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This day of appreciation may not be on your radar, but it is certainly on mine. The brainchild of Jeremiah Owyang, this is a day that is near and dear to my heart and one that allows us to reflect on the hard work that goes into the craft. It is not a science, but an art and anyone who holds this role has my unwavering empathy and support.
I can’t remember a time when I felt more alone, under appreciated, but yet completely enthusiastic and exhilarated, than when I was the community manager of GOLO, at WRAL.com.
If you read this blog on a regular basis, you are quite familiar with the ups and downs I experienced launching and growing that online community from zero to more than 13,000 members and the heart ache that came along with it. If you read my book, “18 Rules of Community Engagement,” you probably know even more.
Community Management is tough and it takes real comittment to see it through. It is not a job for the faint of heart or those who lack motivation and drive.
I can go on and on about what it takes to be a successful community manager, and I’ve done so in the past in posts like these:
- The truth about community management
- Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions
- When members go rogue and other community frustrations
But that’s not what tomorrow is about. It’s about you. If you’re a community manager, pat yourself on the back. If you participate in online communities, say thank you to the folks who put out the fires and keep it interesting. It isn’t as easy as it looks.
And if you have the time, check out the hashtag #CMAD. I’m sure it will be blowing up the twitterverse as very well it should.
Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day to those on the frontline and deep in the trenches.I support you more than you will ever know.
Make it great.
Jeremiah Owyang has a thought-provoking post today about whether or not blogging is evolving into life streams. He notes how bloggers like Robert Scoble and others are much more focused on the real-time web, while seemingly putting their blogs on the back burner or shutting them down altogether. It’s a great read and I encourage you to go over the Jeremiah’s blog and take it all in.
What I want to focus on for a bit is the concept of building community through these life streams, or through an aggregation of life streams. I’m not sure that it’s possible.
I am a big twitter user. I also use Friendfeed and a great deal of other social media platforms. I like the constant stream of fresh new content coming in. But I also know that I miss a whole lot of it and the stuff that I miss is pretty much gone forever for me.
I may go back a few hours on my twitter stream as time permits, but for the most part, I don’t. I miss 85% of the happenings on Friendfeed, but since so much of it is feeds from twitter, blogs, etc….chances are I may see it somewhere else. So to be fair, I’ll say I miss about 65% of the content streaming on FriendFeed.
Existing solely through life streams seems a bit disjointed to me.
The ultimate aggregation of your activity across 10 or more platforms is not a selling point in my book. Talk about noise. I do not believe that ones online presence is the sum of it’s parts, and that is what such aggregation suggests.
You can’t combine all of your activity into one place without somehow connecting the dots and expect people to latch on to you, or join your Tribe.
Now, I know that this may work for the superstars and we can see that it does.
But you will lose me if you resort solely to this kind of online presence. I am not saying that blogging is the only way. But your followers, readers and viewers sometimes deserve a complete thought with a beginning, middle and end. If you are providing that in your life stream, kudos to you. Maybe you will continue to build community, which for me is the ultimate goal.
What do you think? Are life streams a bit disjointed or am I way off-base here?
This is just one of seven awesome new community jobs listed over on Jake McKee’s blog.
If you weren’t so sure about whether or not this community management thing would take off, or whether or not jobs in social media would become more widely available, this is proof.
Even county governments are hiring Twitter and Facebook experts. Need I say more?
Jake’s blog is a great resource and I encourage you to subscribe. Jeremiah Owyang also maintains an excellent list of web strategy jobs that you’ll want to tap into as well.
Have you seen any cool new community or social media jobs lately?
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