Essential Skills of a Community Manager

July 23, 2008 · Comments

party Community manager is a role that more companies will adopt in the coming years. Jeremiah Owyang provide a huge list of companies who have such a champion already, and more recently gave businesses a scorecard for whether startups should have a community manager.


Here, I’ve talked about managing a community and what it takes. I’ve discussed what I want in a social media expert. I’ve even written about how we might do community management wrong. Here are some pieces of the puzzle that I think are vital to the role, and to its adoption for most businesses. Tell me what you think.

The Essential Skills of a Community Manager

The best community managers are like a good party host mixed with a fine restaurant host. I make a distinction because a party is more personal and a restaurant requires their host to think with a business mind. Community managers need both skillsets in equal space. A party host will connect people together, praise incoming guests appropriately, maintain conversations throughout the event, and see everyone safely off with a smile and a wave. A restaurant host must be certain the ambiance is just right, know that the kitchen is functioning appropriately, and help the rest of the staff pull off a flawless dining experience. The blend of the two mindsets suit a company’s community manager well.

Community managers must be experienced communicators. One thing a communicator needs to do well is LISTEN. Part of that involves building sites and community spaces such that people have a place to engage you directly, and part of that means using listening tools to understand what’s being said about you elsewhere. Upon hearing and understanding, a community manager should engage with their own authentic voice, not with a marketing message.

Community managers are ambassadors and advocates in one. This is complex, but a community manager’s first responsibility is to her employer, and yet, she must convey the voice of the people (customers and other stakeholders) such that the company fully understands the mood of the marketplace, the needs of the people, and the customer’s intentions. Further, the community manager must clearly understand the community’s position in the marketplace and communicate that in such a way that customers don’t feel they are being fed a line.


Community managers are bodyguards and protectors. Some communities find a bad apple in their midst. A solid community manager will understand the difference between a vocal critic and a curmudgeonly troll. Knowing when to remove someone politely and quickly from the party is an important matter. The rest of your guests will appreciate this. Just be sure that you know the difference.

Community managers must build actionable reports. It’s not good enough to send emails to your leadership saying, “We had 54 comments on that last blog post.” Metrics and reports appropriate to your organization are necessary to weigh the value of these efforts. Understanding the goals of your organization’s use of social media, and especially the relationship marketing expressed within having a community manager position in the first place are the key to understanding what to measure (I have several measurements I’ve communicated to companies over the last few months, each reasonably different).

Community managers cultivate internal teams for further support. As community managers are the face of the organization (or “a” face) to your online customers, being sure to promote internal champions, leaders, and other teammates becomes important. One reason is that you want your customers and stakeholders to realize the humanity within the company. Another reason is more for the company’s benefit: should the community manager leave the organization, some level of continuity might be salvaged.


Your Take

I’ve given you my ideas on what I find essential to a community manager role. I’m curious how you’d apply this to your needs, and/or if you can see what I might have missed. Your thoughts are valued.

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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

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  • Chris, these are all good qualities and generalizations. They are also idealistic. Rarely are community managers in an ideal situation. What I mean by this is that often times a community manager must fight internally for acceptance, work hard to get data, and push/finesse internal developers and team member to help build infrastructure that is needed for them to do the proper reporting. Reporting in this case covers not only metrics, but also helping the internal team members to understand the importance of the learnings they come up with in the social space. Weights and Metrics need to be given to certain actions and findings and a community manager must be able to proove concept and validate their role in the organization.

    so when a community manager says she would like to use twitter the boss is going to ask why? There has to be a better answer than "because it's good for PR or good for researching information" ROI needs to be shown.

    One of the things I see when looking at the job descriptions for community managers I see that the role includes Marketing, PR, Biz Dev, and more. Depending on the organization you my have to slowly integrate with these departments that are already formed. Social media folks tend to be VERY idealistic. Yep, it would be great if organizations were fully transparent and none of them had internal communication problems, but when someone finds that company they NEED to let me know.

    A community manager need to make small wins and build on those wins. Prove ROI, and validate their role. If the Social Media Sphere continues to say that ROI is unattainable in community management....the profession will die. It's just a bump in the road folks. I know were all smart enough to figure this out!

    @keithburtis

    Social Media Community Manager for @BestBuyRemix
  • I'am your fan
  • Good work guy!
  • Thanks, those are quite helpful tips. It seems that you have some experience in managing communities, as you are not just pointing out the usual marketing crap every first year business student without any live experience will tell you as if it was the bible.
  • andar909
    hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you, sir.
  • This is such a timely post as I've recently become a Community Manager so all of this is great brain food.

    @Webconomist- I fully agree about the advocacy aspect. Thanks for mentioning this.

    @Samantha- I love that you mention 'not looking like a poseur'. It's really those who are authentic people who can really thrive in the role of Community Managers.

    @chrisbrogan- You rock. You just plain rock!

    This post helped me to find Connie Bensen's great blog and helped to inspire me to create my own blog on the topic.

    Thanks again everyone!
  • rodica
    Someone once said that the best quality to have in a community manage is "situational awareness". The term comes from the military, but it's referring to understanding the characteristics of the situation and being able to predict outcomes of your actions/other people's actions into the future.
  • One of the most important jobs of the CM is to connect the right internal people with customers and let them work it out.
  • Customer service!

    Having a strong customer service background can pay off huge. The skills you can learn in the customer service trenches - listening, solving problems, deligating and connecting - all come into play as a Community Manager.
  • Paul Acosta
    Great post Chris. I'm also passionate about this great analogy by Heather Champ, Community Manager at Flickr that I found at Connie's blog:

    "Being a Community Manager is like being a pinata. People beat you with sticks and you still need to give them candy".

    Thanks again for your point of view. Can't wait to hear what my friends have to say when they see your post.
  • @ Liz. I wonder though, if an ombudsman type would make it as a community manager. You've got the age-old newspaper culture at play there, which is counterintuitive to the needs of those on the web. I'm not saying that they couldn't fill our shoes, but there is a difference in skill-set in my opinion. There is an arrogance in that industry that has led to its demise. I was charged with integration as a multimedia editor at a newspaper, and it was a tough sell most days. There were people who "got it" and editors who were completely on board and then there was the rest. I bet that being immersed in that culture could have major effects and could take some serious deprogramming.
  • @Samantha - Great point as well.
  • @Pamela - Same here :-) !
    @Peer - Excellent points! It's absolutely critical to have the company behind your efforts. The best community managers will also be change agents within their organization.

    "In other words, there has to be an institutional change of emphasis towards a more honest and open regime otherwise (rightly or wrongly) any efforts by CM are seen by the community as little more than lip service." - Beautifully stated!
  • Liz
    Actually, this position almost sounds like an ombudsman, a position that many newspapers use to have as a liaison between readers and the publisher. I attended a university where I had a conflict with a departmental decision and I spoke with a campus ombudsman who told me my rights and options as a student but also filled me in on the position of the university who, of course, was his employer. But he also acted as an advocate for student and staff who had grievances.

    I think a community manager also has a difficult role, straddling two worlds: lean too much towards the business owner and there is the danger of being a corporate shill...take up the users' cause and one becomes a consumer advocate. The job sounds like it takes a great deal of finesse to avoid alienating either side of the "conversation."
  • Great info, thanks!
  • I think you're dead on in your assessment. As community managers, we have to genuinely care about the community and have an unwavering commitment to make it grow. An amazing amount of patience and high tolerance for drama are both handy attributes as well. Really, it's not a job that ends when you walk out of the office or leave your computer. You have to have ideas and find ways to execute them quickly. And I would also add that you have to take risks. Try something new every day until you find the right fit. Then, start looking for the next.
  • Great list for building Best Practices for building a Social Media practice.

    I would only add;

    An advocate for the brand, with an understanding of brand values, systems and the brand one is representing.
  • From my years as a community manager I found that it encompassed most of skills listed in Chris's post, but one important issue not mentioned was being able to go to internal stakeholders and get them to act, for the good of the community. We CMs can talk the talk (perhaps very openly and honestly), but the company behind us also needs to walk the walk for it to be a success.

    Community Managers can listen, but a lot of the time they're seen as conduits to the people that the community *really* want to reach - and if the company at large doesn't react then the community isn't working, usually despite the CM's best efforts.

    Yes, personal experience taught me this, but if right person (whether it's a director, a manager or heck, perhaps even a janitor in some situations) doesn't understand the power of the community then no amount of listening, party-hosting and bridge-building from the CM will help.

    In other words, there has to be an institutional change of emphasis towards a more honest and open regime otherwise (rightly or wrongly) any efforts by CM are seen by the community as little more than lip service.

    Great article though!
  • @Jesse - glad to find a kindred Community Manager philosophy spirit :)

    @Samantha - you are so right. The way a company empowers a CM is twofold; give them access to the right information and give them the authority to represent it in the community. The CM must have access to the happenings in product development, customer service, marketing efforts, (as you point out) legal issues, etc. Without that they are just having the wrong (or at least uninformed) conversations.
  • Nice post. Bottom line, community managers need to be able to act as bridges. Listen to their members to see what they need and then help them find it. Listen to what others outside their community need and then connect people in the community to the needs that exist outside the community. They need to have feet in both camps. They need to look outward and inward. Just serving their members will be great for the members but they won't grow. Just serving the customers outside the community is great for business but the people will not see the value and they will show their loyalty with their feet and walk away. Keeping a healthy balance and being willing to ask for help to share the load as well as the wealth of being a community leader are keys to growing the community while delivering value. If the community is not delivering value to its members or its customers, then I am not sure what they are doing or how long they will hang on. Thanks for getting this discussion going. Obviously there is a lot of passionate individuals that have a lot to share and say about this important role and the people that do this kind of work. Keep up the great posts.
  • Wow! This conversation is huge and all over the place. What I love the most is that you're engaging each other. Keep up the amazing work. You rule. : )
  • Jesse, Pamela -- I'd add my $.02 here onto your thoughtful posts, that is the Community Mangers need to have a very clear vision and logistical understanding of what the company's legal structures involve. What does the Privacy Policy say? What's the TOS like?

    Secondly, I'd add that a true community manager can lead users to content and services that they want them to follow without being a poser.
  • Exactly Pamela, thanks for finishing my comment for me. :-)

    I had started down that path, but my comment was already getting too long. Great, great points.

    I think the key is found in your comment about your own community managers - they understand the larger mission of the business. That needs to be communicated, and once you are comfortable with their understanding, you've got to let them be themselves. If you don't, you can't expect them to feel like they are really the voice/face of the company that they need to be comfortable being.
  • @Jessie - great point. And just to expand on my earlier point, I think it is also important that the company be comfortable having the community manager be the face and voice of the company. I am a business owner and there are times when our community managers (not their official titles - we are a small business, so we all wear many hats) are handling conversations a little differently than I would. I'm fine with that because they are very smart, enthusiastic and entertaining communicators who understand our larger mission. So I trust them to represent us well and I just stay out of the way (except when I get excited by a conversation and decide to jump in myself).
  • Question for CMs:

    I, personally, love brutal honesty and business people being themselves, uncensored.

    With your personal and work life coming so close together, where do YOU draw the line when it comes to honesty, humor/sarcasm, and the language you use?

    I believe it really depends on the many factors of the community/customers you 'serve'. But, does anyone follow a general rule? I really just try to be myself without knowingly offending anyone.

    Would love to hear your thoughts,

    Emil
    @urbanmelt
  • Neil- I stand corrected. I probably would try to turn him to the good side of the force, as you pointed out. : )
  • skyle
    Hi Chris,

    Thanks for the post. I love #1.

    Having worked in the restaurant business for years, it's a great analogy and way to think about managing a community. It's the ideal social business setting, serving up community with a fork and spoon.

    And when did we all stop listening? Listening is underrated. I feel as though everyone is waiting to speak, to be heard,...hmm
    I've been practicing just listening for a couple of months-actually paying attention to this. The result of which I hear many people wondering, why I am "just listening?"

    @Lee Kent good points on facilitating introductions to/in your community! A key point and seems forgotten at times, yes? Chris is very good at leading by example here, connecting others to each other brings them back to the community through you, your company, your community, etc.
  • Great post Chris, and AWESOME comments everyone.

    One point I would add is that Community Managers need to be comfortable becoming the face and voice of the company.

    This sounds like a given, but it's so important. As a Community Manager, you want to make sure that you REALLY want to be the person customers call out by name. You want to make sure that you really are an advocate for your company, and deeply interested in its success and the success of its customers.

    Otherwise, you won't fight for the things worth fighting for. You won't go the extra mile to make sure one single customer feels like the most important person in the world. You won't put in the time needed to nurture relationships, and you will have a very hard time delivering the value that you should be.
  • To add more to the listening is an important quality thread, I think a company can gain a great deal from just taking the time to listen to what is going on within their online communities. I have seen first hand how listening can be very beneficial. I saw how there was a groundswell of a movement at a company and their users. The users were growing unsatisfied with the product, and were beginning to build there own separate sub sub community. By listening into the conversations and threads online the company was able to try and combat that movement and push an outreach campaign tot he users to help gain back their trust.

    I say ALWAYS take the time to listen, then react. Let the users tell you what their issues or problems are, then develop your strategy to help soften the blow, or head off those issues.
  • I absolutely agree, with double-fudge, whipped cream, cherry on top emphasis on "listening skills." One fault of traditional marketers and salespeople is that we work so hard on crafting our message that we forget to listen first. These four words I repeat over and over when I teach communication skills: SHUT UP AND LISTEN.

    We could all use a little more listen in our lives, community managers or not.

    Now, to tailor my resume to make all these skills shine...
  • My experience as a community manager has shown me that though many may come to the site, some are reluctant to speak. A Good community manager must also provide some good content and a good guest list then tell everyone about it. They also need to facilitate introductions when called for.
  • @Chris Love the idea on blogging about lessons learned. Might be something Amie and I could collaborate on.

    @Connie Really liked your post on CM responsibilities and goals. Nice to have a checklist of sorts.
  • Last comment, I promise... To Neil's point above- we've helped the curmudgeonly troll (I wouldn't characterize them as that, just providing a point of reference) a few times and turned them into advocates for our community. Example: A
    member posts something about his/her company- an obvious plug and blatant advertisement. We give them a gentle email reminding them of our guidelines, but ask for their expertise
    (a post/comment) in another area. They come back with an apology and an offer to give us their insight elsewhere. Lesson for us: Start a conversation...see what happens..
  • neilgorman
    Hey Chris et. all,

    I think that this is a great post for several reasons.

    1. Chris you do these things. Many bloggers (IMHO) will often blog about something that they don't do, or did just a few (maybe even only one) times.
    2. The information gave a non-community manager a good idea of what it is that a community manager does.
    3. There was info that a person who is currently a community manager could find useful.

    Good show sir!

    However, there is one part that I do kind of diaagree with.


    Community managers are bodyguards and protectors. Some communities find a bad apple in their midst. A solid community manager will understand the difference between a vocal critic and a curmudgeonly troll. Knowing when to remove someone politely and quickly from the party is an important matter. The rest of your guests will appreciate this. Just be sure that you know the difference.


    Personally I feel that a community manager should try to HELP the curmudgeonly troll, before politely and quickly removing them from the party.

    I say this because a person who is an asshole, if shown the error of their ways, can sometimes turn into an amazing member of a community.

    This (dealing with a curmudgeonly troll) is no easy task, but it is something that I believe people who are focused on community NEED to do. (In fact I'd even go so far as to say that they need to do it more than they might like to.)

    I'm guessing from the context of this post that Chris would agree. That a person who would meet his definition of a curmudgeonly troll would be a person who he (or another good community manager) has all ready attempted to help overcome his / her curmudgeonly ways.

    But, I wanted to call attention to it all the same.

    Peace!

    -N
  • Tyson, I'm looking at Spire now...very nice site. I understand what your driving in your comments here. As a CM, you know it's always good to stir the pot!
  • Some context might help, sorry! (see above comments)
    I run the community for Spire - www.spire.com or @spire_intheknow
  • Amie and Chris (now looking at Drew Olanoff's blog)

    I figured I might be stirring the pot a bit when posting my comment. :-) I actually don't think skill set and passions vary TOO much, I think it might simply boil down the company itself hiring the community manager, what they may look for in a candidate, perhaps? (I posted something earlier on Connie's facebook page about this)

    And, to your point, the nimbleness of the company is important here. Something, I think Dell is quite good at...
  • Chris,

    My personal feeling is that Gen Y tend to make excellent community managers. They understand community at a very inherent level.

    However-I never saw ANYONE recruiting for social media type positions at one of the biggest universities in the US (UT Austin). Why do you think this might be?
  • Tyson Goodridge, interesting thought about your two types of community managers. While I don’t disagree, the difference might not be in the passion or the skill set, but the nimbleness of the organization itself. Community Management is always pushing new boundaries so education and evangelism in a larger organization is more rigorous and continuous than a smaller company.

    Great article & comments,
    Amie Paxton
    Dell Channel Community Manager
  • Great article so businesses big and small. Our community manager plays a key role in not only managing our communities on our web property (www.weddingwire.com), but off property as well (Facebook, Myspace, etc).

    Our community manager's role is also to gain new registered users, not just site visitors, which is crucial to our business. Additionally, we provide advice and tips to visitors so the position is an authority on our industry as well (we're in the wedding industry), which gives credibility in a personal way.
  • Wow. What a great bunch of ideas here.

    @Sol - super great point about making people feel like they're #1. That's vital.

    @Pamela - how could I forget? This goes nowhere without internal support and champions.

    @Tina - great point. It's definitely not a marketing job to be a community manager. It's someone with a strong understanding of the products and services, an understanding of customer service, *and* a marketing sense.

    @Kara - are you blogging on what you're learning as a community manager? Curious what kinds of lessons learned you've come up with, etc.

    @Richard - I say skilled communicators because there are lots of ways to say things wrong. There are plenty of ways to anger your customer base. Empathy and listening are great, but I think there has to be both sides to form the full equation.

    @Jeroen - that's quite a write-up. Thanks for sharing that. I read through to your site and now might even pick up the book.

    @Lois - well said. Making meaning is really one of the things I try to do the most with my own site. I can see that being valuable to a community trying to understand an environment.

    @Tyson - Interesting. You're right, of course. It's different being someone representing Dell than it is to be representing FriendFeed, for instance. I think of Drew Olanoff as a great community guy for smaller companies. I can't see him running JetBlue or anything.

    @Frank- wow! I bet there's tons of learning from running things at Monster. Thanks for sharing the link.

    @Connie - by now, if community managers aren't reading you as a matter of habit, they're missing out. Thanks for all you've done in the space.
  • A community manager needs to be very well-organized. As Community Manager for Elastic Lab, I'm helping them build a nationwide network of filmmakers to draw from for local or geograpically-diverse paying projects. This means I'm interacting in a lot of different places online where filmmakers might be hanging out, and I'd look like an idiot if I didn't recognize people I've interacted with on one forum when on a second site. (I'm sure that day will come, but Highrise + a strong memory keeps me straight.)

    Also, you're boring if all you do is talk about the company you work for, no matter how exciting it is. A community manager needs to be well-rounded. I passionately love Elastic Lab, but find it most successful to connect with people when we have multiple shared interests beyond filmmaking - my love of Guinness or Ethiopian food, a geographic area, a recent vacation, etc. We're all humans at core, and there's nothing better than social media to remind us of this.
  • I agree that communication & listening are key to the role. I recently put up a list of Responsibilities & Goals that your readers may be interested in
    http://conniebensen.com/blog/2008/07/17/communi...
  • Chris this is a great article on the Community Manager. I agree with the notion that the community manager needs to cultivate internal teams for further support. It is very beneficial to have the team approach when building a community. I have found that when I worked at Monster.com there was a lot of value added when we added multiple people into the mix when we built out our user community. One additional benefit is that the company can then divide and conquer when it comes to addressing community member issues. It worked very well for us at Monster.com, and I have just written a post about it on my blog at http://www.frankgorton.com called The Power of Communities - Insight from working at Monster.com

    Thanks for the great post and discussion.
  • Very timely piece Chris- thanks.

    I think there are two types of community managers, because I think there can be two (and plenty more) types of communities. Skill sets (imho) are slightly different.

    Community Manager for a large company (Dell, IBM, etc)
    Community Manager for a community-based company - Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc)

    A large company needs a great communicator, and to what Pamela says above, the conviction to have tricky conversations- someone who can really balance company goals with a good sense of personality. Someone who can dance along in the larger corporate world.

    A community manager at a smaller community-based company needs to have above skills, but someone who LOVES the content, and is slightly more entrepreneurial (maybe because he or she is given more latitude at a smaller company?) He/she is passionate about say, food, travel, or widgets and can call on that passion to keep conversations going, and perhaps stir the pot from time to time.
  • Beyond metrics and reports, I think community managers need to be meaning makers. What does the community activity "mean" to a business? Are there emerging problems that deserve a closer look? Are there things that community members really care about that the company has paid little attention to in the past? Is there a new customer segment emerging that presents opportunities? One reason that the community manager position is that you really need to know business -- and you need to have those great social skills too.
  • The lessons from the famous facilitation methodology 'The Skilled Facilitator' ('TSF') might be useful for Social Media community managers.

    This model is primarily focussed on improving the working processes of groups within professional organizations.
    However, after reading the book I think some of the ideas might be applicable to community managers. To give you an idea, you can use elements from TSF such as:

    - 'Group Effectiveness model':
    ' .... The model helps us to identify when groups are having problems, identify the causes that generate the problems, and begin to identify where to intervene to address the problems. .... '

    - 'Ground rules for Effective Groups'
    '.... By understanding the ground rules you can quickly
    identify dysfunctional group behavior so that you can intervene on it. .... '

    - 'A process for agreeing on how to work together'
    ' .... Facilitation and facilitative leadership involve developing a relationship with a group - a relationship in
    which the group gives you permission to help them because
    they consider you expert and trustworthy. .... '

    You can read a summary of 'The Skilled Facilitator' at my blog (including links to TSF site):
    http://jeroendemiranda.wordpress.com/2008/07/20...

    Please feel free to comment on my comment! Does anybody have experience with 'The Skilled Facilitator', or similar techniques? Do you think it makes sense to apply this to online community manager's work?
  • I'm not sure community managers need to be experienced communicators. Age and experience do not necessary equal the ability to listen. I see that as a distinct skill that can be possessed by anyone with the right empathy for who they are communicating with.
  • Great tips Chris. I like the 'party hostess' analogy. It illustrates how customers and the business can both be attended to in the same space.

    Another thought: A good community manager is an advocate, ambassador, AND brings a unique perspective to the community. Managing a community you don't have a genuine interest in would be a bit of a challenge.

    Kara Krautter
    Dell Small Business Community Manager
  • A community manager must also understand all aspects of the product from the back- end, marketing, as well as the community. The CM serves as a balance between all three and can determine the type of tools that users need. One thing i learned early on was that tools must fulfill a need. Otherwise, you will have cool tools that don't make any sense and its just a wasted effort.
  • Not a skill, but an essential for a good community manager is to be empowered by their organization. They need to have very public, spontaneous conversations; sometimes shiny happy ones, sometimes trickier ones. Not an easy string for many companies to cut, but the only way for real conversation and communities to evolve.
  • The great community manager is able to match the importance of the bottom line with the requirement of providing customers with a feeling of being #1.

    He or she is an advocate for the customer while being able to discern what is realistic ahead of time.
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