The Crucial Importance of a Community Manager

Posted by: Tara Barnes

Friday, February 17th, 2012

The concept of community is everywhere. It’s why Engage365 was started. It’s how we build rapport with our peers and colleagues, exchange ideas, collaborate and work toward goals. Community is something that shows up everywhere, in our personal and professional lives, and is relevant to people across all industry verticals. Having a champion to help shape, guide and encourage your community’s conversations and content is something that many organizations think about, but often don’t put enough effort into.

If you want to get inspired and really see how much impact a good community manager can have, take a look at this great article in GeekWire highlighting Wael Ghonim. If you’re not familiar with Ghonim, he was the community manager behind the Facebook page that rallied the youth of Egypt to overthrow their country’s dictatorship. Most of us are aren’t out to change the world at such a magnitute or overthrow governments, but there are key lessons that can be taken from this article (and Ghonim’s book), the biggest being that in order to to help your online community meet its goals, you need to have someone managing it.

The GeekWire article outlined 5 key lessons that can be taken away from Ghonim’s management of the revolution-sparking Facebook page, and I certainly don’t want to duplicate the article author’s efforts. But reading this piece inspired me to think of additional lessons, ones specific to event and association professionals (and your respective communities) that focus on why having a community manager is so vital. Community managers:

• Set the tone and pace: Pathable’s CEO Jordan Schwartz will often reference the “Field of Dreams” fallacy. Many people think that can build online communities for their event or membership base, and think that just because it exists, people will use it. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t the case. You can build the most streamlined and user-friendly community on earth but that doesn’t mean people will flock to use it. A community manager’s role includes not only inviting people to join the conversation, but really showing them how it’s done. Community managers may need to start conversations, nourish ones that seem to be grinding to a halt, and share things with consistency. If community members see engagement and it’s interesting, they will participate in hte conversation. If they see content being posted once a week on Friday, they will check back weekly and see what’s new. If they see discussions happening with professionalism and in a thought-provoking manner, they will participate in-kind.
• Give everyone a voice: Every organization and event is going to be filled with a variety of unique individuals. It’s common that, if prompted, people will readily talk about their thoughts and opinions on any particular topic. A community manager is vital in helping voices get heard and highlighted, and in making sure that a wide spectrum of opinions on any given topic are represented. Having someone who keeps an eye on conversations and content and sharing them in a balanced manner means that all members of your community feel heard and represented, and this helps keeps a sense of cohesiveness.
• Leave the (perceived) power with the people: “The best community leaders make people feel like they did it themselves. The best community managers cultivate environments where they actually can.” This quote, taken from the GeekWire article, is such an astute statement. While community managers can and should set the tone and examples for communication and decorum, the community manager should not be the focal point. A good community manager is like a stage manager, hustling around behind the scenes, adjusting costumes and making sure actors know their lines. Attendees or members want a place where they can connect, network and converse, but they want to feel like they created this world, this connectivity, on their own. Not only does this lend to feelings of accomplishment, but it makes the group feel connected to one another, proud of what they’ve made together. Community managers aren’t there to take credit for the success a community achieves – they should be the wind beneath the community’s collective wings.

If you don’t have one already, go out and find your community manager who can help your organization spark its own type of revolution!