Working on Twitter all day. Getting paid to blog. Being a brand advocate, creating cool promotions, engaging with your customers all over the web. Getting a few moments in the weird limelight that is the microburst of internet fame. Speaking at conferences, hobnobbing at events.

But here’s what you don’t always think about before you lust after that gig.

You’re now a representative of that brand, publicly. The lines start to blur between what’s personal and what’s professional, and all the disclaimers in the world won’t always mean that you can or should post whatever’s on your mind. The personal and professional profiles you keep might be and feel physically separate, but Google doesn’t know the difference, and sometimes, neither do your customers.

You need to make conscious choices online about how you interact, what you post, and how you marry your individuality and personality with your professional reputation and obligations. They’re inextricably tied and related to one another, and if that’s your career choice, you’re likely going to have to make some sacrifices on the personal front in order to maintain a professional persona that’s appropriate for your work. It’s just part of the gig.

Your ego and hunger for the spotlight will hit reality speedbumps when they have to give way in the face of projects, professional objectives, company systems (or policies, even) or collaborative, team efforts. If you think it’s about being a social media rockstar, think again. The real work – the stuff that’s driving your business – has very little to do with the fleeting, superficial world that is internet fame or schmoozing at the parties.

You’re going to have to let go of the idea that your Twitter following is what makes you, and get comfortable with the idea that your business acumen and success are what you’ll be measured against. Social media is just the vehicle. What you’re accountable for is the success of the business and your performance on the projects that matter. Not all of it will be sexy. The CEO can’t and won’t cash a check against how many “likes” you have on your latest blog post. And while your Facebook fans might be important to you, they’re not the ones that pay your salary or determine your long-term value to the business.

My job is as a business woman, not a social media guru.  Community is my focus, and customer loyalty and business growth are my goals. Social media is just one way that I get there. I build strategy full of measurable objectives that takes more than a few fluffy words on a piece of paper. I execute projects, work long hours (the internet doesn’t sleep very well), get my hands dirty, find things that aren’t working and fix them. Driving business through awareness, business and relationship development, and loyalty is what I’m held accountable for, and metrics prove whether or not I’ve performed.

Don’t misunderstand: I love my job. I love what I do. But it’s not cake. It’s challenging. It’s real work, not just sitting on the internet all day. It’s every bit of a professional commitment as many of the jobs I’ve held in the past, probably even more so.

So, are you sure that social media job is what you think it is? Are you still hoping it’s just fun on Twitter and Facebook all day? Or are you ready to step up to it as a professional?

image credit: kennymatic

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Are You Sure You Want That Social Media Job?

It’s been a little over a year since I’ve been in this role, and boy has that year seen a lot of changes. So I thought I’d share with you a bit about what’s evolved, what’s stayed the same, and what I think the future looks like for community-related roles inside of companies.

What’s Evolved:

Team size:
A year ago, our community team was just emerging. David Alston was manning the ship, and in addition to me we had Mike Huggard, who helped us manage some of the lead pipeline from the community to the account teams. So there were three of us.

Today, we’re a team of twelve, and still growing. In April, keep an eye out on the Radian6 blog where we’ll dive into more detail about how we’ve built our department, and the structure and processes we use to operate in this unique way.

My Responsibilities:
When I started my role a year ago, my responsibilities were chiefly doing the active listening as well as front-line engagement through our external communities – Twitter, blogs, and the like – and creating content. I still do engagement and content creation, in addition to now overseeing a more complex and strategic system of team community management and content generation.

The biggest part that’s changed is the growth of our company, and therefore our team. I’ve now got a pretty awesome team of community and content folks that make me look good every single day. That means I’m less in the trenches, and more in an oversight role to help keep the big ship on course.

Here’s a bit of what’s in my wheelhouse:

Events and Business Development
I do a great deal of speaking and attending industry events, because the offline component of community building is still critical. During busy event season, I spend anywhere from 40-60% of my time on the road to spend face time with the people that drive our business (and our community team is doing more and more of this, too). My goal at those events is to meet and talk to existing customers, get to know the social media community at a deeper level, and yes, bring home potential leads for our sales guys.

Internal Communication
Our community management team is focused on supporting our users and external communities on a day to day basis. And while that’s my role too, I’ve also taken a lot of ownership over internal communications and community, making sure I’m the bridge between our internal departments, executive team, and the communities we serve. We have lots to communicate, so I work closely with our product, support, and sales teams to keep the lines of communication open, and always find better ways to keep everyone informed and working from the same sheet music.

Community Resource Development
It’s my job to make sure our team is mobilized to provide our users and the social media community with the resources they need. Whether that’s our monthly ebooks, content for the website, our blog, or a community for our users, those are the projects I help shepherd. I also continue to actively contribute to our content creation myself, and am ever thankful for folks like Teresa, Lauren, and Katie for keeping me on task. That goes for our internal folks too; when they need help with strategic social media input for customers, our team helps on that front.

Listening and Engagement
We have an entire team dedicated to fielding the discussions in the community about our brand and industry, and engaging with them actively online. I do plenty of direct engagement myself, and help set some of the benchmarks like engagement guidelines, processes and workflow, and responsibility distribution on our team. And I have awesome people on the front lines that are the ones that make those thoughts reality.

Measurement and Reporting

I have a dashboard of metrics I track daily, looking at 14-30 day timeframes: breakdown of engagement (% of posts responded to and what categories they fell under, like support or compliments or content sharing), our Share of Conversation, competitive landscape, sentiment trends,  and what media are carrying the conversation about us so we can gauge our outreach accordingly. We’re also putting together regular executive reports that detail metrics on community engagement, content performance, lead generation, and competitive analysis to take regular snapshots of the impact of our work.

What’s Stayed The Same

Community work is still not a 9-5 proposition. Our team has grown, but that’s just scaled the number of people we have managing specific pieces of our community and content functions. The intent remains the same: for us to build human and personal relationships with our users and the social media community as a whole, provide rich and useful content on social media strategy specific to listening, engagement and measurement, and help businesses build social media into the very operations and culture of their organizations.

That means I’m on and connected more than might be comfortable for some people, and I balance that with being a mom and having a personal life. I still work long days – anywhere from 12-16 hours usually – and I’m blessed to work with one of the hardest working groups of people I know. My role has definitely evolved from an in-the-trenches and hands-on role to a more strategic and leadership-based role, but it’s critical for me to stay involved directly in my community. But make no mistake: this is all by choice.

You never really scale, because the needs always grow alongside. So you have to consistently evaluate priorities, and tweak your approach accordingly. And I still have to always balance my personal and professional presence, but you do eventually settle into what “feels” right, and go from there. There’s no checklist or precise answer for this one, and it’s something that every community person will have to figure out for themselves.

The Future of Community Management

It’s hard to speculate on this one still, because community management is still a bit of an enigma for many companies. They’re not sure what it’s for, or why these roles exist, and they tend to be pigeonholed as “online” community managers, as in the days of forum moderators. But the role really does have business significance, offline too, and it’s serious work.

If I had my druthers, I’d be educating companies about how this role is a hybrid discipline – a mix of sales and customer service and communication – and how really should be silo agnostic, functioning as a hub for many different disciplines inside the company. Online engagement is part of the role, but so too is the integration of that online world with offline efforts, business strategy, and even the culture of an organization.

These people are spokespeople, Trust Agents, communicators, networkers, brand ambassadors, and representatives of their community all wrapped into one. And in my opinion, it’s a role we need to take seriously and require that the people who hold them can demonstrate a wealth of mature business and interpersonal skills. That’s the ideal, of course.

The folks over at the Community Roundtable (I’m a member) have put together an interesting report on the State of Community Management. It’s worth a read, as it reflects a lot of the realities today (to the good and to the challenging) as well as a glimpse at what tomorrow might look like. And at Radian6, we put together an e-book on Building and Sustaining Brand Communities that gives our take on what these roles and functions look like inside an organization.

What Do You Think?

Does this job look the way you expected? Is a role like mine going to become more prevalent in the future, and where do you think it fits in business (and why)? What other questions do you have about community roles that I can help answer?

I’m looking forward to your comments.

Special thanks to my Radian6 colleagues for making this year the roller coaster of the best kind, and to my team for always making me look smarter and more accomplished than I am. You guys are what keep me doing this every day, without question, and keep the ship afloat.

image credit: David Paul Ohmer

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Being A Director of Community: One Year Later

It’s amazing to me the misconceptions that exist about this type of position, and it might be because roles like this are still new, and they vary from company to company (and always will). But I thought I might help dispel a few of the more common myths and assumptions about community management in hopes that we’ll find them more and more in companies of all sizes, and collectively understand them a little better.

Social Networking Is All We Do

I spend time on Twitter, blogs, Facebook, forums, and social networking sites as part of my job. But it’s not all I do. And I most certainly do not get paid to just hang out on Twitter and chat all day long (as fun as that might be in theory).

The social channels for me, especially Twitter, are like the phone to me. They’re communication channels through which I connect with people. So much like the phone or email are simply mechanisms through which you conduct your work, so too are social networks to me.

The difference is that Twitter and blogs and other social networks are communities of their own, so it’s a many-to-many atmosphere that brings additional value through continued participation. Whereas you can’t tap into an ambient conversation or discussion by waiting on the phone or by your inbox, Twitter and the social networking communities in which my customers participate are home to many conversations that I both need and want to be part of.  It’s networking and business development the old fashioned way, and it has immense value, even if the perception of online isn’t always parallel with that.

It’s Always Online

Online communities need the cement of offline interactions. People need the validation that the faces behind the avatars and the voices behind the comments are real, sentient beings with personalities. And as much as I will stand by the deep and valuable relationships I’ve built through online channels, what eventually solidifies those relationships for the long haul is the in-person connection I make through events or meetings or just a chat over coffee.

Even if your community is inherently online – a forum or exclusively online business or the like – there are still living, breathing human beings that are chatting away and contributing to that community in a valuable way. Taking the time to meet and connect with those people in person is, in my view, absolutely critical. It’s why I happily make events a part of my responsibilites and get on lots of airplanes to meet tons of people each year. I could do my job from behind my keyboard, but I’d be missing huge opportunities to build trust and affinities with people based on the age-old practice of bonding and human connection.

We’re Just Glorified PR (or Marketing) People

I write press releases and blog posts and do podcasts. I create content and media in all kinds of forms. But I’m not a PR person.

That’s not to say you can’t be a PR person AND be an effective community person. But as I’ve talked about before, being a community professional goes far, far beyond publicizing the work you do as a company. You’re doing business development work (I’ve stewarded nearly a dozen prospects through our sales pipeline this week alone, and I’ve tapped my history as a BD person and fundraiser to do that well). You’re a marketer and content creator AND a publicist. You’re a customer service person (I’m many of our customers’ go-to person when they have an issue, mostly because I’m a trusted and familiar face and they know they’ll get a response quickly).

There’s no one label you can slap on a community person and say that they’re just an old pro in new clothing. We’re a different and evolving discipline that needs to adapt based on the needs of the business. And it does every community person a disservce to park them in the communications basket and leave them there.

It’s a Job Anyone Can Do

Much like I alluded to above, the community role has evolved past the days when it was just a guy hanging out and moderating the chat for people being buttheads. And while not all community roles necessarily need to become complex business-focused roles, my belief is that’s where they’re going to be headed for many companies, large and small.

But the two types of roles couldn’t be more different. The community role I’m talking about requires business perspective, and a true passion for connecting the community and the people within it to the long-term goals of the business. It’s a symbiotic relationship that requires flexibility, professionalism, and an attitude of possibility. It’s asking for a lot in terms of time and resource commitments, and it’s ever changing. But one thing it’s not is just a job for a person who happens to have a computer and likes to chat online.

You Can’t Measure the Impact

I love this discussion. The whole “how do you measure the impact and value of a community role”? Because I almost never run out of examples.

How about measuring and demonstrating customer loyalty over time as demonstrated by repeat sales and referrals? How about tracking the volume and sentiment of the posts and comments written about you over a period of time? How about tracking not just the quantity of your fans and followers, but how engaged they are with you (and you with them) over time as illustrated by tracked conversations, responses, and discussions? How about trending your share of conversation, both within your industry and amongst your competitors, over time? How about tracking specific inquiries and leads that come through your various community channels? How about tracking the number of customer service issues that are resolved or at least stewarded through community channels, and tracking their resolution rate (as compared to those that are handled through more traditional channels like phone and email)?

The list is nearly endless. Look at your current marketing, communications, sales, and customer service metrics. Think to yourself “How does  my building stronger relationships and trust with our customers and prospects positively impact these measurements?” The hard work is in doing the benchmarking and tracking. But measurable, it is.

What Say You?

Speak up, oh community mavens! Tell me what folks just don’t get about what you do. And for those of you that might be wondering if there’s value in these types of roles, I invite you to challenge us here. Tell us what you want demonstrated and articulated in order to show that community is valuable to business.

Comments, aweigh.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Five Myths of Community Management