Daily Archives: January 29, 2013

Community Manager 1.0

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Yesterday was Community Manager Appreciation Day.   Here’s a story about Community Manager one dot oh.  In her early 20s, right out of college, she took a job working at a bowling ball manufacturer as an admin all the while looking for a job befitting her marketing degree and minor in English Lit.  She was hired as an intern at a regional 1,000 employee services company with a respect brand name and made social media community manager. All good companies had one.  She was asked to write the job description for HR because, lucky her, she was a pioneer and the company’s first community manager.

On day one Ms. Community Manager was introduced to the marketing staff (she, red-faced) and told to report to the director of marketing (who didn’t have a Facebook account and was awfully busy).  Given a pod, a computer and introduced to the IT person – off she went.  She went to BrandHackers and a few other meetups in NYC and Brooklyn, met a guyfriend, and picked up some tools and jargon along the way. After 5 months she had talked the company into subscribing to HubSpot (who taught her a thing or two), but she felt as if she were on an island. “Where’s the community manager job description?” HR asked.  “One more week please.”

After 6 months, the company had a new look for its Facebook page, two Twitter handles (one for product, one for customer service), a Pinterest account and Instagram photos. They had a dashboard telling them that March was a good month for web hits. The company also bought a video camera for Ms. Manager and finally got its job description. 

On the anniversary of her 8th month, Ms. Manager got a job at a digital ad agency in Brooklyn by telling them she had built a dept. and generated high “time in site” and “registration rates.” This she did, all this without a whiff of a brand strategy. And off she goes.  Like a virus. Peace.