Earlier this week, I did a blog post with this name on WebWorkerDaily talking about community management as a profession in preparation for my presentation at Oregon State University this afternoon.
The presentation covers several topics related to community management careers:
- Defining Community
- Community Manager Jobs (examples, job description and skills required, salaries)
- Guiding Principles and Best Practices
Several people have asked for the slides, so here are the ones I’m bringing with me to the presentation. As always, I may take it in a different direction depending on the questions from the attendees, but at least this gives me something to deviate from.
Dawn, thanks for sharing this slide show. Great coverage of what a community manager is and is not, where to find jobs and what is required.
Dawn, I’ve just discovered your website, and blog content. There’s lots here to digest. I particularly like the way you’ve aggregated your posts with the UberFeed. As a longtime Gypsy Blogger, with numerous content breadcrumb trails, I can see the value in creating the consolidated view. You’ve given me some ideas for further experimentation.
Dawn, your slides detailing what an Online Community Manager were very helpful. I have a traditional marketing operations background but I’m becoming more and more interested in social networking. I was always a huge fan of sites like 6degrees, Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn even before the economy completely soured. I hope my next opportunity incorporates them in some fashion!
Dawn,
Great slides (there were some very useful ones in the backup set as well). I know you mentioned ‘corporate/customer’ communities in your presentation, but do you cover ‘internal’ corporate communities? They can be very useful and powerful if run correctly. I ran such a community at Motorola (an internal clone of SourceForge.net), and it was successful at not only providing a place to collaborate, but as a means to ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas in a traditionally ‘stuffy’ company.
The transformative power of community is usually thought of as outward facing, but I think good companies can and should also develop inward facing versions as well.
Hope your presentation went well, and I’d be interested to read a blog post with some of your impressions of the questions you received during Q & A. Thanks!
Great slides and came at a perfect time for me.
I’m excited that so many people are finding the presentation interesting!
Guy – I agree that internal community management is also important. I briefly covered that topic in this blog post.
This is awesome Dawn! Great first lesson for interested clients and aspiring community managers.
Hi Dawn,
thanks for the great presentation.
Just one point of criticism: I really don’t like anything that promotes long working hours / ‘workaholic’ attitude – this is what gives employers the chance to exploit employees. Yes you can put in more hours than your colleagues, and yes it will lead to higher output but this is what we all hate about the rat race mentality. Fortunately plenty of companies out there promote a healthy work-life-balance e.g. short Friday’s, 4 day rotas etc.
In terms of community management, it’s better to have two well paid managers who work less but have time to live an active life outside the online space (and generally much more personable and agile as a consequence). Something employers and aspiring community managers should aim to achieve.
FM2030
Being an Online Community Manager, I found your slides to be very true. Some slides even reminded me of things I need to re-focus on.
Hi Dawn,
Thanks for sharing this, very useful for defining the community and the role within it. I’ve just been made the community manager for our site, so I’m looking around for relevant expert material, just like this!
Richard