Jeremiah Owyang discusses how web tools and social media enable companies to connect with customers

What a Community Manager does

November 16th, 2006 | Category: Community Marketing

There’s a lot of misconceptions of what a Community Manager does, most think they’re the customer or even company advocate. While that’s true, the bigger role is to listen and inform.

Today I was telling some colleagues what a Community Manager does, I’m transitioning on, so I’m trying to share what I’ve learned, here’s just a few things that I’ve learned. Part of the Community Managers role is to:

  1. Listen: Use listening tools like Technorati, Talkdigger, read blogs, forums, wikis, to find out what customers are saying
  2. Respond: Depending on what’s being said, respond quickly when appropriate
  3. Inform: Tell the right stakeholders in the company what’s happening, this can range from Engineering, Product Management, Product Marketing, PR, Marketing, Bloggers, or forums moderators.
  4. Shut up and sit back: One of the most important jobs of the CM is to connect the right internal people with customers and let them work it out, stay out of the way if you don’t understand the problems.
  5. Listen more: Keep on listening, responding, informing, and connecting the right folks. A community manager is an odd looking being, big ears and eyes, and a small mouth.

From Jeremiah Owyang, Online Community Manager at Hitachi Data Systems (well at least for another 1.5 weeks)

Update: Nathan of the Net-Savvy Exec Blog lays out very similiarly what he envisions a Community Managers does, a slightly more functional role called Social Media Relations, very nice.

14 Comments so far

  1. daniela barbosa November 18th, 2006 12:28 pm

    #5- an odd looking creature indeed:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/11765756@N00/300254389/

  2. jeremiah_owyang November 18th, 2006 2:09 pm

    Ha! Good one. As if the subject matter wasn’t odd enough as it was in the first place!

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  5. easyduke September 6th, 2007 7:29 am

    Even my mom can understand that…

    Many thanks !

  6. jeremiah_owyang September 6th, 2007 8:20 am

    easyduke

    Thanks! that’s the point!

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  8. Shino October 15th, 2007 9:36 pm

    I *love* this! It sums up so nicely what we do :)

  9. Nico January 27th, 2008 8:09 pm

    Very short but usefull since i’m starting my CM role next week.

  10. lucindigo » Google It: Digital Media +Business March 3rd, 2008 8:43 pm

    […] recently that most certainly didn’t exist 5, probably not 1 year ago - and that was for an “Online community manager.” The role of this person is to do just that, create and manage the businesses online personality; […]

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  12. Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » Community Managers - Room for them in Ireland? April 15th, 2008 4:20 am

    […] Jeremiah Owyang put it like this: Part of the Community Managers role is to: […]

  13. Arvind Juneja April 24th, 2008 4:42 am

    I would also add two things :
    - think.. think a lot…
    - negotiate
    pretty much what we do :)

    cheers,
    Arvind Juneja
    GoldenLine.pl , Community Manager

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