What to look for in an online community manager.

What to look for in an online community manager.

February 5th, 2010 // 4:12 pm @ admin

You have evaluated all possible options in order to engage with your customers and have come to the conclusion that creating your own customer community is the most practical solution. Creating a customer community is a task that requires planning and preparation. It requires expertise and know-how.

Planning, monitoring and moderating a customer community requires a community manager. Someone who is constantly involved and monitors the community. Someone who makes sure that members are engaged and lubricates conversations. You must accurately define and assign their responsibilities.

The question is: What qualities should we look for in a community manager? To answer this question I am going to refer to a statement made by Matren Mickos, former CEO of MySQL during the Social Media Week SF, who said that at his company he had five different community managers monitoring their communities and that they played a big role in the development and support of each MySQL product. The community managers asked him how their performance would be evaluated and he said: “Based on the “Three P’s”: Popularity, Pioneering and Participation”.

He further elaborated on what each “P” means. “Popular” in the sense that the community manager needs to be popular within the community itself. “Pioneer” as in innovative. Your community manager will have to come up with solutions and answers on the spot. Therefore, they must be innovative and must actively participate in the community itself. You can not manage a community without having a presence and without being involved in the community so therefore the third P “Participation”.

Category : Blog