Blaise Grimes-Viort

Hi Kirsten!

Thanks, I do hope it will be of some use.

The way I see it, it does depend on the organisation structure. These blog posts will stick to an assumption of a rigid hierarchy, to make it easier to come up with generic desciptions of responsibility.

In that context, I would say a Community Manager generally is responsible for one “community” (could be spread across several virtual spaces), whereas a Head of Communities would oversee several Community Managers each working across different community spaces or brands. Of course one could have a Community Manager managing a team of Community Assistants, but for the sake of a reasonably concise set of job descriptions, and my sanity as I could go on forever, I will try and stick to the hierarchy above.

But you've made me think to add a sub-line for each job spec to clarify this, which I'll make sure to do! Thank you!

Blaise

Hi Blaise,

Nice list! It gives our dutch community managers group also a good basis to start from.

I´m curious though about one thing: what is, according to you, the difference in tasks and responsabilities between Community Manager en Head of Community?

Kirsten.

Hi Blaise
Would you include the following?
- Web Manager
- Forum Manager
- Content Manager
- Resident blogger
- Twitter Manager

I think as brands become more focussed on social media activity, they're not just going to be looking for managers to “manage” the overall strategy, but for individuals to manage the content and success of key areas of online activity and chatter.

Ha ha, yes I can imagine all too well one could loose his sanity on these descriptions

So I guess you see a Head of Community as a sort of Community Coördinator. That would make sense.

Good luck with clarifying and working out the descriptions. Let me know if I can be of any help anytime.

Kirsten.
Btw how do you pronounce your name exactly?

Hi Jacqueline!

I'll have a think about how these would fit in. I agree that in some circumstances, particularly with a very large network, companies will need to hire people for very specific roles to cover particular aspects of their social ecosystem.

In terms of the more generalist ones you mentioned such as Content Manager, do you mean UGC or staff editorial?

For me, editorial and blogging doesn't fit the scope of this excercise, as I wanted to concentrate on specialisation. However responsibilities from the job description I will produce can be folded into any other role.

I'm just worried that by going off on a tangeant, I could cover more ground than I need to; for example, one could argue that any role could/should include elements of community management and social media…

I have included “Moderator” above, so I could include some of the above that deal specifically with community or social media tools.

That’s right – team management and strategy. Add a budget on top and possibly direct management of the Product, and in my structure that would lead to Director level. I’m mulling over Connie Bensen’s CCO role and how that would break down, and will probably add it in at some point.

Could you send me a link to any discussions your guys have about job roles etc please? Would be great to see what you come up with!

I love where you are going with this. There does seem to be a growing confusion about the differences between a Social Media Manager and a Online Community Manager etc.

Thanks Sue!

Clear! Thanks.
All our discussions are in dutch for now. I set up the blog: http://www.communitymanagers.nl which, for now, is also in dutch but we have plans to eventually translate and write everything in English so that community managers from other nationalities can also join the conversation.

This is something we are working on as well at The Community Roundtable and agree that social media management and community management typically have different emphasis. The way I see it social media management is more responsible for content creation and interacting with a broad network – often this is seen on the marketing end of the spectrum and in the B2C space where the goal is not so much to encourage relationship development between network participants as it is to respond and produce content people want to share.

Community management is typically more focused on a more discrete group of people (even if relatively large) and developing and encouraging relationships is a bigger emphasis.

Those are obviously not hard and fast rules but that's how I see it. And as you get more senior on both fronts, the role takes on more management/budgeting/strategy work.

Great – I'll run it through Google translate for now – looking forward to the translation!

Hi Rachel, thanks for your comment!

Absolutely agree with you in regards the split of responsibility and different focus each type of role has. It is of course possible to create hybrid roles, and in some cases a Community staff will also be responsible for covering Social Media responsibilities and advocacy – in fact my job used to cover both until I started building a team and diffusing skills throughout the company I work for.

Would be great to see the results of your studies!

[...] is een Community Manager’ schreef ik dat de term Community Manager op dit moment vooral als verzamelterm wordt gebruikt voor allerlei functies rondom het begeleiden van communities en user genereated [...]