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

Turn to Tech Scam

I recently had an interaction with a company called  Turn To Tech , who are offering to train people and then postponing payment until after you've gotten a job. Standard, right? Except their pitch is heavy on the sales and less on the info.  I filled out a simple, online form and their first email response was: "Are you available to come in to discuss the course?  The class is a pay after you receive a job type of course, however it will require some pre-work assessment , etc.  That can be gone over with you when you come in.  " Of course? Standard grammar not required. "A-Pay-After-You-Receive-A-Job-Type" of course.  Of course, you could call it an "Income Based Payment". I had to ask 3 more times how much the class would be before and after. "It is $6,000 before the course is complete if you do not want to approach the pay after you receive a job, which is $9,000."  This makes the government look good. Get me back my 6.7% rate...

Network is the Broadway Play Worth Watching

Of all the big plays of the moment, no play does a better homage to the spirit of the tale than Network-currently starring Bryan Cranston.  It’s a perfect American story-created in England. The surrounding immersive media is just the beginning.  The line “I’m Mad as Hell” is presented perfectly the first time, and then highlighted as a regular battle cry-you wonder if this is made from a movie from the 1970’s (it was) or if it was written tomorrow. It takes too much of the insanity of the media-centric world to too many logical conclusions. It plays with your mind over and over, as if media is just an extended magic trick-constantly diverting your attention. For this play, it’s worth it to pay attention.

"Respect for the Bureaucracy": Usability of the Process

College is intimidating, especially if you are a teenager.  Not just the amount of intellectual hard work, but in navigating all the ins and outs of the bureaucracy which can determine whether or not you graduate with crippling debt, or whether you graduate at all. The idea of "Help" and "Mentorship" needs to be formally institutionalized, to support those who need grants and scholarships the most.  The top 1% already know how to navigate the economic system for all advantages; the rest of us need support and access to these same strategies.  The designers of these processes themselves need to focus on helping out the neediest early on.  College has turned into a "survival of the fittest", in terms of economic and social help, NOT academics. College completion rates are stagnant, according to this NYTimes article .  "Need-blind" admissions and increasing grants are wonderful, but the system breaks down on a deeper level.  High schoolers are...