Indiana transcription

Congratulations on your new position! In terms of other advice I would just advise you to research blog posts about getting started as a CM, or social media in general. And to be authentic – engage with your audience on a daily basis and be honest with them about you and your company. If you have any further questions feel free to e-mail me at erin@sprouter.com.

Cheers,
Erin

Plus try the yahoo community managers group e-mint to search for community managers interested in start-up roles.

Regards,

Stuart

I think hiring “just” a marketing person or “just” a PR person limits you in their abilities. I like the idea of CM’s because they’re almost like a jack or jill of all trades. They can switch between customer service rep, blogger, writer, PR person, event planner, guest speaker, etc.

I think you can even have a community managers for offline businesses – take Molson for example. They are an offline business (beer!) but their community person (the amazing Tonia Hammer) does a great job of finding relevant people and events to connect with, and establishing an online presence. They even add a bigger philanthropic arm to her role.

I absolutely agree that it’s easier said than done for a Founder – this is my “best case scenario,” that a Founder has the time to get out to events and manage their presence online. I guess my point is just that ignoring it is the worst thing possible, and that there are some free or inexpensive tools out there that can do part of the job for you.

In terms of recommending where to find community managers – that’s tough. It’s such a new role, so it’s not like you have people with CM experience out there (I’m sure there are some though!). I would suggest looking for people with journalism/communications backgrounds, or people who work at PR/digital agencies. Or get recommendations (I’d be happy to send you a few).

Hope that helps!

Erin

Thanks for your comment!

I completely agree with you – a good CM should be an evangelist, customer service wizard, publicist, and should be able to form real relationships.

Although I do spend some hours behind a desk (like right now) I’m usually out telling people about Sprouter, forming those relationships, and madly Tweeting in a corner (what would I do without my iPhone?).

Anyway thanks for your thoughts!

Erin

Well put, concise description of what a Community Manager can and, more importantly, should do for a company. A good CM is an evangelist, customer service wizard, publicists, and able to establish and maintain real relationships via a keyboard.

It’s key that the CM be deeply familiar with the entire organization. Inside the company, the CM is a representative of the clients/customers/partners and to the outside, the CM is the company’s representative. It seems to me that there is a trend to think that you can have someone sitting in a dark room tweeting, posting to facebook and the like and get the same results. I just don’t see how that’s possible.