Why does community management matter?

Community management matters because it's the most reliable way for customers to tell a company what they think. Surveys would be fine if the people writing them didn't have a bias toward the company (as opposed to the customers) and its goals. Companies invest in it for that reason alone, though; having a clear path to providing feedback is a lot more reliable than waiting for the end of Q3 to find out that the product you released in Q1 stinks. In my experience, though, most companies who employ "community managers" screw the pooch, for several reasons: There isn't really a community to begin with. Communities are complex and dynamic; their needs change and mature over time. A company's focus is strictly on its mission and its relationship with its customers within the context of that mission; simply put, it's not likely that Ford gives a whit about what brand of coffee its customers buy or whether the local college basketball team won last week. They may have a whole bunch of people who pay attention to what their customers say wherever they say it, but that's not a community; it's a forum. Anyone who manages a city of any size will tell you that you might be able to manage the governmental bureaucracy to a large extent, but you can't manage the community; it's going to think and do what it does whether the "manager" likes it or not. Online communities are no different; community management in the best sense is the practices of keeping the discord to a level that is tolerable, and determining what's important to the whole community as opposed to the noisy rabble that shows up to complain -- without making things worse. Most people who do "community management" are really people who know something (maybe even a lot) about social networking; they're adept at using Twitter and Facebook and can probably come up with a few blog posts every week. They make sure to say "thanks" when someone says something nice about the company (even if it's not terribly relevant to the company's mission) and make sure the company line is out there when someone complains. They're usually hired for a set of skills that is easily defined, but the ability to be an evangelist for the customer(s) isn't one of them, frequently because it's a job they're promoted into, and again, they have a vested interest in keeping their jobs. No company's upper management wants to hear that the company is perceived to be a necessary evil (even the people from Microsoft and Google, at some level, collectively cringe when they see some of the vitriol to which they're subjected). The best community managers -- strictly my opinion, mind you -- are from the community. They know the product or service the company sells inside out; they know its great features and its FUBARs. They have an empathy with customers because they are customers themselves. They know who the people in the community are, and why their voices are important. At the same time, they have enough information from the company to be able to explain and diffuse complaints. And there's the rub. Usually, a community manager doesn't know what the bosses are thinking. They have no idea why -- because no one wants to tell them -- you have to reach all the way behind the screen to find the on/off button from XYZ's laptop -- so when eighty people post in a discussion thread that it's the stupidest design ever, all they can do is wonder. Companies don't make it easy for someone to deal with that stuff, let alone exploding batteries or transmissions that die 150 miles after the warranty expires or software that won't work if your computer has virus protection. And if the community manager does know the bosses' thinking, it's because he's a shill for them, and not an advocate for customers' needs. How to define and measure? Good luck. If the company makes bad decisions -- the Apple Lisa, for example -- then nothing any community manager says or does will stem the tide of discord. Junk is junk; the best a company can do is hope that it is prepared to deal with making mistakes quickly and appropriately, as opposed to making excuses. Ideally, a community manager comes from the community -- meaning that there has to be a real community there in the first place, and that s/he has the respect of the company to the extent that s/he can influence decision making on behalf of the community, and that s/he has the respect of the community to the extent that they trust him to be an evangelist on its behalf. You won't have to take your shoes off to be able to count the number of online communities that have managers worthy of the name.