During the course of Community Manager Appreciation Day on Monday I kept a report generated by Hashtracking — a really great service that we use for data behind #CmgrChat transcripts each week — to find out what kind of activity was really happening around this once a year hashtag. The numbers were pretty incredible:
- 1.9k Tweets
- 1.4k Participants
- 9 million impressions
- 6.4 million reach
And this was dated from 8pm Sunday, January 22nd, until 11:59pm Monday, January 23rd, the end of #CMAD – though the tag was still quite popular on Tuesday throughout the day. In addition to the raw data above, see below for the Top 20 people by Popularity, Most Tweets, Impressions, and Reach. Click on the image (twice) to enlarge it.
So what does all of this data mean? Honestly to me, not much other than “Wow 1400 people had a pretty great discussion yesterday,” which is incredible in and of itself. We as community managers usually get bogged down with measuring things like social media growth, and reach/impressions, but we do it because we have to not because they inherently mean anything. It’s a starting point until we as an industry can come up with accurate ways of assessing what it is we do – and it’ll happen in time. Each of us knows that community management is and never has been about numbers. It’s about the relationships, the engagement, the content created, and the action behind the scenes in getting your community to stay loyal customers or fans or users or members with the fortunate results of word of mouth marketing and awareness generation. The best community managers don’t promote themselves, they tirelessly work to promote their brands. We are tasked with the marketing AND the support AND the PR AND the web analysis AND the content creation usually a part of larger teams. Our job descriptions are across the board not clearly defined, but the people in true community management roles are changing the social business landscape from the inside out.
The top 20 people that are mentioned in the report above aren’t the top 20 community managers in the field by a long shot (myself included, though I was very excited to be included in Mashable’s 6 Top Community Managers to Appreciate article on Monday). Most of them (while they are brilliant in their own rights and should be followed) aren’t your thought leaders that are driving Community Management to an all new level and defining the field. There were some incredible tweets by a few community managers Monday, and tweets every other day of the week, that deserve more praise and your attention than anyone else on the list above. If you follow all of these people below, you actually will have the most robust blog posts and tweets about community management, that you really won’t need to look elsewhere. People like:
- Evan Hamiltion of Uservoice (@EvanHamilton)
- Lauren Vargas of Aetna (@VargasL)
- David Spinks of Zaarly (And TCM) (@DavidSpinks)
- Justin Isaf of The Huffington Post (@JustinIsaf)
- Theresa Wu of Google (Google Docs) (@ResaWu)
- Katie Morse of Billboard (@misskatiemo)
- Douglas Crets of Rewired Inc. (@DouglasCrets)
- Elysa Rice of Gen Pink (@Elysa)
- Ryan Paugh of The YEC (@RyanPaugh)
- Rachel Happe of The Community Roundable (@Rhappe)
- Stacey Acevero of PRWEb (@sacevero)
- Jessica Murray of Social Media Club (@JessicaRMurray)
- Suzanne Marlatt at Edelman Digital (@applegirl)
- Matthew Knell at AOL (@MatthewKnell)
- Danya Cheskis-Gold at Skillshare (@Danyacg)
- Meghan Peters at Mashable (@petersmeg)
- Jenna Langer at Livefyre (@JennaLanger)
- Thomas Knoll at Launch Rock (@ThomasKnoll)
- Blaise Grimes Vort of eModeration (@BlaiseGV)
- Harrison Kratz of TweetDrive (@KratzPR)
- Kelly Lux at Syracuse University’s iSchool (And #Cmgrchat) (@KellyLux)
- Jennifer Sable Lopez of SEOmoz (@Jennita)
- Katie Felton of Hashable (@KatieFelton)
- Sheena Medina of Fast Company (@SheenaMedina)
- Caty Kobe of Focus (@CatyKobe)
But do yourself the biggest favor if you’re either an aspiring community manager or an established one. Follow any and all of the above, but don’t stop there, and don’t be discouraged if they don’t tweet all that much and think I may have led you wrong. Join their communities if you can. Look at what they’re doing as far as strategy goes. That’s where you’ll find the best of the best doing it right. The people above “Get it” and you can expect an awful lot out of them and their communities in the future.
*I can guarantee you that at the time of this writing I have left off a number of incredible CMs. I apologize, and can guarantee you that there will be a follow up to this list in the future.
Jenn is a Co-Founder of The Community Manager and the Editor-In-Chief. She’s also an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. You can find her almost anywhere online, but specifically on #CmgrChat every Wednesday from 2-3pm ET.
Great post. My favorite line? “The best community managers don’t promote themselves, they tirelessly work to promote their brands.” So true. I recently blogged about how I have no time to write about my job because I’m too busy doing it. Unless your brand overlaps with cmgt/tech/social media in some way, you’re not necessarily going to be a celebrity. Thanks for acknowledging some of the folks that really matter in this space. Mashable did a good job with their post as well– most of the community managers they profiled I had never heard of (even though they work for huge brands), and there’s a reason for that.
Great CMAD summary Jenn! It’s great to see the groundswell of this emerging role as someone who was blazing the CM trail 5 years ago. From the early talks around this at E2conf to now, it’s encouraging to see this role integrated as key part of the business.
Great summary…and thank you for the shout out!