The Community Manager
One of the aspects that has often been over looked by organisations implementing an ATS or new career site, was the role of someone internally who would maintain, update, improve it. Yet, when I discuss social networks, the need for someone to manage it is NOT being over looked.
That's the good news. The downside is that when they get to understand that the community won't run itself, it causes a slight relapse in their thinking; which is good! Of course the question is then:
'How many hours are needed?'
Of course this depends on a number of factors but as we are now taking on our own community manager for our Talent Management Network. So what are the key aspects we will be considering?
- Key objectives around community interaction.
- Quality of posts written by the CM and level of comments.
- External traffic driving activities.
- Increase in members.
- Community interaction.
- Partner involvement e.g. sponsored/branded groups.
- Revenue!
Some of our thoughts have been taken from a great post by Chris Brogan and I'm hoping some of our improvements will be suggested by ongoing discussions with Connie Bensen.
How many hours per week? Is it a full time role? To be honest, I'm not really sure, it's a bit of a risk at this stage but part-time efforts get part-time results so we've made it a full-time role and will see where it goes from here.
For clients? We aim to be able to provide a support service and whilst they can in some scenarios outsource the community management, this needs careful consideration for too many reasons for this post.
