@spicedawg56 It is! Yet remember email is a social network. @Collectual these folks own social media budgets: LIST http://bit.ly/cgtcJs in reply to spicedawg56 1 day ago
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Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD (Every 4th Monday of Jan)

Categories: Community Manager, Community Marketing, Social MediaPosted on January 25th, 2010
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Every fourth Monday of January, let’s take the time to pause, recognize, and celebrate the efforts community managers around the world to improve customer experiences.

Passionate About Customers
The title matters not, whether it’s online customer advocate, online customer support, company evangelist, disgruntled customer handler. Instead, focus on what they do: A customer advocate willing to help regardless of where they are online. Learn more by reading the Four Tenants of Community Managers.

Yet, Community Managers Don’t Have it Easy
Yet despite their admirable intentions, we know they face several uphill challenges:

  • Many challenges are internal: Most companies want to hide customer issues, and shuffle them into existing support systems. Additionally, measuring ROI in new media when a company wants to keep the kimono shut, increasingly becomes a challenge.
  • Seemingly never ending job: Customers never stop having problems, and with the global internet, the questions, complains, and inquires never stop.
  • Emotional drain impacts lifestyle: The sheer emotional strain of dealing with a hundreds of yelling customers and the occasional trouble maker will take a strain on anyone.
  • Privacy risks in the world of transparency: In an effort to build trust with customers, they expose their real name exposing their personal –and family– privacy forever on.

Now, Recognize A Community Manager, Every 4th Monday of January
While we agree with common manners to always thank someone after they’ve helped you, just take a moment to pause.. and think. Why would someone willingly go through the above mentioned challenges? Because of their passion to improve the company, and help customers have a better relationship. In many cases, a genuine ‘thank you’ can mean more than a yearly customer satisfaction survey. Take the time to recognize and thank the community manager that may have helped you while you during your time of need.

  • If you’re a customer, and your problem was solved by a community manager be sure to thank them in the medium that helped you in. Use the hashtag #CMAD.
  • If you’re a colleague with community manager, take the time to understand their passion to improve the customer –and company experience. Copy their boss.
  • If you’re a community manager, stop and breathe for a second, and know that you’re appreciated. Hug your family.

This isn’t just about a single role, but a bigger trend of making product and services more efficient, and thereby our world a little bit more efficient and sustainable. The comments are wide open if you wanted to share your experience working with community manager, or as one, feel free to thank them below.

Supported by Bill Johnston, Connie Benson, Rachel Happe, Jake McKee, Sean O’Driscoll, Lane Becker, Dawn Foster, Thor Muller, Amy Muller and Jeremiah Owyang, as we recognize and salate community managers!

Related Links

  • HRZone recognizes Becky Midgley
  • Jake McKee says this is (just about) the loneliest job
  • Bill Johnston, recognizes community managers
  • Amy Muller, Get Satisfaction contemplates where community management is and where it’s heading.
  • Amy also asks the community to showcase her community management heros.
  • Dawn Foster asks if you’ve thanked your community manager today.
  • Dawn shouts out to community managers.
  • Sam reasons why the community manager role is essential.
  • Connie Benson, a great friend, shouts out to community managers.
  • Rachel Happe gives reasons why we should pause and thank community managers
  • Connie Bensen of Alterian sent me this screenshot of mentions
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    This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 1:01 am and is filed under Community Manager, Community Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    • Marijean
      Agreed - community manager may be the toughest job in any organization - that's why it's critical to get the right person in that role. http://www.standingpr.com/blog/entry/corporate_social_media_who_can_and_should_manage_your_community/
    • Excellent thoughts here Jeremiah. Why is it that we forget to take the time to acknowledge the value that Community Managers bring to our world. A terrific example of someone that is tireless in her efforts to ensure "her" community is always providing value is Jenny Berthiaume (@jennycb) from Jigsaw. Never skips a beat and always brings a smile to the beginning of the discussion and all parties always leave with a smile at the end of the discussion. She is solid gold! Thanks Jenny.
    • Let's do a little better job with advanced promotion of the date next year...

      None the community managers I know were promoting or acknowledging this in their Twitter feeds, etc.
    • Thanks so much for taking the time to acknowledge the often-difficult role of community managers. I've managed micro and macro communities and it is often a very thankless job where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. The challenges you mention are all too true, particularly the privacy one (a bad, stalker-ish experience in a community several years ago led me to use an alias online forevermore ... which can pose its own set of challenges in certain situations).

      That said, the satisfaction I get out of knowing I've made my various little corners of the web happy, healthy, interesting and busy places far outweighs any of the (few) problems I've experienced. Through my communities, I've helped raise awareness and over $100,000 for various charities, personally interacted with dozens of celebrities and other VIPs and, most importantly, made multiple life-long friends. It's a very rewarding job!
    • A wonderful idea! Only sad that we've missed the date this year, but looking forward to celebrating in good style next year! :D Consider it duly Tweeted and communicated to the wider company :D

      Sam "Satine" Russell
    • Jeremiah,

      Some great banter today based on your comment that @acnatta had retweeted: "Talking to a community manager, when customers complain on social, it's a sign they can't get through other channels. " Andre (@acnatta), David Griner (@griner), Wade Kwon (@wadeontweets) had some great discussion about whether or not customers were becoming more and more accustomed to direction dissatisfaction out into SM *first*, rather than trying traditional call ctr/email channels. Are we becoming customers who whine with the hopes that someone's listening? Are we giving up the channels that companies have asked us to go through first? Would we rather just stand up on stage and shout our displeasure to a wide audience in the hopes that a company is listening? How fair is that to the company, who has channels and metrics set up to measure satisfaction?

      @griner brought up a good point -- that it is probably those social media influencers who are most likely to shout out to followers in hopes that someone hears them. To quote @griner, they seem to shout out: "I mentioned X brand, and X brand did not jump to my demands!".

      Are proactive engagements making us lazy customers?

      That's what @griner's comment to you was about "you starting" today. We had a good healthy debate. Thanks for starting it unwittingly. :-)
    • Oh boy, I've actually discussed this in detail

      http://ff.im/-8A9pp

      I say that one of the risks of supporting customers in social is:

      "Teaching Customers To Yell At Their Friends To Get Help From Brands"

      It's certainly a hot topic. Also, I had a friendly twitter discussion with @comcastcares last week, I said they'll be succssful when they *Stop* responding to customers, as customers will help each other. Now in reality, customers can 'reset a customers internet connection from HQ" like @comcastcares can, but it's a nod to companies stepping out of the way.
    • I'm glad to read that and the analogy to dogs is priceless. Is there such thing as being too customer-centric, and maybe so much so that it's detrimental to the brand to do so? Can you cater too much to a customer? I think this is what you and Frank probably talked about.

      We teach children from a young age that if they want help with something that you ask for it nicely. If my son stands in the kitchen and yells "Dad didn't give me enough juice in my cup", then I'm very unlikely to give him juice because of it. However, phrase it differently and *direct it through the right channel* by asking in a way that I've requested that he do, then I'm more likely to jump all over the opportunity to help.

      Now I know they're not entirely similar -- comparing child to customer. However I do think we have to keep our eyes peeled for the possibility that we're training the population to do something that isn't totally reward-worthy.

      Thanks for the reply.
    • Hi Jeremiah,

      Thanks so much for the post. I totally agree that this is not about simply celebrating work well done. It's about championing a critical role that is facilitating the effective growth of the social space in a way that truly adds value to customers. This role of community manager will become increasingly critical and its status will grow accordingly. Thanks for championing the role and the contribution they make. Best, Simon
    • Great initiative Jeremiah! I love it!

      I thank:

      @kirstenwagenaar for the communitymanagers.nl initiative
      @miekevanelk for teaming with Kirsten on #smtt
      @erwblo for writing the great (Dutch) 'Handbook Communities'
      @richmillington for so much great inspiration!
    • Thanks so much for this, Jeremiah - it's nice to be recognized. :)
    • Well hi Ginevra, tis' great to hear from you, you were fantastic resource for me at HDS.
    • it's been great to see all of your success during and since HDS! #CMAD has made today positively giddy. :)
    • Who-hoo! Happy to celebrate this with my meta-community. (http://creators.ning.com)

      Just a note however:
      Many community managers are passionate about members, rather than customers, as their community doesn't center around their job or making money. :)

    • How did I miss this one until today!?

      Good stuff Jeremiah. Still, I don't think any community managers would be doing what they're doing if they didn't love it.

      David
      Community Manager, Scribnia.com
    • Most people do not realize how important and crucial are the community managers to the social space. Their value goes beyond managing the community; in fact, they are community, marketing, and product experts. Personally, i would like to see a name/title which reflects that extended contribution... Social Customer Expert, Customer Engagement Expert, other thoughts?
    • *hug*
    • Thank you very much, Jeremiah,
      Great idea. I appreciate this very much! :-)

      In Germany we just founded an association for Community Management - hope, other countries will follow. www.bvcm.org
    • I'd love to thank @ljmesser and @community_bryan for their extremely hard work engaging in our product discussions on Amazon.
    • Fantastic Idea! Community managers have a very tough role - the job is often misunderstood by management, burnout is very high as online community never sleeps so they are "on" 24 x 7, and they are often at the cross fires between marketing, IT and legal. Thanks to all the Community managers who keep the plates spinning!
    • Fantastic idea! Community management is a tough role as it is often misunderstood, burnout is very high as online community never sleeps and community managers are often at the cross-fires between Marketing, IT and Legal. Hurray to all Community Managers and thanks for keeping all the plates spinning!
    • Thanks for kicking this off, Jeremiah! I've blogged about this topic today as well, thanks to your prompting.

      For me, the kind folks at @verizonsupport really helped me get out of a call center customer service hell. I shared the story, they fixed it, I love Verizon again. w00t!

      Jake McKee
      communityguy.com
      antseyeview.com
    • Jeremiah -

      I'm taking your advice. Stopping to breath right now. Wow. That feels kinda odd. Okay. Break is over. Back at it. The life of a Director of Community. FWIW, I wouldn't trade it in for the world...

      Seriously, thanks for taking the time to recognize Community Managers, Directors of Community, etc. I could not agree more with Beth Harte's statement, "It's hard to "be" a community manager (i.e. handling requests, providing content, generating discussions, etc.) and measure all of the efforts that you do each and every day." Very very true.

      Crap. I'm gonna do it. Plug a post I just wrote, "Director of Community: Not Just Tweeting All Day Long":

      http://blog.mitx.org/Blog/bid/33916/Director-of-Community-Not-Just-Tweeting-All-Day-Long

      I mention it because I think it helps dispel some of the CM myths ... and give props to some of my mentors & colleagues, Amber Naslund, Beth Harte, Jay Baer.

      Thanks again.

      DJ Waldow
      Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory
      @djwaldow
    • Great idea Jeremiah, but I have to admit "every 4th Monday of January" is a mouthful, you might have to do some serious reminding next year. :)

      @bethharte (who's already in the comments) is a great example of a community manager that reaches out to marketers. I'm not sure there's ever a day where she's not sharing or commenting on something of interest and value to the industry.
    • Hey thanks Adam! I am a nerd, marketing is my life and I am passionate about it. Glad to know that I can help my fellow marketers out as well as the MarketingProfs community. What can I say? I love my job! But...there are challenges indeed. ;-)
    • luisalberola
      Very good idea this CMAD - I just wanted to say thank you to the MM@cadémie team, for believing for such a long time - we are almost there ...
    • Thanks for pulling this together! It's long overdue.
    • This is awesome! It is sometimes a very lonely position. I'd better start circulating a memo around here to give folks enough time to pool together some cash for my lunch! I've written extensively about the perils of community management and this day is long overdue!
    • Jeremiah, it's very nice of you to start #CMAD. You nailed the challenges! I'd also add measurement. It's hard to "be" a community manager (i.e. handling requests, providing content, generating discussions, etc.) and measure all of the efforts that you do each and every day. What's it worth to answer a question that is simple for us, but means the world to the customer because you made their day easier?

      Also, maybe because it's a rainy Monday, but I am not understanding the "Every 4th Monday of Jan." There's only one 4th Monday in January...does that mean #CMAD is only once a year?

      Thanks again,
      Beth Harte
      Community Manager, MarketingProfs
      @bethharte
    • Oh right, yes it only happens once a year, but should be celebrated every day.
    • I am telling my coworkers that I am accepting chocolate chip cookies at my desk today. Can't hurt to try
    • PWride
      It's good to know that Community Managers are appreciated, even if the people we often try to help don't think so.
    • Great idea and a well deserved pause to say thank you to people who often get stuck with a lot of dilemmas and no easy choices.
    • Very nice. We share community management duties among a small group of us at our university, so I have several folks to say thanks to today.
    • nice
    • Keir @ Eidos
      Nicely written points :)

      I'm certainly spreading the word in my company.
    • Alright, I'll start:

      I'd like to thank @comcastcares for helping me with slow internet access. They were responsive, and also to my business partner.

      Also @logitech was helpful in listening and helping me with getting my remote setup.

      Finally @askwellsfargo will answer my questions if I ever have any.
    • Thank you!
      I only found out about it today but I love it! :)
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