You’re Not Going To Be A Community Professional Forever
I forgot the best part of yesterday’s post.
You don’t need to wait for your manager to begin breaking down silos.
You can do it yourself.
You’re a digital engagement professional. You’ve spent years acquiring and refining skills to grow online communities and work with digital audiences.
Why not apply them internally too? Do you think it’s so radically different?
You can identify problems and reach out to help others from different units to solve it.
You can organise your own groups on WhatsApp or e-mail across teams to tackle specific problems the organisation faces.
You can stop referring negatively to other teams and your unit’s individual goals. Instead focus on how it contributes to the organisation’s goal and what will help you get there.
You can go to other units, identify their goals, and see how you can help.
There are a lot of things you can do to build a closer team and tackle these silos yourself.
You’re not going to be a community manager forever. Judging by the current churn rates, you won’t be a community manager in 3 years. That means you need to consider how you’re going to use the skills you’ve acquired today as an asset to get where you want to be tomorrow.
I think deploying them within your organisation right now is an excellent way to start.
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This article made me think quite a bit on the future of the profession. What roles do you think will be the most “organic” for community managers to transform into? And why do you think the churn is happening?
Hey @alenarybik. Hope you’re well!
Fundamentally I think the churn is actually happening because community is becoming something companies build into their foundations now. Knowledge sharing, engagement, content and so forth are things every company can benefit from. What they need is people who understand HOW to achieve those goals and break down silos.
It’s not just “a community manager”, it’s much broader and so the role develops into something new
One of our clients calls this “network engagement”. There’s also a strong call for leadership across these channels - CM’s will need to acquire the skills to motivate teams across the boards, build and direct strategy and deliver results. That’s a pretty big, but very exciting opportunity I think for people who can evolve.
Hi @Darren_Gough , glad to see you and thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! Developing the churn topic; so, do you think that the community manager role will become more fragmentated (eg. specialising in engagement, content, knowledge sharing, depending on the company’s needs ans vision)? Or vice versa, community managers’ will take on more broad-ranging responsibilities? I believe we’re primarily talking about internal community management here, no?
I see your point about community manager’s skills becoming improtant for managers and leaders - would be interesting to watch this unfold.
Does your client have a specific person working with “network engagement”? Or do they develop it more like a general framework for their employees (I assume)?