This is why I love the conversational web. It provides an excellent means to connect ideas, and er, write a post. I saw a tweet from @jowyang which was about a company looking for community managers. No, it wasn’t the job per se that interested me, but more the fact that companies are finally getting into conversations and hiring community managers. Before you harangue me about web companies having had community managers for ages, this one is a grocery review community. Well, at least happens in the US. 😐
And then, I also happened to read a post that spoke about a wiki for brands that is created and maintained by the users. Thats already happening a bit on the Facebook fan pages, but I’m guessing the brand would have to have its official spokesperson acting as a moderator at least in the initial stages, that’s like a community manager.
And lastly, i read a post by Chris Brogan that talked about social media not being a replacement for marketing strategy. (I wholeheartedly agree) The takeaways he has mentioned towards the end not only provide a direction on how social media can finally pull its weight in getting revenue (possibly a beginning to answering this, a thought on everyone’s mind), but also roughly defines what a community manager’s role would be. It would not only be the basic answering of community queries and using conversations with them to evolve the product/service, it would also include identifying evangelists, nurturing them, helping a sales team to categorise potential customers. I am sure there are a lot of add ons possible to these brand communities.
Meanwhile, it might also help social media tools like twitter to figure out revenue models. For at the very base of it all, a Twitter is perhaps like a Hotmail, the difference being in community and the speed of conversations, but in essence a tool for communication. And like email, there are usages to be figured out – for example, what role they play in the brand communities discussed above. These usages will drive revenue models. And hopefully, that’ll make one happy world… until the next revolution. 😉
until next time, tweet dreams