What kinds of jobs are companies hiring for right now? In the move towards a social media world, we've seen a series of hires in the past week for variations on the theme "community manager." Companies are hiring, candidates are hunting and competition for the best people and positions is heating up.
More than just customer service or PR, new community managers online need a combination of old fashioned (authentic) communication skills and the ability to leverage new technologies for maximum impact. It's a skill set that appears to be getting increasing recognition.
What's a community manager? We wrote extensively about the position this summer after speaking to a number of community managers and their employers. We explained the work as follows:
A community manager is someone who communicates with a company's users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to clarify and amplify the work of all parties. They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for.
It's fun but grinding work and something that's much easier said than done. Highly capable community managers are hard to find.
Recently we've reported on hires for the position at open source web conferencing startup DimDim, gaming company Sega and a promotion of technology journalist Mathew Ingram into an online community position at the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. We wrote about the community manager of P2P Social Change startup Zazengo jumping ship to a larger organization (Campaign Consultants) and we've spoken to two startups this week who are looking hard to community managers. We've also heard from scores of people who want a community management job.
Above: Kevin Micalizzi of DimDim, Mathew Ingram from the Globe and Mail and Sega's Kellie Parker
It's a hot job. We only expect it to get hotter. Every smart business now communicates online, with customers, with employees and with the world at large. Skilled specialists in facilitating these conversations are great people to have on staff.
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Thank you for sharing this information. It has been very informative. I will share it on my own networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and New Routes blog. We are a team of 5 working on a national project that definitely benefits of having all of us thinking as community managers. But, I could not agree with you more about being hard work. We are lucky to have two of the best directors of media: Gale Petersen and Catherine Stifter.
Our project is called New Routes to Community Health. The Goal of New Routes is to improve the lives of new immigrants through media created for and by immigrants.
In addition, we are an online community of those committed to improving the lives of immigrants by using media. The website highlights best practices, offers a showcase for locally created, immigrant related media, and is used to help build the capacity of partners to use new media and online technologies to improve their communities. Check us out!
Best,
Brenda Gonzalez
www.newroutes.org
Posted by: Brenda Gonzalez | November 6, 2008 7:58 PM
Marshall, great post. I'm the Community Manager at Clearspring Technologies. It's probably the most fun i've ever had at a job but I'm also working harder then ever.
I probably get a couple e-mails/phone calls a month from folks asking if I know anyone who'd be able to fill a community manager role. It's definitely becoming more popular. But... at the same time, I go to A LOT of events and tell people I'm a community manager at their first response is like "huh?".
From time to time I also see the dangerous trend where you have the job of online community management being offloaded to a pr or social media agency. To me at least, it seems really disingenuous to have someone who doesn't work for your company being the face of your company to your customers.
Posted by: Justin Thorp | November 7, 2008 11:38 AM
Justin, thanks for commenting - I was actually checking you out as an example of a community manager for this post. Found you via Twellow.com. Awesome to see you show up here!
Marshall, yeah saw you in my MyBlogLog. Thanks for stopping by!
If you're a company that's looking for a community manager, one thing I'd look for is someone who's really passionate about your product.
Being a community manager does take a toll on you and the only thing that keeps you going when the Red Bull and coffee wears off is the fact that you believe in what you're doing and really love the community that you're serving.
To quote my friend Gary Vaynerchuk, you have to be willing to "give, give, give until your face falls off."
Posted by: Justin Thorp | November 11, 2008 7:05 AM
As a Community Marketing Manager, I'm actually going against the trend by trying to make myself redundant by embedding the skills I've developed throughout the company!
Posted by: Dan Thornton | November 23, 2008 3:58 PM
Well, I am an Online Community Manager and teh job is quite complex, a combo of all five of these, really: http://onlinemarketerblog.com/2008/11/13/5-new-social-media-jobs-you-will-fill-in-the-next-5-years/
There are pros and cons, but it is definitely a lot of work and most CEOs don't really understand what it is and how to evaluate it.
Posted by: Coturnix | November 23, 2008 4:01 PM
Great post. I've leveraged my social media work into a few freelance opportunties but the community manager position, while desirable, always seems elusive.
Those community managers that are getting hired, what is it that is making them stand out among their peers?
Posted by: Erin | November 23, 2008 4:06 PM
This is great news for those of us who have known for a while how big social media is. Hopefully, more and more businesses will invest in these typs of positions.
Posted by: Scott Mahler | November 28, 2008 8:25 PM
Hi Marshall,
I'm the Communities Product Manager for Lonely Planet. Just wanted to concur that there's a lot of wisdom in your posts around this evolving specialty.
Erin, to your question - in my experience it's a combination of outstanding, innate communication talents; an intuitive understanding of how people collide in affirmative and challenging ways; resilience and empathy; a gift for storytelling and a twist of lemon. Reflexivity is important, and a grasp (but not an especially dogmatic one!) of digital marketing and SMO is an asset.
Our team at Lonely Planet is shape-shifting to accommodate the right balance of community managers, liaisons (think content mentors), moderators (in-house risk mitigation specialists with community management nouse) and other collaborative enablers. It's an area we hope and expect will grow considerably in the next five years - with us learning all the way :)
Posted by: Venessa Paech | December 10, 2008 9:35 PM
One thing that draws me to the position is the diverse number of skills involved. It seems like it's less a job that requires years of experience honing a particular skills and instead places value on bringing everything together in the company to communicate a sort of holistic message about helping the customer, benefits of the product, and represent the companies' vision of the future and its industry.
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It only shows jobs from employer websites and these are often not advertised. It has a lot more jobs then any other website.
Try it out, hope you like it as much as i do
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