Recruiting community managers is very difficult. One salient quality that a cm must have is to be able to understand the existing strategy that is being followed for a community, and then follow that. If any changes need to be made they can be done along with whats already being done. A revamp can be done ONLY after talking to clients and relevant project managers.
This is something I am currently facing major problems with, despite giving a very clear and in-depth brief on what needs to be done in community. The new cm wants to do their own thing. It is sometimes a pain to get them to actually follow existing strategy and lot of them get fired or quit because of that. If they quit thats better cause the ones that don't just do work thats frustrating for me!
What new employees need to understand very simply is that current strategy is something that has been approved with client and is being tried out. Maybe it is working, maybe its not. It cannot be changed except by talking to client and giving necessary reasons why what needs to be changed. They cannot go ahead and make changes to it on the field without letting anyone know and getting approval in advance!
More than anything I find that community managers need to have an intuitive, intrinsic feel of the project. What sort of brand image are we putting out? Is it 'fun and party-going'? If they get that right then its not a problem but if they skew it for eg. to a 'gossip channel' then there is a problem. Discord is bound to rise. This is something that is a problem with qualified, college students, experienced SM people and all of them.
Running a company I need to think then, how to achieve consistent community management? This question does not apply to just social media companies but also to companies managing their SM activities in-house, cause even they might see a change in the person handling the social media activities.
blog comments powered by Disqus
