Skip to main content

Pride & Prejudice of Community Manager Appreciation Day

Today is the bicentennial of the publication of "Pride & Prejudice"
("It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Keep reading it here)

A somewhat anti-feminist, yet seemingly all too true, maxim, written by a woman who would die 4 years later at the age of 41. Unmarried. Her writing is funny and ironic and packed with sarcasm. She's popular today (with everyone including Zombies) because of this tone. Her community has rallies around her for 200 years, despite (or because of) her voice being silenced so young.

Today is also "Community Manager Appreciation Day", so what are we to make of this precedent? Create good work at the beginning, then back off and let the fans take over?

iMedia has 4 Ways to evaluate your CM Strategy

My quick & dirty summary
A) "Engagement, not followers". The goal is what you are doing, not the numbers.
B) Conversation- Actual quote:"the marketing and advertising messages that you push to your followers will be mixed in with real conversations and you will have a more natural, two-way relationship."
C) "Measure twice, post once"-spend more time on how to post and only half the time working on content (REALLY??)
D) Multidisciplinary-although this is a great point, here it dissolves into the issues of "primary marketing channel" and noise.

I much prefer Mashable's take on 10 Qualities of a Good Community Manager. Read them yourself. Passion for the brand is primary, although listed as #10. These qualities give you a wider view on what the role entails, rather than approaching the vague new role as just another project that someone can fit into their existing job. Which is actually what happens WAY more often than someone coming onboard with the title of "Community Manager" and only having those duties. Good luck to the jugglers out there!

And on a confusing note, the non-profit Acumen Fund, is shutting down their online community entirely. The link to the online community is here, but the end date is April 2013. I received an email proclaiming 7K people from 140 countries and 19 volunteer chapters, since they started in 2009. They are keeping their Twitter and Facebook accounts, but "this online platform is not where our future lies". I will admit not having visited the site or engaged, but not removing their emails from my inbox either (even if I rarely open them). How better could they have managed this? Or how could they rebrand this as a shift, rather than a "closure"? Was it a matter of lack of interest by users or funding at the non-profit?

In the future, maybe it would be better to have concrete goals AND a larger strategy for people who have those 10 characteristics listed above. If there is actual quality of content, it might last longer than 4 years, maybe even 200.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mark Twain in the Azores

I've been doing some research on Twain's visit to the Azores. He stopped in Horta on his way to Palestine-a series of correspondences that would become his book,  Innocents Abroad. Most of what he wrote about the Azores in that book was not kind, he was trying to create jokes-and also created a cynical sense of the superiority of the American traveler. He made himself the joke of an ugly American-especially viewed from the perspective of today. In the Book about the Dabneys, there is evidence that he was in their house. Below is a quote from one of the female residents. “At 10 the parlor was quite full….One young man had his note-book out all the time and remarked as I gave him some verbena,’I am taking notes as I am a correspondent of a paper’.  ‘Horrors;, writes CPD, “how we may appear in print,’

#BLM Art and Former Statues

#BLM Art and Former Statues Not only have there been gorgeous murals going up around the world in support of Black Lives Matter, but they are also painting the streets themselves. Black Lives Matter in huge letters, visible from space, or at least from small aircraft. And the statues, ALL the statues seem to be coming down, all the ones which lack compassion.  And even the ones of old men, who might be on the good side of history.  In these days, it is better to rethink everything.  Even those who fought, did they not fight hard enough?  Did they do everything and we are still stuck in this world? Would their ghosts be fighting for change, along with the protesters?  I imagine the ghosts on the better, more equitable side of history, cheering on the living.  All the energy (both living and dead) are contributing to the new world.  And even the ghosts with regretful pasts, are changing their minds.  Even they can change their minds, even they can f...

America is on fire!

Plenty of virtual ink has been spilled about the horrendous treatment of African Americans at the hands of the American police.  Those who are supposed to protect and serve will easily kill anyone with non-white skin.  This also applies to immigrants, those with accents and those with mental health issues. But African Americans were brought to this country illegally, forced to work, and have never been freed of the social idea that they can never have respect, especially from "authorities". This has been an issue for the past 400 years, but after 2 months of being locked up, America is bursting at the seams in trying to get the attention of the non-leaders, calling for justice for a man who was choked to death on video over a long period of 8 minutes. Earlier in the week was a black man who was birding in Central Park who videotaped a white woman who called 911 on him.  She knew to call out race, to say that an African American man was threatening her life-even though she...