Web Strategy Micksup

WTF am i doing on myspace?

Originally uploaded by striatic

One of the most important things a company can have in developing a new application, whether it is social or not, is a community manager. It’s someone who represents the customer (or user if your afraid) in development and design discussions, someone who looks after them and someone who IS one of them.

It’s a tough role. You have to be mature, balanced, extroverted, open, honest but positive, you have to evolve with the product and the community, you have to delegate to the community and you have to understand the business imperative.

I’ve worked with a few great ones. Dekrazee1 from Tangler, Mishy from Sports Passion and Rowan at Kazaa. But they are rare and valuable like diamonds that lay diamond eggs.

(Interestingly they are all females with strong will but big hearts. Has anyone looked at the personality of great community managers.)

Whilst they are rare, I’m working with a new crew of community managers now. Lauren from Xumii, Chris from Getprice and Jean from Lingopal.

To help them, and the hundreds (I hope) of others out there, I set up a Friend Feed room for Digital Community Managers to collect useful, interesting links and info and share the love.

Drop by, join and make some noise.

Popularity: 23% [?]