What Makes a Great Online Community Manager?

When I first donned the title in early 2008, "Community Manager" was still a relatively new term -- so new, in fact, that when I asked for a job description prior to accepting the position, my soon-to-be-boss had to do quite a bit of research before he could formulate a cohesive definition. It isn't that the community management didn't exist until that point; it was simply known by other names, often a smaller responsibility of someone in a different department (for example, marketing).

As the web becomes increasingly social, of course, that can no longer stand. Just in the last year, the demand for (and awareness of) community managers has exploded. As Mashable author Meghan Peters put it in her recent piece, 4 Community Management Predictions for 2012:

Community management, an industry still in its infancy, came a long way in 2011. Many businesses no longer ask “What does a community manager do, and do I need one?” but rather “What makes a great community manager, and when can I hire one?”

While I can't tell you when you can hire a great community manager (after all, I won't be on the market for a while...), I can shed some light on the first part of the question. What makes a really kickass community manager fabulous at the job? I've come to believe it takes a very particular kind of person to survive--let alone excel--in this profession. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as being friendly and moderately tech-savvy.

The Anatomy of a Good Community Manager

From head to toe:

• Farsightedness - What you do online today affects you (and your brand) tomorrow. A great community manager looks ahead, evaluating potential consequences before acting, and sets aside knee-jerk reactions in favor of measured responses.


• Sharp nose - Nose, intuition... Call it what you will, where the internet is concerned, the ability to sniff out a rat is indispensable. Even with all the back-end tools available to you, there will be times when the evidence is inconclusive and a judgment call has to be made. In these moments, a good BS-o-meter is all you've got.


• Silver tongue - Much of a community manager's duties center around communication, both internal (with team members and other departments) and user-facing (both on- and off-site). Delivering information clearly and concisely is important, as is the tone in which it's imparted.


• Six arms - "Oh, come on! I've only got two hands!" just ain't gonna cut it. Multitasking is not optional. As community manager, you need to be in six places at once. Not only that, but you need to be doing six different things in those six different places. Someone who needs to work on a task start-to-finish before moving on to the next one simply isn't going to make it.


• Strong stomach - Even if you don't work at a user-generated content site like HubPages, you're bound to see (and read) some graphic nastiness in this occupation. You need an iron constitution so you can handle anything that's thrown your way, from 1000-word expletive-filled rants against your person to explicit images of sex and violence, without losing your lunch. Leading us to...


• Thick skin - When you become a community manager, you lose the privilege to give as good as you get. You'll still get plenty -- plenty of insults, accusations, threats, conspiracy theories -- but unless you can let it all roll off your back, you appear unprofessional and waste time that could be spent on something else. ("Oh come on! I only have six hands!")


• Sea legs - Things change quickly on the interwebs. It can be dizzying and downright disorienting, but you need to keep your feet. A combination of self-confidence and flexibility is priceless in times of upheaval and crisis (which, believe me, will come).


• Clown shoes - Okay, okay, so it's not really a part of your body, but this final ingredient is one of the most important: a sense of humor. In this line of work, you're not getting out alive unless you can laugh -- at yourself when you make mistakes, at difficult users you have no chance of pleasing, at the absurdity of the situations in which you find yourself. But silliness serves an even greater purpose. The internet can be cold and impersonal. Humor is one of the most effective ways of cutting through the computer screen and connecting to each other. And that is, after all, the whole point of being a community manager.

Is Blogging Dead?

Let's first state the obvious: this blog has been dead for quite some time. (If, indeed, it was ever alive. Does the life of a blog begin with conception, or...? But I digress.) It was in contemplating the revival of this particular venture that I started to think more carefully about the history--and future--of blogging.

It struck me recently that the life path of the blog has echoed the development of my own generation in many ways. When I was 11, I registered my first email address... back in the day, when everyone used AOL. These were the days of chatrooms: relatively anonymous conversations with strangers--impermanent, impersonal. Updates about our own lives were shared privately via email, with specific individuals. By the time I was in middle school, IMing was a popular after-school activity. Basically, IMing replaced email for the instant-gratification-obsessed, short-attention-span-possessing crowd (that is, teenagers).

It wasn't until I reached high school that blogging made its way into my life. Keeping a diary has long been a favorite pastime of adolescents, especially girls, and keeping a weblog was simply the newest incarnation, utilizing technology more appropriate to my generation than the good ol' pen and paper. Almost all of my friends had accounts at LiveJournal, and unless you diligently kept up with their various blogs, you were so painfully out of the loop, you wouldn't be able to follow half the conversations that took place in person.

This couldn't last forever, of course. Just as the social circle seems like the most important thing in the world when you're 16, and gossip becomes less interesting the older and busier you are, blogging as we knew it fell by the wayside. Of course, there are always a few people you went to high school with who still really care how much Mr. Valedictorian makes a year or whether Ms. Social Butterfly is still ridiculously good looking. Similarly, there will always be people who like to read and write journal-type blogs. But increasingly, purely personal content fails to grab or sustain the average net surfer's attention. Instead, people now mobilize around common interests. The most popular blogs are topic-centered: food blogs, craft blogs, political blogs, sports blogs, time-wasting blogs. (Yes, I would say that time-wasting counts as an interest, especially amongst people born after 1980.)

Currently, then, the blogging platform is being used most successfully as a vehicle for content that does not necessarily match the original purpose. Blogs may not be dead, simply "all growed up." But I would argue that the platform itself isn't long for this world, either. No longer do we need chronological posting, for example. For most user-generated content, the date is not as important as the subject matter itself. Hence the success of websites like our own HubPages, where pieces of content (which we call "Hubs") are organized in a category tree, as well as available on each author's personal page.

While we still see the occasional confused newbs signing up and attempting to write about their in-laws' visit or what they need to get at the grocery store, I predict that these folks will become fewer and fewer over the next few years. Sites that organize around shared interests--like HubPages in the internet publishing sphere and Google+ as a social network--will enjoy the most vibrant communities. And as for blogging? Well, it ain't what it used to be. But that may be a good thing.

When to Backpedal? - Dealing With User Backlash

Up against massive customer backlash over their new logo (which was only unveiled yesterday), Gap has already made a swift about-face, announcing in a Facebook status update that there will shortly be a crowd-sourcing project to design a new one. This has got to be some of the fastest backpedaling I've ever seen.

Being the Community Manager of a user-generated content site, I'm very familiar with the user-backlash phenomenon. While it's not on as large a scale as the Gap logo drama, since we have a smaller "customer" base and are less universally recognized, we deal with it on a much more regular basis.

While the unveiling of our new logo 8 months ago got mixed feedback, it certainly hasn't been the most controversial change. At HubPages, our highly active forums mean that even the smallest site updates can be brought up and discussed by users 24 hours a day, whether we announce them or not.

Recently, it was one of these rather minor updates (the addition of the Facebook social plug-in) that caused an enormous uproar. Some of the upset centered around misunderstanding of how the plug-in works, but a lot of it was vehement criticism, plain and simple. Now, a company would have to be suicidal to ignore that kind of negative feedback, so we called a meeting to discuss it, but ultimately, we decided that the feature added enough value and there was enough positive feedback to continue to use the plug-in. Having seen a lot of these flare-ups over new features, we were confident that once the dissenting users had aired their grievances, and felt heard, the complaints would die out.

As it turned out, we were right, and reading the Mashable story on Gap's change of heart, I wondered if Gap had waited a little longer and stood their ground, while helping their customers feel heard, would they have had the same experience? Obviously, there are major differences between our companies and our "user" bases, but I think that as brands establish (and rely more heavily on) Web 2.0 presences, it will become an issue more and more companies must grapple with.

There will always be people resistant to change. It would seem to me that there has always been this type of backlash, but the difference is that companies have never before received it so immediately and on such a great scale. When your favorite brand of chips changes their packaging, 5 years ago you might have complained about it to your friends, but chances are you wouldn't have bothered to write a letter to the manufacturer protesting it. But today, Gap unveils a new logo, and is suddenly flooded with negative comments on Facebook, thousands of unhappy tweets, and who knows how many emails.

In a way, this is a great advantage, because brands have the opportunity to receive and act on feedback quickly, instead of potentially losing a customer. However, I think there is danger of abandoning a carefully planned strategy based on the reflexive reactions of the people of the interwebs. Just because someone wants to gripe about something does not mean they're actually going to abandon your brand. By all means, take feedback seriously. But remember that you've thought things through in a way the average consumer has not. If I like the chips, I'm going to keep eating them, no matter what package they come in... and I might decide I like the package tomorrow, but I won't have that chance if my instant negative feedback causes the company to make an about-face today.