Update: Here’s a Wrapup of #CMAD 2013, which Trended.
Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day, in celebration of saluting this important role changing the face of corporations and customers everywhere, I wanted to share original data and insights on the state of the space. Community Manager Day (#CMAD) is hosted globally every fourth Monday in Jan, I’ll do a wrap up post and cross-link for this fourth year. Why do Community Managers get their own day? Essentially, they serve customers every other day, so they should get a day of thanks to highlight how they’re changing the face of business, customer care, and our industry. Here’s key stats on the essential skills, requirements of community managers, as well who they follow the most on Twitter.
1) Top Required Skills of the Community Manager
Altimeter Group conducted analysis of 30 global job descriptions of Community Managers to ascertain patterns on job requirements and skills.
Above: Out of 30 Community Manager job descriptions, the most critical requested skills were writing ability (83%), customer relations in online channels in normal daily conditions (76%), and working with other departments (53%). Other critical skills included reporting, and providing feedback to product teams on innovations and improvements. A few of the requirements included passion/tact/clever people skills, as well as passion for the topic and vertical the CM was covering.
2) Top Tools of the Community Manager
Above: Interestingly, 43% requested that Community Managers to participate in social networks –not just online communities owned by the brand. The heritage of the term originated with online communities (before Facebook and Twitter were founded) but the job requirements now suggest that 43% of community manager roles must interact with customers wherever they go.
3) Top Experience Requirements of the Community Manager
Job Experience Requirements: Out of the 30 job descriptions, 13 (43%) required bachelor degrees, and a majority required that they have Years required about 2.5 – 3 years of experience in social/marketing/customer service. Additionally, 6 companies had a requirement that the community manager have 2.5 – 3 years of experience in the specific vertical which they were serving.
4) The Most Followed Community Managers are in America, Western Europe
If you’re seeking to reach community managers in person, you’ll find key global hotspots in East Coast US, Western Europe, and a scattering up and down the West US Coast. This represents the top 500 followed community managers (update: Little Bird has provided a method and list of top 1000 CMs), and is not representative of the thousands of total CMs in the entire industry.
5) Most Influential Community Practitioners
Long time friend, Marshall Kirkpatrick (RWW, now entrepreneur) provided me data on influential community managers in Twitter. While I’m not involved in creating his social analytics product, Little Bird they provide this service analysis to any topical community. By analyzing which Community Managers are most followed in Twitter by their peers, he generated a list. Here are the most followed (thereby highest potential of Influence) Community Managers followed by their peers. Caveat: I recognize that measuring influence can’t be a sole number, but the data provided is interesting on heat maps on a social graph.
Community Managers followed the following folks, who are mostly providing services, resources, information and guidance to other community managers. Out of the top 500 Community Managers on Twitter, the 5 most-followed by their peers are:
- Jenn Pedde (@JPedde) Community Strategist at 2U and Co-Founder of CmgrChat is followed by 74% of the top Community Managers on Twitter
- Blaise Grimes-Viort (@blaisegv) Head of Community Management & Social Media with @eModeration is followed by 66% of the top Community Managers on Twitter
- Rachel Happe (@rhappe) Principal at The Community Roundtable is followed by 64% of the top Community Managers on Twitter
- Jim Storer (@jimstorer) Founder of The Community Roundtable (like Rachel, above) is followed by 61% of the top Community Managers on Twitter
- Tim McDonald (@tamcdonald) Community Manager for @HuffPostLive is followed by 53% of the top Community Managers on Twitter
Yours truly (@jowyang), is followed by 43% of the top 500 CMs, thank you!
6) Most Influential Community Managers at Corporations followed Community Managers
The top 500 Community Managers followed the following corporate community managers the most:
- Maria Ogneva (@themaria) at Yammer (which is a social business vendor, kudos Maria)
- Lauren Vargas (@vargasl) at Aetna
- Paco Vázquez (@pakvazquez) at Telefónica
7) Top Software Vendors Followed by the top 500 Community Managers
The following are the most followed social software vendor corporate accounts (not personal accounts, like Maria) of the top 500 Community Managers. While just one data sample, this gives light to the mindshare owned by actual product users in the industry:
- Salesforce MarketingCloud (@marketingcloud) is followed by 26%
- Wildfire (@wildfireapp) 11%
- BuddyMedia (@buddymedia) 8%
- Lithium (@LithiumTech) 8%
- Cotweet (@cotweet) 8%
- Sprinklr (@Sprinklr) 6%
- Spredfast (@Spredfast) 6%
- Adobe Social (@AdobeSocial) 3%
- LiveWorld (@liveworld) 3%
- Involver (@involver) 2%
- Little Bird (@getlittlebird) 2%
- Oracle (@oracle) 1%
8 ) Most Influential European Community Managers
Out of the top 500 Community Managers in Europe, the ones most followed by their peers are:
- Camille Jourdain (@camj59)
- Christophe Ramel (@Kriisiis)
- Cédric DENIAUD (@cdeniaud)
- Flavien Chantrel (@moderateur),
- Jean-Luc Raymond (@jeanlucr)
- Isabelle Mathieu (@isabellemathieu).
9) Rising Stars in Community Manager Space
Globally, the most Emergent CMs this year, defined as new but already followed by a large number of other leaders in the field are:
- Hootsuite’s Laura Horak (@laurahoots)
- Rolando Cuevas (@cuevas_rolando) of Spain’s Community Next
- Mark Schwanke (@AdoptACM) formerly of Motorola Mobility
- Fer Rubio Ahumada (@FerRubioAhumada)
- Patricia Fernandez (@triciafernan)
10) Most Connected Community Managers
Globally, the CMs who are following the largest number of other top CMs on Twitter are:
- Nissim Alkobi (@nis519) at Payoneer
- James Baldwin (@TwistedEdge) of the International Game Developers Association
- Paulette Bleam (@paulettebleam) of stealth startup Sumazi
- Jim Storer (@jimstorer) of Community Roundtable
- Robyn Tippins (@duzins) of ReadWriteWeb
Summary: As the broader category of Social Business continues to proliferate around the globe, these day to day business programs will be staffed, run, and managed by Community Managers serving on the front line with customers, employees, and partners. This key role represents the shift to digital real time communications in the business workplace, and demonstrates the changing role of authentic and human customer interactions.
Credit to data analysis by Julie George of essential skills in data point 1-3.
Is there a full list of these 500 community managers? Would love to pull some of our own stats on them.
I would be willing to bet that @socialbakers is missing in the tool providers.
Great Post Jeremiah! indeed the role of Community Manager is an organization is different as it work with all departments and operate as a cross company position…
Professional Community Managers require different tools and different methodology… it’s a very exciting to see how the role of community manager evolved in the attempt of business to “catch up” with social media.
Thanks for sharing this important post!
Sharel
Would love to see what data SocialBakers could add to these insights.
Love to see “Writing” as the top skill for community managers. It is a space where we all need to keep pushing education.
Great post Jeremiah. Love the LittleBird data being included.
Jeremiah, thanks so much for including Little Bird data in this year’s post! We’re still in private beta but we open up access to new people each day; we welcome your readers to come check our service out and we’ll keep our eyes peeled for members of your community to let in quickly!
Love this! Thanks so much for putting it together and sharing.
Little Bird is powerful, isn’t it??
Jan this list has been made available to me, through Marshall. It’s up to Marshall if he wants to share it in public
with you. Jan, please share if it happens.
Writing as a clear communication skill is priority one Jason!
Great post! I agree, good communication is key for a community manager, it’s important to understand the many ways your organization’s Raison d’être is conveyed online.
I recently read Edelman’s trust barometer that individual “non-social employees” are becoming the greatest ambassadors to a company, and the community manager can foster this spirit to encourage more and more employees within an organization to live that promise.
Wow – so excited to be on top of that list! Honored to be amongst so many CMs that I work with and respect. There’s clearly more going on in the space now than ever before, and it’s a very interesting time. What I really love about this post is the skill based information. It’s not about marketing, or customer service or product per se, but what it takes to make a community manager successful. Thanks Jeremiah!
Thanks for the mention Jeremiah !
Pretty amazing there isn’t (apparently) a single CM of notoriety in the luxury industry…what a bummer…
Thank you for including me and thank you for being a voice in support for community managers.
This is really cool! Thanks, Jeremiah for putting the spotlight on community managers and the extent of skills and commitment needed to do the job well. I’d love to see what Little Bird would come up with for social strategists and consultants – on the individual (not agency) level.
Thank you for the mention of my name.
Dear JeremÃas Owyang, I am very surprised about your comment. I am grateful for mention. Best regards.
Thanks for the mention. I’m glad for being in your post. Thank you very munch.