Basic Tasks a Community Manager should be doing

A Community Manager (or CM) is, as its proper name shows, a person who is in charge of managing a community (in this case a virtual one). The CM can manage one or more communities at the same time and its role is strongly linked to the persons that make up the Community, being his/her main goal to keep it alive and make it progress.

Manager: (From lat. gestor, -ōris).

• Person of a company involved in the management of it.
• Business ~ : Person who without having a mandate for it, looks after goods, businesses or third party interests in favor of the owner of them.

Community: (From lat. communĭtas, -ātis).

• Common quality (which not being private to anyone, belongs or extends to several).
• Group of people linked together by common interests or characteristics.

These definitions, taken from the Spanish Royal Academy of Language Dictionary describe the generic role of a Community Manager: “a person who looks after the goods or interests of a set of people linked together by a series of characteristics or common interests.”

The CM has 5 basic tasks that should never forget:

1. Listen: Has to keep up with the Community and listen carefully to the users in it. Has to read Blogs, Discussion Forums, Wikis, etc. related to the Community to discover user concerns and what they are saying about their Company, Product, Blog and/or Group. Always available in order to reinforce the group’s security.

2. Share and Comment: Always precisely, appropriately and without any delay. You'll always have something to say about the topics that are treated in the Community. The CM is the company's voice in the virtual world and must possess and use its common sense correctly. He/she must express the company’s opinion and must be committed to it, being an expert and an active defender of the values the institution represents. Always share because "collecting data is the first step towards wisdom, but sharing is the first step towards community"(Henry Louis Gates).

3. Report and Connect: Probably the most critical mission for a CM. The CM must be capable of reporting to and forwarding the information received in the Community to the necessary departments. To connect is one of the most important tasks of being a CM because he/she acts as a speaker announcing the needs of the Community members towards the core business and vice versa, being him/her the link between these and the appropriate person inside the different departments (Marketing, Public Relations, Engineering, IT, etc.). If, for example, a user claims more attention through the Social Network because he hasn’t received his membership card in a reasonable amount of time, it's the opportunity to review the process, find out why this happened and make it better. Or on the other hand, the company may want to know the opinion of some Community members on a given project before executing it (can't stop thinking here about the GAP logo issue!)

4. Feedback: Every single comment or opinion posted in a Community by any member is a great opportunity to discover what is going on outside the corporate environment. Comments and opinions build up the company's real image in the real world. Also the Community must be fed back with your own comments over the topics discussed so the members can see what the company thinks, and present the ideas and opinions regarding different topics in order to help members understand what is happening inside the institution.

5. Motivate, Dynamize/Energize and Innovate: To innovate is a basic or fundamental part of a Community because it’s evolving constantly, and the Innovation will come from the motivation the Community has because it’s the contribution of new ideas what drives people to do things in different ways. The success of a Community depends on its dynamism/energy degree built through motivation strategies and techniques; in the end what you should try to do is to make every single member feel part of the Community, a team member.

Other characteristics a good Community Manager should look for:

When using a Community

• Establish and measure success factors, goals and criteria.
• Establish some good Use Rules and Best Practices.
• Encourage and promote the use of the Community.
• Connect Community members between them, reinforcing the “sense of belonging to the Community”.
• Contribute creating content in the Community periodically.
• Extend the Community and encourage its use through other Social Networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
• Be a forerunner and an active advocate of the Community.
• Be a visible mediator for the Community without blocking or suffocating it.
• Create posts in Blogs, Forums, etc. so the Community members understand that the CM is also a member, has the same level of interaction.

Towards the Organization

• Coordinate the collection, description and analysis of content or functionality requirements requested by Community members and prioritize them.
• Communicate precisely, efficiently, concisely and clearly the requirements requested both from the Community members towards the organization and vice versa.

Personal skills

• High written and oral communication skills.
• Technical knowledge on Web applications.
• Be a leader with team work capabilities.
• Be patient, objective and peaceful/serene.
• Be very tolerant: a Community is made up of different individuals with different convictions and education.
• Have experience in the use of Social Networks to be able to train less experienced users.

These are some basic tasks a Community Manager should be doing. Do you have others? Please leave your comments below and SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE! Thanks!