The Four Tenets of the Community Manager
Summary
The budding Community Manager industry holds 4 tenets; these values resonate as a common thread within the role. The include community advocation, brand ambassadorship, online communication skills, and product requirements gathering and improvements.
Methodology
Recently, I’ve been doing some research on the Community Manager role, which is appearing at most brands that take online communities and communication seriously. This was a role I had this role at Hitachi Data Systems, and many of my friends and peers have this role around the industry, and I’ve written about it extensively.
16 real job descriptions
I put out requests on Twitter, blog and email to get submissions, as well as scoured the public job listings and I’ve reviewed 16 job descriptions from companies ranging from LinkedIn, Buzz about wireless (Sprint), Vancity, Communispace, Imagination Corp, Microsoft, Flock VMware, GamesforChange, Disney, ACDsee, Dogster, SimplyHired, Yahoo, and many others. It was a global sample from B2B to B2C, and the beliefs and values that these individuals require in the job description indicate a direct pattern.
The Four Tenets of the Community Manager
In the following, I’m not going to list out all my findings, but it was clear there were 4 number of Tenets, or beliefs that each role holds. In nearly all the job descriptions, the following beliefs were spelled out as requirements for the role.
1) A Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporate community as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.2) Brand Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, products and upgrades to customers by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer good products.3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
This tenet, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.4) Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to product teams. This may involve formal product requirements methods from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between product teams and customers. The opportunity to build better products and services through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, customer communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.
While there is much deeper research on this role to be completed such as where are they, how much do they make, who do they report to, best practices, etc, I’ll just be publishing the above. Thank you so much to all those who’ve submitted content to me.
Additional Resources
I’ve been very involved with this new role, here’s some related content:
Meet your peers and Join the Community Manager group in Facebook Understanding the Community/Evangelist Role, and profiles of a few of my Favorite Folks Capture from the Community UnConference Forum One Community Roundtable–Strategies for Community Video of Dell: When the Web team leads product development, the evolution of Dell Hell to Dell Swell Video: Web Strategy Show: Community Strategies with Jake McKee
Update: Also see this association of community managers (IOCMA) that are now calling for members (link via Connie)
(Update: based upon comment feedback, I modified the language of this 4th tenet for clarification, thanks Shashib, and Connie)
(Update 2: Kevin adds a lot to the conversation and challenges the idea that “They aren’t your communities to manage“, also read Evan’s response to Kevin.)
43 Comments so far
Leave a reply
For Community Advocate I agree that the primary role is to represent customers, but I would add that the secondary function is to represent the company. Staff are customers too. In my opinion it is impossible for a comm mgr to be effective if they aren’t representing & building relationships in both directions.
My role clearly has expectations for internal & external communication, team building, training, etc. I am wondering if this is an exception to your findings?
[…] Today Jeremiah Owyang published the Four Tenets of the Community Manager: […]
Is there any conflict with the last tenet -” Shapes Requirements of Future Product and Services”
Did Dell make this successful throuhg IdeaStorm? I guess Michael Dell put his weight behind this. I would be interested to hear what the challenges are here.
Great post Jeremiah. Thanks Connie (http://www.conniebensen.com) for bringing me to this post.
To clarify Shashib
The community manager is getting the requirements FROM the community.
Ideastorm is an example of the dell community team implementing a tool (under the umbrella of the community program) to obtain customer requirements.
So to be clear, there should not be a conflict
I will update the language to reflect this better.
“(G)etting the requirements FROM the community” that’s the key, that’s the strength of the position.
Curt
Yes, that’s right. I’ve met some product managers that were NOT thrilled about not being in the drivers seat, it was interesting to see them squirm.
This is a post that fits into my presentation here in Boston about hiring experts as social media managers for an organization. It’s tough to boil down a job description and some of these actually cross over each other in a Venn diagram of sorts. I think you caught some of the description I am seeing too, but it seems to be more in line with the idea of participation, and all of the details that word encompasses. I tried to come up with a short job description of this and as I began to delve into certain areas, sub topics opened up and it became even more of a spider web. Everyone has a different idea of the description of this job based on what they feel is most important. Some think it is listening, others speaking, and other still a blend of everything from what you base your ideas above. This is not something that can be boiled down to a 500 word essay to be certain.
This is intriguing, Jeremiah.
I would have thought the focus would be more on aspects of the “moderator role” and/or “how to improve communication”.
I am surprised that there are any “specific TOPICAL goals” — since I would have expected rather an “open forum” (perhaps limited by more/less standardized rules of netiquette).
Then again, many of these “guidelines” are very open — almost wishy-washy. They leave so much wiggle room that they almost seem superfluous.
Indeed, it’s such “virgin territory” that a USEFUL job description is perhaps hard to come up with.
This sounds like the traditional role of a product manager. Almost to a tee (except for the being a community advocate part, but even that is key for good product managers).
A community manager is very different. I don’t think you ever evangelize your brand. Of course, the examples you’ve used to get this description are all about evangelizing: Microsoft, LinkedIN, SimplyHired. At least the MS people enter the community and are really nice people, building relationships, but, ultimately, they are there to evangelize their brand, which always sits with me like underwear that rides up.
I agree with Kevin’s post (http://tinyurl.com/22yyyu) in that you can’t really manage a community and you shouldn’t be the single point of contact.
Personally, as a community consulting firm, we see ourselves more as personal trainers…we go in and help our clients open up and get involved to the point that everyone at the organization is part of the community they serve and getting smarter by the day.
Then, and only then, do we set up Facebook groups and the like. We teach them to stop being part of their own echo chamber. We show them the difference between talking at and talking with. Etc.
A product manager does all of those things you list above, a community manager needs to keep themselves far away from the evangelizing (lest they turn into a product manager or a member of the sales team) and closer to helping create ways for their employer/client to be part of the community they serve (and that includes the employees).
nmw - I’m wondering if you are thinking of forum moderation? That is how I started down my path - by redirecting the product forum into a constructive place. Once people realized they could get help, a sense of community evolved. But now the forums are only a fraction of what I do.
Tara - I’ve never gotten the idea that Jeremiah suggests that communities be managed. In fact he has always promoted listening, then participating.
It sounds like your consulting firm is doing what the Comm Mgr position does - the listening, the training, then the engaging. In my company I consider those my responsibilities. I view myself as the connector between the customers & corporate & provide communication in both directions.
And yes I do evangelize because that’s the best way to establish brand.
Tara, Connie
The term “Community Manager” is a mis-match, but that’s a title that’s been adopted. I can think of a few Community Managers I know that evangelize. They’re not running around with flags, but having real conversations with the community.
We all agree that the community is in charge, the corporation is catering to it.
I see so much more for this role. It’s not enough just be a manager. If a socially-responsible company does this right and fulfills a role in the larger community, it can catalyze the community and whole industries towards change.
I agree with you Geoff that it’s more of a strategist & leadership role. That’s why the term ‘web strategy’ has always resonated with me. Maybe we should use Community Strategist?
‘Managing’ tends to the short term.
I’m much more comfortable with a strategist sort of role with the primary focus being internal. Working within organizations to help people to engage as members of communities as described by Tara and Geoff.
I have to say that, while I think Tara’s inclination to not be a salesperson is solid, it’s silly to not evangelize your product as a Community Manager/Ambassador/Advocate. Certainly don’t shove it down people’s throats, but if you do care about your product (which, for god’s sake, I hope you do!) then you should take reasonable opportunities to help pump up your community. Again, this isn’t about posting spammy posts on unrelated blogs, this is about responding to your community’s posts and Twitters, about reaching out to those who have already confessed interest. If someone writes a glowing review of Flock 0.9, of course I’m going to tell them how excited I am about Flock 1.0. If someone has already added me to their contact list because of their love of Flock, of course I’m going to tell them about our new group on Facebook. And I would expect the same of a Community Ambassador/Advocate/Whatever for something I care about. I *want* to know that Queens of the Stone Age has an awesome new album coming out, and if there is a tour I’d sure like to be on top of getting tickets. If I’m told in an honest, excited, human way I’ll be even more likely to go check it out.
Everything about being a Community Ambassador is about honest enthusiasm…for your product, your company, and (most of all) your community.
[…] how great the latest product is. However, I think that if you accomplish what Jeremiah suggests in his post on the topic, you are part of your community as much as your company. Once you are a legitimate part of your […]
This is really interesting. Jeremiah, do you think the community manager’s role, at times crosses over the role of the PR/ communications manager? since there are some parts that involve “online and offline community building, social media, and customer-company interaction etc” These seem to also describe some of the PR/ Comms person’s role.
Both PR and Community Manager roles should be in synch. Yes, both of their worlds are much larger due to social media tools.
Have you read this post called “edgeworks”?
http://tinyurl.com/ysqpsp
It explains how corporate communications has shifted to the edges of the company (in addition to still being centralized)
PR Folks that deploy this correctly are MORE relevant than ever.
P.S. I am no longer at simplyhired.com;0 I am now at Mint.com, basically getting involved in many of the things discussed in this post.
The strongest thing I get from customers: feedback. We can adjust our product based on what customers actually want…not what we want;-)
[…] marketing. trackback Is Community Management an oxymoron? — Check out Jeremiah’s recent post on the 4 tenets of community manager — There seems to be some debate on the four tenets […]
[…] Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang Outlines the four qualities of a “community manager… […]
[…] couple of days ago Jeremiah Owyang spent some time outlining the ‘Four Tenants of the Community Manager,’ which is extremely interesting in light of the panel I participated in last week on PR […]
[…] The Four Tenets of the Community Manager What does a community manager do? […]
yah, that’s pretty much on target.
i might simplify even further, combine #1 & #4 into “represent the customer to the company”, and combine #2 & #3 into “represent the company to the customer”.
basically, i think it’s those 2 plus one more:
* market research & community listening (inbound)
* company / product education & evangelism (outbound)
* identify / amplify community cheerleaders (both)
the last one is important if you’re trying to scale… you can’t do it all yourself. if you can find other evangelists / cheerleaders in your community, make sure you give them amplification.
nice piece J
[…] gives some personal commentary on The Four Tenets of a Community Manager as observed by Jeremiah Owyang. The four tenets […]
[…] Update: I’ve reviewed many of these and boiled down the role to Four Tenets. […]
[…] savvy with the communities and the new media etc. Jeremiah Owyang wrote an informative post about The Four Tenets of the Community manager. He also led me to one of his older post for […]
[…] It’s time for Comcast to 1) change its service to resolve these needs and 2) start engaging with customers on their terms. Online and […]
[…] The Four Tenets Of The Community Manager […]
[…] the Community Manager group in Facebook, and has been a big contributor in my research, defining the four tenets of community managers, and is becoming a great […]
[…] evangelize the importance of such tools and to keep a program growing. Jeremiah has the 4 Tenets of a Community Manager, which are very difficult to […]
[…] his underlings are responsible for all outreach and relations with the populous. Just like any good community manager, he follows all online dialog and responds thoughtfully. This doesn’t mean spitting out spin […]
[…] to know more about what’s involved in the community manager role? Check out Jeremiah’s Four Tenets of the Community Manager. If you’d like to submit a question to the Community Guy, check out the submission details. […]
[…] Also, be sure to check out Jeremiah’s Four Tenets of a Community Manager. […]
[…] step is an easy one: figure out what employers are looking for. I wrote about this earlier, as have others. Check job descriptions for similar positions, keep an eye and ear open for what employers are […]
[…] identity(brand) the more likely they will have a strong community online(tags: Online advertising)The Four Tenets of the Community ManagerFor those of you who want to be a Community Manager - this is a must read - excellent blend of […]
[…] identity(brand) the more likely they will have a strong community online(tags: Online advertising)The Four Tenets of the Community ManagerFor those of you who want to be a Community Manager - this is a must read - excellent blend of […]
[…] great demand, but in 3-5 years social media will be integrated into most marketing departments and the community manager will be just like the analyst relations person: A tactical line […]
[…] In the last few months, I’ve interviewed nearly a dozen community managers at many companies, and compiled 16 specific job descriptions to create these 4 Tenets of Community Managers. […]
[…] identity(brand) the more likely they will have a strong community online(tags: Online advertising)The Four Tenets of the Community ManagerFor those of you who want to be a Community Manager - this is a must read - excellent blend of […]
[…] the Three Types of Government Blogger, by me […]
[…] Social network communication tools serve as an ideal mechanism to foster collaborative co-creation. They allow for teams of people in and out of the company that are geographically, ethnically and religiously agnostic. Our jobs as communicators is to foster these environments, and serve the communities by providing information on demand, and to provide real value in our outbound initiatives. See Jeremiah’s description of a community manager. […]
[…] on something, you notice others who have thought/said/tickled around the same thing. The waves of blogging conversations about community management seem to be washing on the shore closer together these […]