As I’ve heard everyone’s responses, I’ve definitely realized that comm mgrs have quite a large role in marketing and within the company as a whole. That’s the beauty in being one as you’re able to have a hand (if not a full effort) in many facets of the business but more importantly, all things that deal with the most important part of your company – people.

Hope to see you around more often

Your information is great! I would add that the best thing about the comm mgr role is that it covers a broad spectrum ranging from marketing, PR, product dev’t, communication, tech & customer support, etc. It really is a huge responsibility, but an amazingly gratifying role.

Keep up the great work Sonny! and I like your blog design too!

Appreciate your thoughts! Look forward to hearing more of your views in the future.

You are totally spot on with your point about building a positive internal community. There definitely has to be an acceptance from top to bottom and an understanding of the authenticity needed from the company and CM to make these efforts worthwhile and effective, for both the company and the community itself.

Look forward to more of your feedback here!

thanks for this excellent post – it came across my Twitter feed from @antipink and I immediately retweeted it. It’s a great example of Twitter outreach.

I think community managers (CMs) have an incredibly diverse role ahead of them, and while it’s possible (and often very useful) to define the broad job description, I think the specifics of working in different communities dictates the full role on a community-by-community basis.

Totally agree with all the commenters here and with the suggestions offered through Twitter. I’d add that I think CMs are also internal organisational advocates for the art of powerful conversation.

I see a large part of my (soon-to-be) role as championing not just THE community, but also championing community as a concept in our own business. I drive excitement about embracing transparency and authentic communications among the development team, the C-Level and all areas of the business.

I think it’s potentially an issue if the only person embracing conversations in your business is the community manager. Chris Brogan’s excellent post on the scalability of social media and community communications (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-matter-of-scale/) and the comments along with that post demonstrate that for social media to be successful at scale, partners need to be brought on board from within the organisation as well as from within the community.

Look at Zappos – over 400 employees twittering, effective conversations being had all over the place. As a CM, it’s part of your job to empower and enable the rest of your company’s employees to join the conversation too. It helps with scalability and it really shows the company’s commitment to giving a damn about the customer.

@Deb – You are too much! You should talk to my designer and thank her for bringing my ideas to life!

Learning from one another is definitely what helps communities grow and evolve into an army of advocates for your company. It takes more than just a CM but one that involves the entire community. And did I mention that you’re too much

I think you put your finger on the pulse of how a community can thrive and learn from one another. And that is key for every organization right now. Building community in the way you have is what it’s all about. Say, did I mention that I like your new blog?