Stage Two's blog

For some thoughts on startups and community managers, I recommend reading Jeremiah Owyang’s piece on “Should Startups Have Communtiy Managers” and Marshall Kirkpatrick’s “Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers”. I recommend the read because, like any marketing tactic, there’s no single one-size-fits-all answer. Some companies desperately need them, others will never. But once a company’s made the decision to have one, the next question is who’s best for the role?

First off, being a community manager is not for everyone. When I used to run the SlingCommunity, I used to tell people the right way to do it was to live with a combination of thick- and thin-skinnedness. I had to remain thinskinned enough where I took every piece of negative feedback openly and honestly. It’s never about user error or someone “not getting it”, it’s about doing it better and better until they do “get it,” regardless of how right I was (or wasn’t). That said, it’s also key to be thickskinned enough where not everything is taken personally, it’s important not to get mired down in negativity.

So who’s the right person for this job? Here’s some candidates:

The Leader (president/CEO)
Having the leader of a company be the community manager is a very tricky play. Fundamentally it’s a time-consuming role, and the typical startup CEO just plain shouldn’t have enough free time to do it. As the company is launching a product/service, I do recommend the CEO have a lot of personal visibility within their community. Unfortunately, as the company grows, the CEO will inevitably become too busy to stay active within the community, and depending on their involvement early on, could leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth for some of the earliest adopters.

VP/Director-level: Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, etc
Having a VP/Director-level person could be perfect, if its at the kind of company where these level people are highly engaged in the product/services, but not overly committed managing people.  Busy-ness is a problem, as managing a community is a time-consuming proposition.  That said, these level people tend to be able to represent the company well, bring senior-level attention to an important job, and lend a lot of credibility.  Definitely a possibility, but probably not the best choice for most firms.

Manager-level: Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, etc.
Now we’re cooking with gas.  I’m a big fan of the same people who have “hands-on” roles with products being the visible advocate externally.  Also, manager-level people can do a great job explaining the vision/thought process of a company to the outside world while simultaneously taking in valuable feedback.  The only concern I’d raise here is for the PM’s who don’t have enough resources internally to give them the spare, regular time intervals to engage in the community (it’s important not to ebb and flow, but to have consistent presence).  This is most likely the best bet for many companies.

“Dedicated Community Manager” (aka Chief Community Officer, Evangelist, etc
I have very mixed feelings here.  It’s certainly a really positive sign to the outside world that a company has gone so far as to hire a dedicated person to run their community.  That said, it also can create some friction as the individual will often have to answer to many different voices.  If the company is ready to have a community manager become the true voice of the product’s customer base, and give him/her the right venue to express and share feedback, then this approach is often a great win.  If the community manager doesn’t have an internal audience, however, this can backfire tremendously.  Also, it’s essential that the community manager have specific tasks, deliverables, etc, and not just “maintain” the community.  Lastly, try not to come up with a goofy title here, it’ll look silly a few years out.

Outsourced Individual/Team
There are some times when outsourcing the community management can be extremely effective.  In my opinion, these times are exactly when there’s also internal resources dedicated as well.  There is no way to completely “hand off” the community to a third party and watch from afar.  I do recommend working with a firm that specifically does community management, and I’d further recommend picking one with domain expertise.  Managing a developer community is radically different from media producers which is in turn different from gadget communities.

Customer Support/Service
While I believe the customer service division of a company must be at least aware of the community, I also think they must be at most involved.  Fundamentally customer service departments have different responsibilities and objectives than the specific needs of a community, and I’ve found it’s a bit more challenging to align those needs.  I’m sure there are some places where this is the perfect fit, but from my experience it should be approached with caution.

Distributed Effort
In truth all employees have a responsibility to the community.  Everyone should be aware of hot topics, trends, themes, etc that are going on for a company’s user base.  It’s also great to have as many employees as possible actually participating, whether its creating content, responding to issues, or otherwise being active.  But I also don’t think it’s sufficient to let things run haphazard.  Without someone being ‘in charge’ it can easily get confusing for the community members themselves, and issues can easily get overlooked (or the flipside, too much attention to a minor/non-issue).

As you assess what your company needs, try to project the needs of your community.  Will they need a lot of technical information?  Will they want to hear human interest stories?  Will they want humor and fun, or seriousness and clarity?  Will they be tolerant of fluctuating response times, or expect posts and comments within minutes?  There are many reasons to have a community, and many ways to run one.  Figure out as much as you can for your products and your customers in advance, and the right individual/group should emerge from the pool.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.