In all my years of writing about “all things web” (granted weighted heavily toward e-commerce) for the motorcycle and powersports industry, nothing has seemed to reach the same level of resonance as my idea that developing a dedicated, full-time community management position was a brilliant thing to do.
When I was running marketing for the dealership that I work with, I had put on a few really successful open-house events. The “light bulb” moment came when I said: “we need to do stuff like this every month!”
That required someone dedicated to coming up with the ideas, handling all the logistics, etc. But I then saw this role as much more than just an “event” person. We need to do more community stuff. Community stuff takes a lot of time. I need a full-time person to do it. Bingo! It was that simple.
I also wanted them to start being the “face” of the company on all our our online social networking activities. That led to me climbing up the abstraction ladder to call the position community relationship manager.
In short, this position is THE public and personal face of the company.
I just came across a post on ReadWriteWeb that deals with the same idea. Their article is obviously written from a more theoretical framework, while my take on it is much more the result of pragmatic, hands-on needs.
Marshall asks the questions “Do Startup Companies Need A Community Manager?” My answer is of course a resounding “YES”. However, like pretty much everything else it all comes down to the ability to execute on the idea.
It’s not PR!
PR is dead. The two-faced, B.S. spewing PR flacks that have made their money by coming up with ever more creative methods to lie to a company’s customer are going to die a loud and long overdue death.
PR was a one-sided shouting match. The new age of community is more about listening than talking. One thing that most PR people seem to have is a genetic aversion letting anyone else talk or listening to them when they do.
No one with ANY hint of PR on their resume should come anywhere near a community relationship position!
But what about all those functions that PR serves? Like minimizing damage when the company does something stupid or bad? Or “spinning” one result to be seen as something totally different?
Oh, I don’t know… How about not doing things like putting poison in kid’s toys, or letting poison food get produced in the first place or simply telling the truth?
Naive? Probably.
The direction that the world is going to force you to go? Absolutely!
Might as well start recognizing that you’ve got a transparent kimono on. Open it up… Or don’t… Don’t matter because people are going to know what’s going on anyway. You might want to see how the truth works for a change.
It’s not Marketing!
Marketing still has a valuable place when it comes to developing the identity and the initial message. But marketing is going to need to become much more participatory and reactive to the reality being dictated by the real world.
It must be legitimate!
Don’t lie. If you have a position that the market doesn’t seem to like, then explain in truthful detail why you did what you did, do what you do, or are going to continue to do what you did. Even people that hate you will at least respect you. How is that a downside? And who knows, maybe being honest may actually turn some people onto you. After years and years of BS, maybe legitimacy and honesty are worth giving a try?
It may be a game changer!
This has the potential to be one of those paradigm changing ideas that fundamentally changes the way companies communicate with their customers.
Customers don’t want to listen to PR B.S. and they sure as hell don’t believe anything that comes out of a marketing or advertising department.
There are of course risks. The old model of how PR/Marketing crafted and controlled a focused message or identity is over. In reality the only messages or identities that really mattered were the ones that the customers created for themselves and communicated to each other.
In the past it was obviously easier for a large company to force conformity to the desired message, but as the number of communication channels is now nearly infinite, there’s no way any company is going to be able to effectively control their message or ID.
Companies must sooner or later respond to the fact that the key to their company’s long term survival is the active and honest communication and participation with the market. And in non-economic terms, what’s a market if not a community?
This is going to totally shake up so many business practices! From product development, to accounting, to of course sales and marketing.
It’s going to bring about the need for greater transparency. Worn-out corporate double-speak is dead. The old guard PR industry is going to die (no doubt kicking and screaming about “losing control”).
It’s time for companies of all sizes to realize that they have already lost, or very shortly will loose, control over their true image.
So it’s time now to start crafting plans and organizations that can communicate and participate openly and truthfully with the market. That starts with the Community Relationship position.
If you really want to take this on and understand it, you need to closely read Groundswell. It will articulate in detail pretty much everything I’m talking about. But with better writing and more footnotes. 
Tags:community-marketing, community-relationship-management, marketing, pr, relationship
