Sue On The Web

The Online Community Manager and the Job Search

I often get asked the best places to look for Community Manager jobs. As this role grows I am seeing more and more jobs posted all over the internet. As yet I am not aware of one main central place where Community Manager jobs are listed. However I will try and give you some ideas of where to start looking.

So in no particular order here are some great places for you to peruse:

1. LinkedIn is a great place for tracking down OCM jobs. I've seen some companies that only list available positions on LinkedIn and no where else. You can also use LinkedIn to search for jobs that are listed elsewhere.

2. Jake Mckee, Chief Strategy Officer at Ant's Eye View, whose background is with online communities and community management, has a great jobs board on his site.

3. Jeremiah Owyang, Web strategist and partner at the Altimeter Group also has a large array of OCM jobs listed on his job board.

4. Forum One Communications, a company that is deeply involved in Social Media and online communities. You can find a list of OCM jobs on their Online Community Report site.

5. The Community Roundtable, a peer network for community managers and social media practitioners, is often contacted by companies looking for community managers. In response to that they have implemented a great idea. If you let them know your skills and experience they can pass along your details to companies who contact them.

6. Search Twitter. Many, many, many people will share jobs they've seen posted elsewhere on Twitter. Run a search using the search function, and you will be surprised by the amount of jobs that you will find. Search phrases such as:

• online community manager,
• web community manager,
• online community management,
• online community moderator,
• online moderator,
• etc, etc.

7. Set-up Google Alerts using the search phrases I've listed above.

8. Last, but by no means list, I am constantly keeping an eye out for OCM jobs and try to list as many as I can on OCMForum. However it is by no means an extensive list. My community manager duties means I do not have as much time as I would like to list all that I see.

These are just a a few things to jump start your job search, but hopefully it will get you on the right path, and will reap the reward of that special Online Community Manager that you have been looking for.

If you know of other OCM job resources that I can add to this list please let me know.

Too Much, Too Loud!

I would say approx 70-80% of a community managers time is "behind the scenes" stuff. For example, I always try and connect with as many of our members behind the scenes as much as possible. It's that one-to-one connection that builds relationships and respect, and lets the other person know that you care about their opinions and their experiences.

As we are all discovering, the role of a Community Manger is still changing and evolving. For many it's not just about the managing of our static communities but also reaching out to our "community" elsewhere. I for one, tweet (on behalf of the community I manage) on Twitter in order to pass along useful info, and keep our Twitter follows updated with news from our forum. However, community building is not solely about what you are "seen" doing. Posting and commenting all over the place in public places is all well and good (and of course that's part of community building) but it's not the be all and end all. Connecting with people in private is just as important.

So remember, using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed, to broadcast your message is fine, but connecting with people is a two-way street. You can't stand on the corner blasting out your message with a megaphone and expect people to stop, stand still, and listen to you.

A recent Tweet on Twitter really summed this up for me when cc_chapman wrote,  "Fact: Social media allows assholes to just be bigger, louder assholes." So take heed, there is no point blowing your trumpet as loud as you can if no one is listening. After a while people will just tune you out!

CmtyChat

If you are a Twitter user, and an Online Community Manager, you don't want to miss out on Community Chat. Hosted by CmtyChat it takes place every Friday at 1pm ET. It's a fast paced, bite size way of interacting with your peers. Learning and sharing information, and reading about different experiences. We ask questions of each other, and give each other tips. It's a really great way of finding out how other community managers deal with issues in their community, and what works and what doesn't work.

The best way to follow the chat is to go through TweetChat and login in using your Twitter account details, then enter #cmtychat and you are ready to go. See you on Friday!