Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD) is almost here. Monday, January 28th will be the fourth annual celebration, initiated by Jeremiah Owyang. You can learn about the history and events of this day here. This day is dedicated to honoring the often-overlooked heroes of the online world—the dedicated people who maintain customer relationships, allowing both organizations and customers to grow and succeed through sharing knowledge.
Why should we have a day to celebrate this job? Many people don’t really know what a community manager does, so why is this role so special? The answer is simple. To show appreciation, you need to recognize the value that person brings to the organization. Here are 10 contributions I believe a talented community manager makes to both the organization and the community they serve:
1. Peerless host. Tireless attention to, care and feeding of the community’s members (customers and prospects) to ensure they are heard and their needs are met.
2. Tireless monitor. The work never stops. The dedicated community manager follows and logs on to the community after-hours, on weekends and holidays to make sure the community is humming.
3. Virtual concierge. Attention means more than checking posts. Community managers provide off-line support and engagement with members. Believe it or not, they pick up the phone, write personal notes, send little gifts and do research for their members.
4. Reference librarian. They sweat the details, remembering a wide range of facts about their members. This in-depth knowledge is the key to personal outreach within the community. Sam got a new job – congratulations! Sue had an issue with the product – was it resolved to her satisfaction?
5. Online coach. Community managers are the shepherds of member-created content. Member comments they encourage, articles they help refine or even edit. Just because the member is a senior professional doesn’t mean they can write well. Thanks to the community manager, the customer’s posts or articles read better and smarter!
6. Tech support whiz. They tackle the day-to-day, every day. Lost passwords, “help, I can’t find the X button?”, responding to the vague “it doesn’t work for me!” and always helping solve puzzle without judging the member.
7. Hail the members’ champion! They fight battles on behalf of the membership every day as the liaison with product development, customer care and sales to help get a member’s message across even when the feedback may be unwanted within the company.
8. Stats master. Quickly gathering on-the spot metrics and tracking data even when there are other pressing matters at hand. “Hi, I know it’s after 11am but can you pull some data together for the noon meeting?” Really? Yes … and they can do it.
9. Constant student. Tech never sleeps. They must always learn new tools and techniques to keep pace with the rapidly-changing techscape. The community manager is often expected to be the resident social media technologist, so they must know about every tool ever developed and have an opinion on its suitability.
10. Executive assistant for social. The hours they spend with executives and senior folks showing and teaching them how communities and social media “work”.
That’s ten, and the list could go on and on. I think these are just a few examples of why community managers need a day – or a year – of appreciation.
In case you are unfamiliar with the complexity of the community manager’s role, I have explored this topic in a number of past posts to better explain the nuances and challenges. Here are some examples of posts that focus on the details of community management.
Don’t ask community managers to be strategists was a controversial piece that looked at the need especially in larger organizations to hone in on the specific skills of the community managers and not assign too many hats to a single individual, thus rendering them unable to focus on customer care.
Social media manager vs online community manager – Same or different? tackled the challenge of trying to parse the two, often overlapping roles by focusing on performance metrics rather than job requirements.
A day in the life of a B2B online community manager is a perennial favorite about the specifics of working in the business-to-business world which holds different demands from consumer-facing online communities.
Here’s to all of you out there doing this important work. Happy Community Managers Appreciation Day!