An online community manager builds, grows and manages online communities, performing community management, often around a brand or cause.

History

The most recognized origin of the term (online) community manager is in the computer games industry with the advent of

MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

(Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) in the mid 1990s. Roles have expanded to include a wide variety of responsibilities and skill-sets including social media management, marketing, product development, PR, and customer support. Game community management often includes supporting open communications between the developer and player community. While the term "online community manager" may not have been used at the time, the role has also existed since online systems first began offering features and functions that allowed for community creation. These early efforts, in the form of bulletin board systems, had leaders known as system operators or Sysops. The early 1990s saw the growth of mainstream online computer services such as

Prodigy Prodigy, Prodigies or The Prodigy may refer to: * Child prodigy, a child who produces meaningful output to the level of an adult expert performer ** Chess prodigy, a child who can beat experienced adult players at chess Arts, entertainment, and ...

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

and

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

. Prominent features of these services included communities which went by various names; Special Interest Groups, Communities of Interest and so on. And their leaders were often referred to as community managers.

General roles

Online community managers may serve a variety of roles depending on the nature and purpose of their online community, which may or may not be part of a profit-motivated enterprise. Patti Anklam has asserted that "every network has an underlying purpose," and motivations for such network creation include mission, business, idea, learning, or personal. , pages=4,31,108 She says such leaders hold the collective vision, create and manage relationships, and manage collaborative processes. Anklam does not distinguish a fundamental difference for these roles as related to the varying purposes of network (i.e., community) creation.

Professional roles

Community managers are involved in the computer games industry, branded online communities, online research communities, corporate blogs, and other social media marketing and research activities. Roles have expanded to include a wide variety of responsibilities and skill sets, including social media management, marketing, product support and development, PR, and customer support. At the core, community management encompasses a little bit of each of these while retaining its core tenet - ensuring open communications between the developer and community.

Culture and appreciation

Community Manager Appreciation Day takes place every 4th Monday of January as a way to recognize and celebrate the efforts of community managers around the world using social media and other tools to improve customer experiences. It was created by Jeremiah Owyang in 2010. People are encouraged to send sincere Thank You notes to their online community managers. People using Twitter include the #CMAD and #CMGR

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in their tweets about this event. Many online community managers and vendors in the social media marketplace post

blogs A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

in appreciation of their community managers. Cities with large concentrations of Social Media focused businesses, such as Boston,

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

, and San Francisco hold in-person meetup events to celebrate and honor those who represent and support their online communities.

References

External links