Social tools are easy and intuitive to use, but they are only as good as people using them. As the old adage goes: "Garbage in, garbage out." As you build out your internal social network, your plan should include an internal community manager - someone responsible for its overall well-being. Why is that? Simply because accountability gets results. How many successful initiatives do you have without a clear owner?
What this doesn't mean is that you need to hire a full-time person on day one; you can certainly work up to it. You can (and should) have several people taking care of the community, and even if they are doing this part-time, there will still need to be that one "owner". Whether or not your community manager is full-time or part-time, the job is not trivial, and you have to choose the right person carefully. Or maybe you are that person? I've written about attributes and skills necessary for an external social media manager before, and although there's some overlap, it makes sense to explore in more detail on this blog.
An internal community manager is:
Passionate: In every piece of writing I do on the subject, I always place this characteristic at the top of the list. You can learn a lot of other skills; however, passion is something you can't fake. Most likely, you will be breaking new ground and changing the company's culture; it will be challenging. Your passion will keep you going when you want to quit. All great community managers - internal or external - have passion (often borderline fanaticism) in common. They are passionate about their communities and industries, passionate about making a difference, passionate about the higher mission that the community is built for, passionate about connecting and helping people. This brings me to my next point.
Inspired by service and people: Any social network - internal or external - is ultimately all about people. If you don't want to interact with people or be generally helpful, you probably won't make a very good community manager.
Well-connected: An internal community manager is very well networked in his / her organization. In a fledgling community, you have to galvanize the organization to participate and take a leap of faith with you. To that end, you need to know your colleagues, what their strengths are, and make sure you have shared goals and viewpoints. In a more mature community alike, you have to know your coworkers in order to facilitate the connection of people to each other.
Knows evereything and is everywhere: Platforms like Yammer are very effective at search of older content and serendipity of real-time discovery. However, sometimes important discussion points and questions get overlooked. If you see an important question languish without an answer, you as a community manager, need to do some legwork and connect the pieces and people.
Tactful and diplomatic: Because you are dealing with people and their careers, it's paramount to always be tactful and diplomatic. In case you ever have to moderate a situation, things may get awkward later down the road if you mishandle the situation. By the way, fewer situations get out of control in an internal community vs. external. Unlike external communities, people's careers are on the line, so there's a heightened interest in "behaving."
Confident and shrewd politician: The internal community manager is oftentimes navigating a previously unexplored space and creating an unprecedented network. The community manager will need to be able to sell the value of the effort to the C-suite, managing and mentoring upwards, aligning and navigating objections. The community manager needs to be confident, but never conceited.
Can create structure without stifling: The goal of a network like Yammer is to encourage and inspire sharing, collaborations and conversation. Thus, it's important to not do anything to stifle a natural exchange. At the same time, in active networks, a "free for all" with no structure won't sustain over time, especially as the network grows. It's important to put structures in place that allow users to find what they need easily and help them isolate signal from noise, per their own definition (one man's noise is another man's signal, in essence). This requires cooperation on the part of the writer, reader and responder, and the community manager is there to make sure that best practices are being developed and adhered to.
Not afraid to make unpleasant decisions: Each community should have its own policy and governance, and the breadth and depth of the policy is going to depend on your company's legal and HR teams' involvement and comfort levels. The community manager will ensure that this policy is written, represents the stakeholders' interests and is adhered to. The community manager knows where the line is and is empowered to take action on minor infractions and escalate the major ones to the right departments to take disciplinary action.
Patient like a saint: As your network gains mainstream acceptance in your company, you will be the person to whom everyone comes for advice. Remember what we said about accountability leading to success? Well, congratulations - you are that person! As new users will come in, you will find yourself answering the same questions over and over. Recognize patterns over time and create your own list of FAQs; direct people there. At times you will feel like you are stuck in The Groundhog Day movie having the same discussions over and over. That's OK; remember, you are a resource for everyone else.
Creative like a circus: Success in a community takes a bit of the systemic development of best practices, as well as a dash of serendipity and creativity. How will you launch your Yammer network or celebrate its birthday? Will you do anything special for your 100th user? What about user 10,000? Predictable is boring! Let your imagination run wild and take some chances. As we all experience information overload, you need to stand out. Check out some creative things our customers have done.
Industry and market expertise: Your internal community manager needs to be the jack of all trades and really know what's going on in the market. The knowledge of macro and micro trends and market forces, as well as immaculate knowledge of the company, will allow this person to have interesting and enlightening conversations with others.
The above success characteristics are common to many internal community managers; of course the list is not exhaustive. Depending on the lifestage of your community, you may need to emphasize certain characteristics above others, but that's fodder for a follow-up blogpost.
So what do you think, reader? Do you manage an internal community, or know someone who does? What success characteristics are you finding important?
Photo credit: marfis75