Community Managers: crucial future centipedes?

Since big companies have seen the importance of social network sites to promote their brands, it seems like there is a rising demand for community managers. Although this new kind of profession is still in full development and the description of this internet job is sometimes a bit vague, the job is surely indispensable according to some.

Some four or five years ago the job title emerged for the first time. But before that the leaders of community services of mainstream online computer services during the early 1990s such as CompuServe and Prodigy were often referred to as ‘community managers’.

So what do they do then? Quite a lot if you ask me. First of all, a community manager should create, organize, manage and control an online community of customers and clients. This broad definition can be understood differently depending on the size of the company, the endorsed use of the brand and the industry itself. It is evident that a government agency may adopt a different communication policy than a non-profit organization. Big companies may demand more competence from their community managers in everything from the social tools themselves to budgeting, marketing, project management, recruiting and more. On the other hand, community managers employed by smaller businesses typically tend to have a ‘smaller’ variety of obligations, such as overseeing Facebook and Twitter accounts, writing blog posts, creating videos, taking pictures, and playing webmaster if necessary.

Another task of the community manager is to escort and moderate web 2.0 relationships and conversations in favor of a brand. Web 2.0 refers to the development of the internet as an interactive medium in which users not only download but also start uploading. With Web 2.0, internet users determine the content that appears on the internet and so they increase the interactive nature of the web. This user-generated content is collected from social networking sites, such as weblogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, web video and web services with open APIs. Examples of applications are YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Last.fm, Pandora, Wikipedia, Twitter, etc. They also track the conversations on these applications by tools as Sysomos, which uses content of social media sites to create a clear overview on how products, people, and brands are covered in those media sites and what their sentiment towards these conversations are.

As we deal with an emerging profession, it’s still difficult to tell what the ideal diploma is to become a community manager. Although there are many courses for this upcoming career, the most important thing is that community managers acquire a taste for new media and that they learn how to master it. Other useful skills are: being social in general, having expertise in technology and being experienced and competent in copywriting, HyperText Markup Language (html) and design.

Although when observed from the outside community managers may appear to be an influential and powerful group, they are usually hidden behind the scenes. There for, every fourth Monday of January the ‘Community Managers Appreciation Day’ takes place as a way to recognize the effort they put into their lives on a daily basis in order to make ours more convenient Community managers are usually put on the background but on this day they deserve to be in the spotlight, since they establish a brand’s desired image on the internet. It’s this one day a year they are being explicitly appreciated for their sometimes thankless job. Celebrating this day has become a global phenomenon, as events, conferences, cocktail parties etc. are being organized and even digital digital postcards are being published.

Even Uservoice has made several clever Community Manager Appreciation Day cards.

Yet, despite their admirable intentions, not all is rosy for community managers and they too have to deal with all kinds of struggles and challenges. The most obvious one is that customers will never stop having problems and global Internet has made it impossible not to ask questions or complain. Another difficulty is that the emotional impact of this type of job may lead to an emotional meltdown. Coping with tons of dissatisfied customers can work discouraging on long-term. Besides this, they also put their personal privacy at risk by exposing their real names in order to build up trust with the customers.

The question now rises whether community managing is really that important as it seems to become. Because of the tremendous value these companies get through the care of the company's image on the social networks, some say the profession of community manager will be found in every company over the long haul. This means specific training at colleges and universities will be given in the future. I personally think this might be the case, but one could ‘easily’ be a community manager without having followed specific courses. We’ve learned of our own how to use new media like PCs, e-mail and social networks. In my opinion, the practice of these new media became self-evident, and the same will happen to the use of social tools. At least, this may very well apply in small businesses. In this case, a specific course would be unnecessary. Big businesses, on the other hand, require focus on certain specific aspects of the job, making specific training programs quite useful. This once niche career field is now beginning to extend into specific areas of knowledge. But community management staffs are still very small and overworked.

We can conclude that with the upswing of the Internet everybody can express their opinion freely online and that is also what happens with brands. It is the community manager’s duty to make the link between consumers and the company by promoting online conversations about the brand among surfers. They help measure business goals, develop and expand the image and visibility of the brand on the internet and provide customers with real-time feedback. Community managing is much more than just playing on Facebook all day and even though it involves many challenges, there’s a bright future for this role.

Long live the community managers!