Over the past 2 years, the relatively close knit blog universe has exploded in a massive confluence of social expression and corporate reaction. A cottage industry of owner-operators, trawling social media on behalf of themselves and others, has cropped up in lofts, dorms, agencies and iPhones.

These are the new social media Community Managers and corporate is clearly looking. This post offers a granular look at crucial skills, essential duties and a job description for the CM role.

“That cottage industry will become as important as PR, Marketing, Customer Service, Sales.”
-Lee Odden-

Often the key to integrating social media into the marketing mix is about not hiring immediately, but rather sharing CM duties cross departments. That said, there comes a time in many a’ company’s evolution that bringing in a full time hands-on Community Manager makes sense. What type of person should you hire? I put that questions to our friend Lisa Barone, noted SEM industry blogger/Social Media Addict/Evangelist.

She says, “Hire someone who is addicted to the conversation and will be around on the weekends to approve comments, continue discussions and put out fires when needed. 9 to 5’ers need not apply. Make sure they have a thick skin. When you’re managing a community, attacks will come and someone will always have a problem with what you’re doing.

They need to know when to step up, when to say nothing and how to steer conversations down constructive paths. Above all, make sure it’s someone you trust with your brand. They’re going to be your eyes and ears into what’s happening. “Don’t hire someone with a rock star complex.
-Lisa Barone-

Now I’ll put my human resources hat on and offer up our job description for Community Manager. Please feel free to use any part of it and adapt as you see fit. If any readers would like to contribute ideas, you’re invited to do so in the comments thread.
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Community Manager Job Description
Do you tweet and use Facebook every day, all day? Is building social community so ingrained you just can’t stop? Do you take pride in customer service excellence and fancy yourself an entrepreneur? Do you understand the difference between a “brochure website,” a “publication” and why feeds are important?

We seek a highly a motivated individual with experience and fanatical passion for blogging, micro-blogging and community participation leadership. This position is full time salaried with benefits, including attending mainstream and niche’ conferences.

We are a [your company description here] in [city, state] with an national reputation for [your company mission here] mission. We promote our website by integrated organic optimization (SEO), social media optimization (SMO) and paid placement (PPC). Our Reputation Monitoring & Management objectives are comprehensive.

The successful candidate will join our internal marketing team at the managerial level, and interact with an external Search Marketing agency. Our Community Manager/Blogger will oversee and contribute recurrent content to holistically support our customers and corporate objectives.

Qualifications and Experience

• Has a bachelor’s or associates degree in music, advertising, marketing, graphics, web development, communications, English, IT, music, theater, anthropology, history or related.
• Excels at research, possesses excellent writing skills and the ability to crank editorial and technical writing output without brooding.
• Has work experience or training in advertising, PR, online marketing or similar field
• Proficient with Microsoft Office products.
• Dedicated to blogging and use of Facebook
• Understands the power of feed marketing
• Demonstrated creativity and documented immersion in social media (really send the links)
• Demonstrated ability to map out a marketing strategy and then drive that strategy proven by testing and metrics
• Experience sourcing and managing content development and publishing
• Ability to jump from the creative side of marketing to analytical side, able to demonstrate why their ideas are analytically sound
• Management experience or obviously ready for promotion to management
• Discretion to identify threats and opportunities in user generated content
• Understands social media universe including YouTube, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Flickr, Forums, Twitter, Wikis, blogs, etc…We’re looking for a social media addict who maintains a personal mix of participatory expertise from among these channels.
• Possesses functional knowledge or some experience with HTML/CSS
• Knowledge of search engine optimization-think including basic keyword research. We name and tag our posts based on research..
• Has excellent verbal and written communication skills and an ability to work individually on a project or in a team environment
• Is eager to meet and exceed objectives and take on more responsibility
• Brings to the position outstanding organizational skills and the ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously while meeting deadlines
• Ability to communicate results to management and in a fast paced environment

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Interact with our customers to align unselfish service of their needs, with our corporate objectives
• Be the eyes and ears of our brand as if your own reputation depended on it
• Build and maintain our content distribution network by way of social media channels
• Minute by minute participation in conversations that surround our content and brand, answer comments, be a mediator.”
• Identify threats and opportunities in user generated content surrounding our brand, report to appropriate parties.
• Interact with legal, search, client and cross corporate agencies.
• Create content for feeds and snippets in various social media sites.
• Schedule and organize multiple departments which generate content on a daily basis
• Conduct keyword research including cataloging and indexing target keyword phrases
• Participate in social media, as yourself and white hat avatars, on our behalf
• Optimizing tags, on our feeds, sharing sites like YouTube/Flickr and search engines through copywriting, creative & keyword optimization & buzz pocket mining.
• Tag and title content, with an understanding of how the word’s chosen impact natural search traffic and rankings via recurrent optimized content
• Manage and track link building campaigns, coordinated with all facets of our business.
• Create and update daily, weekly and monthly reports
• Analyze campaigns and translate anecdotal or qualitative data into recommendations and plans for revising the social media campaigns.

Please send resume and salary requirements to _______@gmail.com
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“Hire someone who is passionate about your product/service. Don’t just hire anyone.”
Tamar Weinberg / Tamar

The role of Community Manager has definitely moved towards the front of many C-level executive’s mind. No longer only the stuff of geeks and nerds, feeds and social communities have gone mainstream. As an example, aimClear is currently supporting clients hiring 3 full time community managers and one free-lancer for a 6 week project.

We look forward to any input you might share regarding the traits of a good Community Manager hire. Thanks to @lisabarone @LeeOdden & @Tamar for help with this post.

With creative academic outposts (some workspaces crafted of stainless steel and 100 year knotty timber) rock star teachers in New York lead giant screen video classroom sessions in Minneapolis, Miami, Hamburg, Soa Paulo (Brazil) and San Francisco. At MAS Minneapolis I’ve never felt more hooked up anywhere by diode glow of virtual collaborative IT backbone.

Miami Ad School has an envious graduate placement rate worldwide for a reason. They distribute big-brand quality copywriters, designers and offer a  bootcamp for account planners.

(By way of disclosure, MAS is a client & friend of aimClear though not in this SEM HR recruitment area) Having worked in niche’ academic lead-gen SEM space since 2001, we appreciate how crucial graduate placement is to any school’s street cred’ on a number of levels. Miami Ad School’s golden pony is that every graduate ever + current grads are notified with job postings.

MAS trains students who have already graduated from other marketing/design programs by immersing them in truly national internship opportunities and master classes with industry leaders. MAS offers both long-term creative programs as well as a bootcamp for account planners which teaches students to assemble a national “book” highlighting their work. Given the intensity of recruiting in the SEM space, it is worth your taking a crack at the pool of professionals this institution cranks out.

Regardless of the recruiting channel, (job board, headhunter, craigslist, etc…) we start by asking ourselves “is this seo job candidate incredibly intelligent and is he or she one of us?” It’s my pleasure to introduce MAS to the SEM community as an SEM recruiting resource because they’re “one of us.” Miami Ad School invites SEM recruitment inquiries.

The landscape of paid search is rapidly changing. Platforms and tools change in subtle and major ways at any time. Though entry level, this position a good opportunity for someone interested in growing a career as the “new” media buyer. There is also the opportunity for advancement as our business continues to grow.

The Paid Search Account Technician is not required to research, set up, or create new accounts. Rather, in this role, expectations are that you can discern pattern changes in mature and healthy ongoing portfolios of paid search and report. However the technician has the authority to make tactical changes to accounts within pre-defined scope.

Daily tasks include generating daily, weekly, and monthly financial reports to or clients from a proprietary suite of Google, Panama, MSN, and other API Tools including multiple analytics packages, daily monitoring up to 20 clients with up to 5 accounts each, and holding each in strict adherence to budget.

Required Software: MS Office 2003+including the ability to use basic formulas in spreadsheets, and Windows XP (Vista a plus). Experience with major online paid advertising platforms is a plus.

Read carefully: this position requires a candidate who is functionally literate, has good grammar, is great with details, thinks on their feet, can handle a very fast pace, has a functional understanding of Internet navigation including use of search engines, is punctual, takes personal responsibility, and is very smart. Every aimClear team member also participates in social communities.

We’re open to giving an ultra smart, ultra talented, cutting edge creative person a cool first-job in search marketing. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Please email resumes to marty (at) aimClear.com.

Go to the head of the class if you like to rip apart open source applications and get them to do interesting new things. Experience with WordPress a plus.

Read carefully: this position requires a candidate who is functionally literate in .php, mySQL, Apache server, Windows Server, Dreamweaver, My PHP Admin, CPanel, Fireworks, and MS Office. Every aimClear team member also participates in social communities.

We’re open to giving an ultra smart, ultra talented, cutting edge creative technician a cool first-job in search marketing. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Please email resumes to marty (at) aimClear.com.

aimClear provides organic search engine optimization, paid search, and social media for an exciting client list in Minnesota and around the United States. Email applications to marty@aimClear.com with an attached resume.