Community Management Education (and Certs) a Sound Investment –Yet Experience Trumps All

Thank you Jeremiah for the coverage of this topic. As the industry matures, our hope at The Community Roundtable is to help transfer knowledge about the community management discipline in a variety of ways and the training we are doing with WOMMA & ComBlu is a great first step for many people.  Part of the reason our core service is an association model is because we also believe that much of the discipline is not just skills but judgement which can only be gained through experience and peer interaction. 

We offer a range of services like reports, a community management fellowship, and executive education – all of which fit on different rungs of the learning scaffolding and which address different audiences.

I would love to hear from others here about how they learned and what helped them the most while they were ramping up – or questions they have about training programs more specifically. We are likely to learn a lot as we roll out our training program and are expecting to iterate as we learn as well.

Thanks Rachel for leading the way and being so open in dialog.

We are building a multi-level social/digital certification program for a fortune 20 right now.  Part of the challenge is one size won’t fit all by industry or segment.  A solid “public” standard or template to follow makes sense, but ultimately the needs of a company will very based on their size, complexity, global footprint and industry.  I agree with Bill J as well that experience matters.  This isn’t a matter of training, policy and exam milestones, but also one that has to build a system that creates and motivates mentors as they progress through appropriate levels.  Like any learning objective, training is a part of the puzzle, but on the job training and mentorship must be substantial components of the plan.

Sean O’Driscoll
CEO
Ant’s Eye View

Thanks Sean, leave a URL when/if appropriate.  

I really like that you have included the notion of “product manager” as part of your skill-set for community managers — it’s not something that I have seen come up frequently in terms of roles that community managers have, but I think it is incredibly important. The ability to understand how to assess, aggregate, and expand on the needs of the community closes the feedback loop between an organization and it’s customers. Good product managers have a deep understanding of current products, the overall direction that the company is headed, and can then bring customer needs into that picture in an efficient manner. It is a skill set that is hard to find, even by itself, which means that finding that skill in someone who can also fulfil the other needs of a community manager can be quite challenging.

Thanks Terry.  Social Marketing and Social Support can be considered just “lip service” if the core issues aren’t being fixed over time.  

The Community Manager is really a customer liason between the company –and our important customers.

I’ve built a number of these certification programs, both Edelman’s “Belt System” and others for clients in various industries. While community managers are undoubtedly of increasing importance, I can tell you that certifying a “community manager” actually isn’t all *that* high on many priority lists. Companies (particularly very large ones) far more urgently require the integration of social media skills into the day-to-day work of employees in a number of roles. Principles of community management can (and, in some cases, must) be a part of this regimen, but that’s a bit different than what we’re talking about here. 

My pair o’ pennies.

Phil Gomes
Edelman Digital

These are exciting times. 

The mere formation of certificate programs and a growing interest in this type of education outside (or even within) the job shows that community management as a discipline and career field is ready to turn the corner and spring up into the conscious of the mainstream, while earning further acceptance in places where it’s much overdue. I’m not sure what type of results to expect from programs like the one being launched through WOMMA, but just its existence is a huge victory in my book. It only gets better from here. 

The whole notion of “certification” when it comes to social, and even SEO, is fascinating to me. It’s basically saying we as an industry are OK with one entity coming up with the “rules” and the “right” way to do something. I’m not terribly sure that is healthy for either industry. Klout is a good example here. I think it is absolute utter nonsense, and the most meaningless metric in all of social marketing. Yet the developer of this course may think differently than I do, and set that as a standard. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? At the end of the day, nobody. Every single entity that’s hiring social has different needs, and we should not be bogged down by thinking that a “certification” program brings us. 

Hi Alison – I’m helping to develop the WOMMA/TheCR/ComBlu training program and I just wanted to note that we do not consider this a ‘certification’ or a requirement in any way. It is a consolidated set of information that we think is important for community managers to know, with the goal of helping people familiarize themselves with a lot of concepts faster than they might otherwise be able to.

As with any training, it cannot give people 100% of what they will need to do the job because so much of the discipline is judgement based and specific to the context in which it is practiced.

I definitely understand your concerns and hope that we never get near a ‘klout’ style algorithm for what community management means because that is impossible. However, demand for these skills is growing faster than available resources. This training, hopefully, will help increase the speed of that skill development in the market.

Hi Alison – I’m helping to develop the WOMMA/TheCR/ComBlu training program and I just wanted to note that we do not consider this a ‘certification’ or a requirement in any way. It is a consolidated set of information that we think is important for community managers to know, with the goal of helping people familiarize themselves with a lot of concepts faster than they might otherwise be able to.

As with any training, it cannot give people 100% of what they will need to do the job because so much of the discipline is judgement based and specific to the context in which it is practiced.

I definitely understand your concerns and hope that we never get near a ‘klout’ style algorithm for what community management means because that is impossible. However, demand for these skills is growing faster than available resources. This training, hopefully, will help increase the speed of that skill development in the market.

Interesting, and indeed a sign of a maturing profession. But certification based on theoretical education is indeed not enough. I’ve seen many certified people in my life, who were very good at learning theory, but next to useless when it came to real life implementation of that knowledge. I once worked at a global technology consulting company, where the internal certification system was based on theoretical knowledge and proven application of that in project. I think this gives a better indication of how someone can add value to a job/project.

Thanks Phil.  Edelman was one of the first to show me their social media black belt system, congrats on your program.   

I also learned other agencies have done similar like Weber Shandwick.

Thanks Phil.  Edelman was one of the first to show me their social media black belt system, congrats on your program.   

I also learned other agencies have done similar like Weber Shandwick.

So you don’t consider this a certification, yet the program is called “online certificate program”? That’s where I personally find the issue, as it could be misconstrued as some sort of authority. I think I’m in the extreme minority of people who think this is something you can’t teach…you can either do this job or you can’t. But like other folks have said here, it’s good to see that there is so much interest in something of this nature, means that companies are finally waking up and realizing that the customer has a voice, and they come above all else.

Absolutely. Education is great…but it doesn’t mean you’re good at something.

This is my concern as well. I know Rachel is a stand-up CM and I give her the benefit of the doubt. But I do know highly successful community managers who do things /very/ differently. “Certification” implies you’re learning the one right way to do the job, which I think is false.

Looking forward to seeing how these develop, regardless!

Interesting post. Thanks to you, I’ve been in community management since 2006 and  definitely see a vital need for qualified and experienced community managers. 

However, certification might be a little too premature for our industry. Certification could be important in highly regulated industries such as private-for-profit higher education or healthcare where risk management is always in the discussion. But what about the travel industry or community management for a restaurant chain?

Thoughts?

There are standards bodies at the federal level for hospitality and even at regional level, so there are some that exist.  The certified sanitation letters found on doors of restaurants in L.A. are an indicator of that.

Even careers where it’s all about taste such as artists, chefs, and musicians go to education and get degrees to get best practices and learn the tools of the trade.

Thanks Dan.  It’ll be interesting to see if a formal degree or college courses emerge to support this growing profession.  

Right Evan, yet a Certificate or Degree indicates that one’s gone through the motions to get a baseline understanding, and has at least been exposed to best practices.

The developer of the curriculum shouldn’t, by him/herself, set the standard for the entire company. That person should participate in the development of those standards, for sure, but it would be foolhardy to have that person build a de facto standard in a vacuum. 

But, at some point, a company needs to codify its relationship with online communities and it isn’t too much to ask that 1) employees conform to that standard, and 2) there’s a certification program made available to them. 

So who is going to be the ruling party in this certification program? Again, that’s my argument. No one entity can say what’s right and what’s wrong. At that point you’re only in it for your own self interests. 

I agree wholeheartedly that we need education programs for emerging community managers. There is a fast and rising demand for CM’s who have a baseline understanding and are able to hit the ground running. Those of us who have been at it for many years could have skipped some of the trial, error,(and rework) that went into developing the expertise that we’re now working with. 

But I also agree with Evan’s earlier argument that there are so many variations in approach. And each community has its own set of circumstances. I’ve managed five communities over the last five years and although some community-building techniques were replicable, each role required a slightly varied set of skills. None of these communities resembled one another in form or function. And the business goals behind growing each of these communities also varied greatly. 

If I contrast this to project management, which I studied for a while in order to acquire certification, it is a world apart. There is a set of processes that can be applied to practically any project in any industry in order to achieve success, and certification means you *get* the role. 

I’d say education is what we need the most right now, but rather than focusing on finding a standard/certification for CM’s, let’s focus on enterprise-wide, executive and peer education.  

An organization can (and often must) draw lines about “right” and “wrong” with regard to its relationship with online communities just as it can in terms of whether it issues/supports PCs or Macs. The company should be open to updates and challenges, of course, but certification is less about “How to ‘do social media’” than it is ensuring that employees have an understanding about how social media and online community engagement sits within and supports the strategic imperatives of the firm. 

The internal stakeholders involved included (but aren’t limited to) comms, marketing, legal, HR, MIS and executive leadership. The complexity is multiplied somewhat when you’re working with a company that has a thin-but-powerful corporate layer sitting atop business units and brands, which often behave as their own companies. 

That’s the direction this must go…social marketing curriculum built into established degree programs.  So alongside all the existing requirements and electives required for a Marketing degree you have social marketing classes.  As much as we like to think social is the be all to end all its just another marketing skill that is critical to learn and apply.  It doesn’t have to be anything more or less than that.

Hi Nathalie – I helped develop the community manager certificate program with WOMMA & ComBlu and can say we agree on nearly all your points. We heard from customers and friends that they wanted an option to bring their teams up to speed on what community management was all about. They were scaling from 1-2 CMs to 10-20 CMs relatively quickly and wanted an cost-effective solution. 

In building the first module, we solicited input from current CMs to hear what they thought was important to explore with students in the course. We did our best to create a balance of perspectives, including both thought leaders and practitioners in the different segments. These real world, peer-based experiences are a very important part of what we’ve developed. This is very much a peer-based educational experience. 

By no means is this course finished. We’ll learn from the first run, adapt the content based on feedback and changes in the market and evolve the course. We talk with community managers every day (some in TheCR Network, some not) and roll that into our perspective. This comment thread is a great example of that in action. We’re listening. 
Thanks – Jim 

Thanks, Jim for providing context. I follow TheCR, you and Rachel and observe how you’re advancing the profession constantly. I thank you all for the hard work you are putting into this and keeping the focus in the right places. Education and training, and how to scale it is the major pain point I am facing right now with my clients. How certification fits into that picture is still uncertain. I look forward to keeping up with your progress. 

I acknowledge that the term ‘certificate program’ is confusing – it is consistent with how WOMMA does its other training courses and also with training terminology in general so that is why the title is what it is. But it should be thought of as a training course.

We spent a lot of time vetting the framework and outline of these courses with The Community Roundtable members who are all very experienced community managers and most of the content was developed by practitioners who are WOMMA or TheCR members. Our goal was to be as inclusive as possible and focus on what was common across a lot of different contexts, including internal collaboration focused community managers.

True. Certification is good because it provides validity to a role that not enough companies yet recognize as significant and even vital to their success. Certification is bad because there is no final certification in most digital/social technologies. Always evolving and learning. Cheers!

I always appreciate the opportunity to learn new things.  While classes cannot cover every possible scenario they can give you a knowledge base that empowers you make the correct decisions.  Experience still trumps training but the combination of the two is much better than either by themselves.

Jeremiah, I absolutely loved this article!  This issue is of particular importance to me as I have started a new organization called the National Institute for Social Media with a goal is to create the first nationally accredited certification program.  The process of earning accreditation eliminates many of the concerns voiced within many of the comments below, and in my opinion is the only way to create a valid certification program.

It remains though, that many jobs in this space call for tertiary qualifications – and nothing about skills that demonstrate an ability to actually understand and carry out the role.  Let’s hope recruiters and HR people are reading this blog. In fact if you know one, do pass the link on to them so they may begin to understand the landscape at least a little.

“Best Practice”, in this context, is a complete crock (even more so than in the rest of IT !). What works for one company may be totally wrong for another.

I’ve been a successful community manager for nearly two years. I’ve done many things right just as I’m sure I’ve botched a few along the way. I’m regularly asked to share my experiences and insights with other community managers and am eager to do so. I still intend to go through all three of the cert programs mentioned in the article.

Will I already know a lot of what is presented? I hope so. Will I still gain new insights and info that help me be a better community manager? I fully expect to.

Anyone who values lifelong learning like I do is eager to find helpful resources whenever and wherever possible. Most of what I learn I learn through my network of fellow community managers and resources shared by people I follow on Twitter. But I trust and respect the work of Rachel and Jim at TheCR and am eager to learn from the coming courses. I’ll still have to make the application to my business and choose what applies and what doesn’t. But don’t we have to do that with any formal education or training we take part in?

It great to see a indication that someone has gone through the motions, especially – as indicated in other comments – when that motions are based on real life experts’ knowledge. However, I think adding a requirement that the students have to show capability in practice as well would give a certificate more value. Sort of like the Six Sigma Black Belt. It’s heavy theory, but also an example of how you’ve put that in practice. This case needs to be brought to the certification board with ‘sponsorhip’ from an existing Black Belt. I think that gives a better indication of quality.
my 2cts.

Certification is not a bad thing, but take care to avoid the one size fits all approach. We developed training and certification for the social programs we manage for our clients to ensure we meet the agreed standards of performance. These are adapted on a program by program basis, retaining the core and adding in the client-specific elements that give the program the look and feel the client wants. It’s one of the benefits you get with outsourcing (and I know there are mixed views of the outsourcing of social programs ) – an established framework for engagement that has a robust foundation but can be easily customised. We now have over 500 people moderating, monitoring and managing communities for clients around the world. I work for SYKES BTW.

Nick what’s the URL to the program?

The program isn’t available online, as such. We developed a number of job description templates, specific competency tests, over 20 unique processes (as in unique to social programs – different from regular contact centre engagements), and more than 200 pages of training materials to enable our organisation to handle social engagement programs. We adapt these to suit each client’s need. I’ll summarise somehow and let you have details.

Agreed – Communities also come in very different forms, and include many different types of demographics. If you just use basic guidelines and policies you will be ok, but it won’t really be anything spectacular. There still needs to be a backing of history, theory, and psychology. 

[...] Periodically people would request my courses when they came across the old posts referencing training. I always felt bad when I had to explain that my day job was busier than busy. So, I’m really pleased to see that WOMMA and the The Community Roundtable are offering training courses that are specific to Community Management (in contrast to Social Media in general) and they are created by credible people in the industry. Earlier this week Jeremiah Owyang covered the pro’s and con’s of the certification aspect of the Community Manager Training courses. [...]

Thanks Nick, leaving a URL would be most helpful. 

Thanks Nick, leaving a URL would be most helpful. 

In theory, I agree.  ”Common practices” or “case studies of success” are often a more correct term.   Yet, keep in mind, the community manager space has been around for way over 10 years.  There’s already a proven body of knowledge available.

In theory, I agree.  ”Common practices” or “case studies of success” are often a more correct term.   Yet, keep in mind, the community manager space has been around for way over 10 years.  There’s already a proven body of knowledge available.

Millseric, would love to see the website, got a URL?

Millseric, would love to see the website, got a URL?

What a CROCK! I think it’s common sense, some marketing and customer service skills that certifies you if that’s not enough then there might not be hope for that individual. If these programs succeed it will prove 2 things. 1 American’s are stupid, and 2 scams succeed. I can’t even fathom such ridiculous information. I can’t imagine people paying for this, teachers teaching this or anything like that.  

isn’t certificate and certification two different things/credentials?

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, certifications can be a useful way to evaluate someone’s overal *knowledge* on a topic, but unless there is a practical component to the exam, even the best certification is still assessing the least-useful attribute of a professional: knowledge. The way “experts” are defined by those who study expertise is this: experts are what they DO. In other words, given a representative task in a given domain, experts are those who consistently/reliably *make better choices*. The fact that experts do know more about the domain is not what matters when looking for predictors of performance.

But in this domain, I have a bigger concern. In certifying “community managers” or other forms of social media professionals, there is an implicit and overwhelming assumption that “social/community” is THE way to solve problems for a company including “engagement”, for example. It starts looking more and more like a “when you are a certified hammer professional, EVERYTHING looks like a nail scenario. Then you end up with the problem we are already seeing so much of today: companies out-social/community/engaging their competitors, when they SHOULD be focusing on fixing the reason they even need theses things in order to compete (assuming the business is not itself a social media product or service).

The thought experiment is something like, “assume a future where every one of your competitors has an equally awesome, certified, capable community manager/social media
strategist. NOW what? And what if “increased engagement” is not what the company — let alone their users — really needs? As a user, my attention is not scalable. My ability to engage is not scalable. The companies that may “win” in the near future are those who realize this, and make products, services, and marketing that frees my attention for doing things I love to do rather than competes to attract it back to the company. For example. I do not want to spend time “engaging” with Apple… I want to spend time editing in Final Cut Pro. And when I DO engage, it is with a local non-Apple community user group.

Any of use can look around our home and professional workspace and name some of our most beloved and most-used products, and realize that we would nearly kill for some of the things we own that come from brands with which we have never engaged. If you look to most hobbies, for instance, the communities we are involved with are NOT from a specific brand but from the far more compelling context in which those brands are used. I might attend a snowboarding club, not a Volcom group. A photography club, not an Adobe meeting (though Adobe might sponsor part of it, and it might even BE an unofficial Adobe user group). A horsemanship club not an Astund saddle-maker group. A maker/DIY group, not the Radio
Shack club.

Not that a brand cannot use community in this way — to support the bigger, cooler context in which their products are used as opposed to trying to suck users into engaging “with the brand” (whatever that actually means). Sooner than later, we must recognize that users are not All About Us, and if we deeply care about our users, we will not try to seduce them into spending more time with us. The best community manager, in my opinion, is the one who asks, “what the hell are you doing clicking around our site and posting content when you SHOULD be out there kicking ass USING our product…” and then putting all of their resources into enabling users to do just that.

So, yes, I fear that too much emphasis on certifying social media professionals (including community managers) will only harden the view that user engagement is about engaging with US / the brand, rather than the far more sustainable and user-healthy view that users have far better uses for their precious time, including actually USING our products and services to do something amazing *for themselves.”

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, certifications can be a useful way to evaluate someone’s overal *knowledge* on a topic, but unless there is a practical component to the exam, even the best certification is still assessing the least-useful attribute of a professional: knowledge. The way “experts” are defined by those who study expertise is this: experts are what they DO. In other words, given a representative task in a given domain, experts are those who consistently/reliably *make better choices*. The fact that experts do know more about the domain is not what matters when looking for predictors of performance.

But in this domain, I have a bigger concern. In certifying “community managers” or other forms of social media professionals, there is an implicit and overwhelming assumption that “social/community” is THE way to solve problems for a company including “engagement”, for example. It starts looking more and more like a “when you are a certified hammer professional, EVERYTHING looks like a nail scenario. Then you end up with the problem we are already seeing so much of today: companies out-social/community/engaging their competitors, when they SHOULD be focusing on fixing the reason they even need theses things in order to compete (assuming the business is not itself a social media product or service).

The thought experiment is something like, “assume a future where every one of your competitors has an equally awesome, certified, capable community manager/social media
strategist. NOW what? And what if “increased engagement” is not what the company — let alone their users — really needs? As a user, my attention is not scalable. My ability to engage is not scalable. The companies that may “win” in the near future are those who realize this, and make products, services, and marketing that frees my attention for doing things I love to do rather than competes to attract it back to the company. For example. I do not want to spend time “engaging” with Apple… I want to spend time editing in Final Cut Pro. And when I DO engage, it is with a local non-Apple community user group.

Any of use can look around our home and professional workspace and name some of our most beloved and most-used products, and realize that we would nearly kill for some of the things we own that come from brands with which we have never engaged. If you look to most hobbies, for instance, the communities we are involved with are NOT from a specific brand but from the far more compelling context in which those brands are used. I might attend a snowboarding club, not a Volcom group. A photography club, not an Adobe meeting (though Adobe might sponsor part of it, and it might even BE an unofficial Adobe user group). A horsemanship club not an Astund saddle-maker group. A maker/DIY group, not the Radio
Shack club.

Not that a brand cannot use community in this way — to support the bigger, cooler context in which their products are used as opposed to trying to suck users into engaging “with the brand” (whatever that actually means). Sooner than later, we must recognize that users are not All About Us, and if we deeply care about our users, we will not try to seduce them into spending more time with us. The best community manager, in my opinion, is the one who asks, “what the hell are you doing clicking around our site and posting content when you SHOULD be out there kicking ass USING our product…” and then putting all of their resources into enabling users to do just that.

So, yes, I fear that too much emphasis on certifying social media professionals (including community managers) will only harden the view that user engagement is about engaging with US / the brand, rather than the far more sustainable and user-healthy view that users have far better uses for their precious time, including actually USING our products and services to do something amazing *for themselves.”

[...] Jeremiah Owyang covered the pro’s and con’s of the certification aspect of the Community Manager Training courses. [...]

I admire new strategies in learning. Learning from just the four corners of a room is not actually enough. There are different kinds of people who need different kinds of learning environment. And experience leads to that. Thanks for the article.

[...] 1. Community Management Education (and Certs) a Sound Investment –Yet Experience Trumps All [...]

[...] Owyang recently posted on this topic. I agree with what he wrote, but believe that certification is needed to achieve [...]

[...] to the new training program have been fairly mixed, at least within our own little bubble. Jeremiah Owyang and Connie Benson (who’s an instructor in the program) have some good posts about why this [...]

[...] brands such as Campbell Soup Co. The position from a corporate standpoint is only growing in popularity, and with the openness of the social Web, it is easy to know whom to cherry pick should you need [...]