this is not possible, it’s also important to recognise that when social media is done properly it becomes a nerve centre of an entire organisation. It can be a very responsive environment for managing outgoing messages alongside inbound service feedback and customer sentiment. 

“On a global scale, evaluating and interpreting the impacts of the cumulative efforts of the business in real time can make insights gained from community management and social media in general, critical to a business. Practically speaking, many organisations won’t be big enough to generate that level of feedback, so the best fit should be dependent on the nature of the business itself.  If it’s very customer facing (i.e. service or retail) then placing the function within a customer service team could make sense.”

Unsurprisingly, as with the implementation of any new role into an organisational structure, businesses are still feeling their way, and there are plenty of pitfalls along the way. But employing the right candidate and providing them with the appropriate support within the right structure is the bare minimum that is required.

The role of community manager may still be a mystery to many organisations at present, but with social media use by businesses accelerating, it is only a matter of time before firms will feel the need to bring this figure into their fold.

“Social media ‘natives’ who have learned practitioners skills, understand the brand, the uniqueness of the channels and the needs of customers, are increasingly in demand,” concludes Quance. “As Facebook pages, Twitter channels, LinkedIn profiles, business blogs, customer help communities and emerging channels, such as Google +,  are all increasingly used as part of the ‘business to customer’ interface, the in-house community manager is only likely to increase in importance.”

Originally published on www.mycustomer.com October 2011

You might also be interested in reading some of our other community blogs:

• With great communities comes great responsibility: the issues of managing big communities
• Knowing your community: addressing anonymity without intrusion
• That warm and fuzzy community feeling
• Reaching B2B communities on the move...
• At the heart of the community...