Being a Director of Community

I often get asked what my job entails. Community roles are still a bit on the new side,  and I’d wager that other people in similar roles have differences in their responsibilities (and I’d love to hear from you guys here).

So here, I’ll try to capture a bit about my responsibilities and goal and the challenges of a role like this. In a future post, I’ll talk a bit about what I think it takes to do it well, should you be interested in a similar position yourself. There’s a lot of information here, but hopefully it’ll help answer some questions, or even prompt some more.

The Gig:

As a community director, I see my role as a bit of a blend: part business development, part client services, part communications (like marketing and PR all smashed together). In short, my job is to stay connected and engaged with the Radian6 community, which means our customers, potential customers, fans, and those that have an interest in what we’re doing as a company.

On a day to day basis, I’m often doing these sorts of things:

Listening for mentions of our brand across the web (yep, using Radian6 of course), and when appropriate,  engaging the people and discussions. For the most part, that’s blogs and Twitter for us, but occasionally a forum or other social network becomes an important place to chat.

The goal: Building a strong network of relationships across the web based on trust, familiarity, and professional insight.

Acting as a liaison for our customers on the front lines of communication across the web. It’s related to above, but sometimes I’m not the best person to answer a question, so I can help act as a conduit to our internal team members and make sure our customers are supported at each point in their relationship across our company. I’m both ambassador for our brand, and advocate for our customers.

The goal: Streamline communication between our customers online, and our backstage teams at Radian6.

Writing for the Radian6 blog, focusing on topics that are relevant to our corporate and agency clients, and the social media space as a whole.

The goal: Sharing thoughts, best practices, and generating discussion about topics that are important to people working in social communications.

Framing out and executing a community strategy to empower and engage our customers, both with us and among themselves . This is community building at its core, including supporting user groups, creating online destinations, sharing best practices, and connecting people within existing communities.

The goal: To make being a Radian6 customer a truly valuable experience. We want to create a network among our customers, get to know them as people, and tap the insights of our users to continually improve our platform and our role as thought leaders.

Internal education with our business development and other team members to discuss the web 2.0/social media landscape and how it works, as well as trends and issues that are cropping up among our own community.

The Goal: Helping everyone inside the company understand and feel comfortable with how social media and community outreach relates to their job, as well as carry feedback from the community back to our team. Lucky for me, it’s easy in my company.

Contributing to all of our content marketing efforts, and including media creation and community outreach efforts. That can include press releases, online content, podcasts, case studies, you name it. And we work hard to listen to what people are asking for, rather than what we think they need.

The Goal: Be a source of information to the community at large about our industry best practices, what we’re up to, and what we’re planning next.

Participating in the communities we cultivate. I can’t stress this one enough. My job is not only to listen to the community, but I need to be an active and engaged participant myself. Otherwise, what kind of credibility do I have? This also entails my getting on lots of airplanes to go to events where our customers and prospects are. Being available and accessible offline and face to face is important, too.

The Goal: Lots of connections and relationship building, both online and off.

The Challenges:

Being in this kind of role isn’t a clock-punching kind of job. I’m hyper-connected, and I actually thrive on that kind of pace. But it certainly isn’t for everyone, and being incredibly connected to a community means that you’re never entirely “off duty”. It’s a perk and a challenge at the same time. Being trusted is immensely gratifying, but it also means that you have increasing responsibilities to the people that count on you.

Scaling can be hard. The trick is in empowering your colleagues to be engaged in the community, too. You’ve got to integrate listening and engagement practices into as many aspects of the business as you can, and that often means internal education for others so they can feel comfortable being part of that ecosystem. For companies not in the social space, this can take more time and effort, but it’s the key to being able to truly scale social media efforts. Social media isn’t strictly for communications types.

Balancing personal and professional interactions. For instance, if someone’s talking about my company on Twitter, following them is a natural progression. But if they’re talking about my competitor? Some might see my connection as intrusive. It’s always a delicate balance to read the pulse of any given community and gauge your interactions appropriately. There’s no perfect answer, because we’re dealing with human beings here, and everyone’s experience and expectations are unique.

Negativity happens. It takes a certain amount of temperance to properly address critiques and complaints while understanding when negativity is happening just for the sake of it. Above all, it’s about remembering that most people simply want to be heard and acknowledged, and taking negativity as a catalyst for good conversation, either internally or externally.

Keeping a workflow. Communities don’t keep schedules, nor do they stick to routines. It can be a challenge to balance ongoing, strategic projects with the need to be available, connected, and responsive to the community when they need you, or when the situation warrants.  It takes a bit of discipline and a high level of organization to keep projects moving forward while taking the time to engage and communicate effectively and in a timely manner.

What I’ll say about all of this? This job was made for me. For a person who’s always been plugged into what’s *right* about communicating with customers but balked at what felt contrived in marketing, being in a community role is the kind of job that I’ve always sought. Challenges aside, every interaction and connection is well worth it, and each day brings me new insights and the validation that social communications really are on the right track.

So that’s the lowdown, at a high level. Is this what you expected? Are you in a similar role but doing different things? I’d love to hear your feedback and help answer any other questions you might have. Let’s chat in the comments?

This post was cross-posted to the Radian6 PowerShift Blog.

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