Social Scanner: On community management

Last March I met with Sheldon Levine on a Wednesday morning in the lobby of the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas. It was the final day of South By South West Interactive and instead of making a last ditch effort to catch panels, I invited sources to come by for coffee and talk.

Levine, director of community at Sysomos, has seen his role grow along with the size and clout of the company, so I posed a question from a panel to him: will community managers ever enter the c-suite?

“They’re the ones who know what’s going on inside the company, what’s going on outside and how to put those two together,” he said. “The role is really important and community managers should be able to talk to the c-suite more, rather than just a marketing guy who will pass it along.”

The words struck a chord. Community managers know both brand and consumers, yet their role is notoriously junior enough to warrant a baiting and snappily-titled SXSW panel pondering whether they’ll ever rise to a higher rank.

That discussion led to more than a dozen interviews with community managers and social executives over the following six months and a series published this week in Marketing taking stock of the evolution of community management.

More than anything, I learned there’s a disconnect between community manager’s influence over consumers and their power in the ad business – a problem with no resolution in sight. I also saw that expectations, salaries and even the definition of community manager varies wildly depending on the brand or agency a community manager works for.

These topics aren’t likely to fade into the marketing ether any time soon. In fact, next month DX3, The Tite Group and FITC are hosting CM1, a conference entirely about community management – another sign of the discipline’s growth.

“We thought it was time that we create content specifically for community managers and the people who manage them,” said Ron Tite, the CEO of The Tite Group helping organize the event. “Community managers are in the trenches for billion-dollar brands, and companies need to be able to dial up their capabilities and skill sets so that community managers become part of the strategic team within an organization.”

From the origin story to transparency and pay, here’s our three-part series on community management. For the full package, download the iPad edition of Marketing or pick up our Oct. 21 print edition. Watch MarketingMag.ca for more on community management as these stories continue to unfold.

Part One: Transparency Required and Reaching Across the Company
Part Two: Transparency Required and Reaching Across the Company
Part three: CM Glass Ceiling and 24 Hour Community Managers

Marketing readers respond

We’ve received great feedback on the series so far – both positive and critical. Here are a few reader comments:

I think you should replace the title you use here of “Community Manager” with “Social Media Manager.” Community Managers have been around a LOT longer than 5 years. The role of Community Manager can be dated back to the early 90s – specifically in the gaming industry as well as newspapers. Community Managers were (and are still) tasked with managing content & forums as well as events, all things that existed well before social media. Social Media Managers, however, have had their come-upance in the past due to the explosion of social networks, and their focus is on growth (marketing).
-Jenn Pedde, Syracuse University professor, ‎community strategist at 2U and co-founder of #CmgrChat

I firmly believe in elevating the community management role to a strategic one. Often, they have access to data and insights that can drastically alter the activities planned by those of us who don’t spend as much time in the trenches.
-Ron Tite, CEO of the Tite Group

In my time at DDB Vancouver we had [community management] informally as early as 2004 and formally with the launch of Radar DDB in 2007, which I understand was the first network agency social practice in Canada if not much of the world.
The interesting thing about the role today is less about approval systems and drafting copy, but bringing back consumer interests, loves, hates and behavior more deeply and insightfully into the agency’s thinking. Community management is a chance for perpetual real time ethnography, which is a great propriety way to understand people/consumers in ever smarter, more authentic and rather impactful ways. Not just posting cat videos, but certainly some.
-Brett Macfarlane, DDB account director and brand strategist