What Are the Characteristics of a Great Community Manager
Posted by Tom Humbarger on August 27, 2009
The Community Roundtable and introNetworks hosted a live chat that covered this topic today.
Webchat Participants
The speakers included the following:
- Jim Storer (@jimstorer) from The Community Roundtable
- Rachel Happe (@rhappe) from The Community Roundtable
- Howard Wahlberg (@howardw) Member Services Director for the National Science Teachers Association
- Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) Director of Community for Radian6
- Mark Sylvester (@marksylvester) CEO of introNetworks
There was tremendous activity on Twitter during the call and you can find this thread by searching on the #introchat tag. Some of the more interesting tweets included:
- @keithburtis title means little, substance is everything…. need to link Social Indicators back to Boardroom speak
- @eyecube Care for a community, don’t *manage* it
- @maddiegrant The best community managers are people who care about people
- @MsMizz As community manager, ur looking for ur “cheese heads” the ones that are so engaged & passionate that they’ll put a cheese hat on
- @mrshasten Importance of a community manager: it’s like weeding the garden. You can’t just set up a community and neglect it
- @JohnMLee Great point from the Community Manager Webinar: Communities don’t want to be managed, they need to be nurtured
- @P_Lussier Community mgrs need to be “accessible & approachable; intensely human,” says @ambercadabra
- @SocialGeekMe being a community manager is not a “this is not my job” type of job.
- @spoonmovement #introchat – @ambercadabra says that being a community manager is “not for the faint of heart” and that it’s a hybrid of many disciplines
- @AdrianMabry Comm Mgr role follows 2 analogies – the ‘iceberg’ and the ‘duck’ analogies. Lot’s of activity that just isn’t glamorous
Several great links were discussed during the chat as well:
- The Community Manager Role Unplugged by Buzz Canuck
- The Ultimate Community Management FAQ by Amber Naslund
- What Defines a Community Manager by The Community Roundtable
- Importance of Active Community Management by Tom Humbarger
Jim solicited book recommendations at the end of the call from each of the participants and here is the short list:
- The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
- Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
- Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
- Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff
The recording of the chat is available at the introNetworks website and the slides are on Slideshare too.
Advertisement
Howard Wahlberg said
Also to expand on the networking charge aspect: measure the quality of the conversations, combine that with the net promoter score, and you begin to get a sense of members with a high networking charge.
Howard Wahlberg said
To expand on the garden idea: non profit IMO’s (individual membership associations) have always thought of themselves as gardens–walled gardens (see the work of Jeff deCagna on this) that keep members in and non members out. Until about 15 years ago, that is. Now, the concept is more of a lovely tended English garden in the middle of a riot of wild flowers and other cool resources. Separating the two is a low wall of azaleas with lots of entrances in and exits out. People can see the cool stuff inside the wall and can also dip out for other cool stuff on the outside of the wall.
IMO’s are communities.
Recent Links at Fast Wonder: Online Community Consulting said
[...] What Are the Characteristics of a Great Community Manager [...]
Confused said
Forgive me but are the slides supposed to have actual content in them that relates to the questions they ask? I ama new Community Manager and this would be immensely helpful. Should I just read the chat log or listen to the audo to get some real info?
Tom Humbarger said
Confused – you should read the chat log and listen to the audio to get the real info. The slides provide mostly speaker information and were used as the roadmap for the ‘free-form’ discussion.
Tom
introNetworks – The “Quiet” Social Network Software Company « Social Media Musings by Tom Humbarger said
[...] network and community software platform. It also turned out that introNetworks was hosting a web chat on community management with my friends Jim Storer and Rachel Happe from The Community Roundtable last week – so it [...]
My Best Community Management Blog Posts « Social Media Musings by Tom Humbarger said
[...] What Are the Characteristics of a Great Community Manager [...]