Community Manager – Features and Functions

The Community Manager is the one who articulates the brand in the social ecosystem in complex ways (contextualizing its origin in the webmaster and forum moderator). Through in-depth knowledge of needs and strategic approaches of the organization and the interests of customers, leads the strategy, builds, manages and moderates communities according to the brand and helps to promote change within the organization. His figure has acquired great importance to emerge as a spokesperson, articulating the brand and reputation in the digital domain, with all its implications.

Make responsible for managing online communities for students in practice simply because they are cheap, geeks or are enthusiastic about social networks, or without these new professionals delegating responsibility for the same team working to minimize costs is one of the greatest blunders that can incur. Another misconception is that the social strategy is simply based on having a person to write on blogs, upload photos, upload videos, update statements or moderate comments. Materialize and build digital identity through bonding with audiences beyond the “social performance” as a marketing element. Create community, build relationships and help achieve business goals effectively requires a comprehensive business insight, innovative and highly committed.

The Community Manager must emerge as a strategist specializing in online communications, with expertise in marketing, advertising and public relations, an early adopter in essence and experience to establish relationships of trust with the audience.

FEATURES
* Must have a thorough knowledge of business and industry
* Common Sense
* Empathy
* contextual intelligence (is the person’s ability to use their skills and common sense and to adapt to the environment, come-do to reform the environment to accommodate him, his chances and minimize your flaws.)
* Emotional
* Be able to evaluate and interpret trends.

MAIN TASK

* Monitor the mark and interpret data
* Anticipated scenarios of crisis or opportunity
* Establish strategic partnerships (communities)
* Identify and “recruited ” opinion leaders
* Collect feedback for use as internal improvement proposals.

The comunity manager is a person with great communication skills to present to the other projects and to sell the positive things in your community to attract more people. I think it’s similar to a ship captain, who with his experience and abilities to the community and organize your team to achieve goals.

You Are What You Write

The only thing anyone knows about you on the Internet comes from what you write, or what others write about you. You may be brilliant, perceptive, and charismatic in person—but if your emails are rambling and unstructured, people will assume that’s the real you. Or perhaps you really are rambling and unstructured in person, but no one need ever know it, if your posts are lucid and informative.
Devoting some care to your writing will pay off hugely. Long-time free software hacker Jim Blandy tells the following story:
Back in 1993, I was working for the Free Software Foundation, and we were beta-testing version 19 of GNU Emacs. We’d make a beta release every week or so, and people would try it out and send us bug reports. There was this one guy whom none of us had met in person but who did great work: his bug reports were always clear and led us straight to the problem, and when he provided a fix himself, it was almost always right. He was top-notch.
Now, before the FSF can use code written by someone else, we have them do some legal paperwork to assign their copyright interest to that code to the FSF. Just taking code from complete strangers and dropping it in is a recipe for legal disaster.
So I emailed the guy the forms, saying, “Here’s some paperwork we need, here’s what it means, you sign this one, have your employer sign that one, and then we can start putting in your fixes. Thanks very much.”
He sent me back a message saying, “I don’t have an employer.”
So I said, “Okay, that’s fine, just have your university sign it and send it back.”
After a bit, he wrote me back again, and said, “Well, actually… I’m thirteen years old and I live with my parents.”
Because that kid didn’t write like a thirteen-year-old, no one knew that’s what he was. Following are some ways to make your writing give a good impression too.
I think in some cases internet protects the identity of individuals, or in many cases it is difficult to know whether people are telling the truth or not. It is important to be honest about our knowledge and experience we have acquired over the years.

Source: http://producingoss.com/en/communications.html

Comunications by electronic ways

Communication projects and free software communities is of great importance because of the number of people involved from different nationalities, cultures and languages.
It is important to maintain good communication when writing e-mails, therefore it is important to consider the following recommendations.

• Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider, be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to place.
• Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.
• Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country has copyright laws.
• If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you’ve received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper attribution.
• Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator.
• In general, most people who use the Internet don’t have time to answer general questions about the Internet and its workings. Don’t send unsolicited mail asking for information to people whose names you might have seen in RFCs or on mailing lists.
• Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Don’t assume that the inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy with what you say or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment.
• Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response, the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the mail didn’t arrive or that they don’t care.
• Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU’RE SHOUTING.
• Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a carriage return.
• Mail should have a subject heading which reflects the content of the message.
• In general, most people who use the Internet don’t have time to answer general questions about the Internet and its workings. Don’t send unsolicited mail asking for information to people whose names you might have seen in RFCs or on mailing lists.
• Talk shows your typing ability. If you type slowly and make mistakes when typing it is often not worth the time of trying to correct, as the other person can usually see what you meant.

Sources: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html