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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.

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