The world of football in the UK on the net is often simply geared towards fans wanting to sound off about how their team is playing and more than not they do it with abuse and foul language just like we would hear in the terraces of the football grounds.

When I set up my fan club for Leeds United I established an ambitious ethos that was going to make my community a huge step up from other football fan sites in that it would be a place where we would not allow abuse, swearing, text speak or terrace language. We would be a site where fans who wanted to be involved with in-depth intellectual conversation and debate about their team could be had without fear of flaming or disrespect for having a unique view on matters and I am proud to say that against all odds for a football community we achieved it.

We achieved it as in our Online Community Managers achieved it. Our Moderators, Administrators, Social Media Managers, Online Community Managers or whatever job title you want to label us as achieved it.

Without us, without people looking after the community and its unique culture that each community creates for itself I am confident online communities such as my own would never exist or last.

As long as there an internet people like us will always be needed, sure the job title may change but at the end of the day, we manage and nurture a vital cog of the internet, we manage the new generation of local town and district pubs where people meet, make new friends, find new jobs, get business referrals and chill out 24/7, we are the new generation of the pub landlords and we are here to stay.

Excellent article Jeremiah! I found this because I was in search of just what this post is all about. I now NEED a Social Media Manager. So yes, I agree that the need will grow.

[...] Web Strategy y en WebWorkerDialy ya se habla ya sobre cuál sería el trabajo en esencia de un Community [...]

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[...] über extra generierte Jobpositionen zu gehen und beschäftigen dafür einen "Social Media Manager". Diese Mitarbeiter sollen mit wachsamen Augen die Unternehmen in Social Networks vertreten. [...]

[...] Social Media Manager/Specialist [...]

[...] Web Strategy y en WebWorkerDialy ya se habla ya sobre cuál sería el trabajo en esencia de un Community [...]

[...] that there is always room for experienced, quality consultants. Jeremiah Owyang did a post on the need for the social media manager and two distinct roles that Forrester sees emerging: the social media manager and the community [...]

[...] The Need For the Social Media Manager The future of social media management in organisations. (tags: social media recruitment jobs work enterprise2.0 PR future) [...]

Our best practices from the past eight years show that when the Community Manager role is split among a group of people with different “day jobs” in an organization, the community suffers. There is a distinct need for a dedicated community professional who is not also 50% tasked with PR or other marketing responsibilities.

Being a community manager is all about working with the audience and it’s behaviors (good and bad).

As an interesting aside, I had a meeting with a potential client this week who told me that moderators/community managers were irrelevant because the software will handle this role….

“Webmaster”

[...] The Need For the Social Media Manager Are social media-specific roles in companies growing or shrinking? (tags: socialmedia HR recruitment) [...]

As a public relations consultant, I am being asked more and more by my clients, who are mostly in corporate communications, to act as a sort of Social Media Manager or Director. However, I notice that little by little they are taking over the smaller tasks. I suspect that given a few more years, they will also take over the strategy too. I also suspect that some will hire someone to run the function, while others will spread the love across the department. I am not too worried though because I am not a one-trick specialist pony.

This is my main concern with getting too specialized since the future of this job title really depends on how much work the function entails in a given company. The value proposition of a specialist will be in their ability to stay far ahead of the curve on new technologies and on their creativity in building solid strategic approaches to integrate social media into overall business goals.