The topic of online community team organizational structures seems to be getting increasingly hot.
The two main questions seem to be:
- Where does the community team “belong” in a corporate structure?
- What are the roles on that team?
I’ve explored the former a couple of times, so I thought I would spend some time on the roles of the team, and in particular, the community manager. I would really love to hear what you think about this. I know leaving comments on this blog can be a bit of a pain (working on it), so if you have any issues, please email me.
The role of Community Manager seems to be evolving in the following ways:
- The role is less about moderation and more about product management.
Most thriving communities need little action by the moderators. Management tools are (in general) sufficient enough to combat spam, and most communities have empowered the members with tools to flag abusive or inappropriate posts. Simply put: with adequate and findable community guidelines, active moderation can (and should) be in the hands of the members. strategy, features, UX, platform, budgets, marketing (and a hundred other things). In short, very much like the role of a product manager. - An expectation of communicating value (ROI) rather than stats
Community managers are now expected to not just report stats (page views, membership growth), but also to report on other points of value, and to contextualize that value, at least in part, in terms of progress on business goals. - Community managers are expected to grow relationships with the influencers in the community
Community managers are increasingly expected to know who their lead members are, and what effect their influence has on other community members. - Community managers should be thinking about “portability” of their team
In some companies, sources of community funding, and even the reporting structure of the community team is changing every few quarters. We live in evolutionary times, so it is good for community managers to reach out to senior staff on teams outside their immediate reporting structures.
In some cases, seasoned community managers are evolving into the Community Director, with several functions reporting in to him / her. My Community dream team would look something like this (YMMV):
- Moderators
- UX
- Analytics
- Content Manager / Community Editor
- Marketing
- Developer / Ops
I’d like to hear from the community managers out there. What are you experiencing in your day to day work? What am I missing here?
I think advertising is really starting to fall in here as well. The advertisers we deal with more and more expect the community managers to know what works & will be a good fit.
Building more participation from the advertisers (vs just monetization) is also a directive the community gives to the manager so it comes from both sides of the fence.
What about an evangelist role? Does that fall into your second bullet? In some environments, there is a need for the cheerleader type – someone who gets it – understands the value – and can help others ’see the light’. Perhaps not the case in some shops, but I think critical for those slow to adopt a community mentality.
-LD
How easy is it for web editors / web content specialists who deal with traditional ‘broadcast / top down’ content to make the jump to community or user generated content management? What skills are transferable or failing that, what skills are required for a community manager?
Bill I agree with several of your comments and just wanted to add that there is a trend for a deep understanding of human behavior that is critical to this role. These individuals often need to have a high degree of emotional intelligence, selfless and strong leadership qualities in order to be effective in these roles.
Good point Miles. Several marketing folks I’ve spoken with lately admit that participation in the communities they are advertising to is one of their biggest challenges, since it takes a lot of work to build and maintain relationships.
I find it refreshing to hear marketers acknowledging this point.
Hi Len,
Absolutely, the community manager has to be an evangelist for community activities, and an advocate on behalf of the community members back to the organization.
With regard to the question about having content specialists “jump” to community management roles… the short answer is “it depends”.
I would think the switch would be relatively smooth if the potential manager was already a participant in the community, and understood the communities needs and motivations. What skills are required for a community manager? That’s another blog post