1) A Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to representthe customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and beingactive in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporatecommunity as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers byresponding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private andin public.
2) Brand Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promoteevents, products and upgrades to customers by
using traditional marketingtactics and conversational discussions
. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offergood products.
3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
This tenet, which is both
editorial planning and mediation
serves theindividual 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 thecommunity
. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within thecommunity, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimesremoving them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorialstrategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internalstakeholders 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 forgathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way andpresenting it to product teams. This may involve formal product requirementsmethods from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships betweenproduct teams and customers. The opportunity to build better products andservices through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases,customer communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.
Ongoing Facilitation
: A community manager is an active participant within thecommunity to answer questions, deal with trolls or other abuses, explain howthings work, monitor the content closely, and much more. It can also meanwalking a very fine line between the community and the company byrepresenting the company in community discussions and representing the needsof the community when working inside the company.
Content Creation
: In any community, content needs to stay fresh and currentregardless of whether you are talking about code releases or other content.People will wander away from a community that looks stale or inactive. This alsoinvolves working with others to create content by encouraging them to blogabout their areas of expertise relevant to the developer community.
Evangelism
: Getting the word out about your community can take a number of forms depending on the type of community. In general this can be served bytalking to people (customers and other interested parties), blogging, speaking atconferences, and being actively involved in related communities.
Leave a Comment