‘KEY’ TAKE AWAY: Find and hire a top notch online community evangelist now. It will be one of the most valuable investments you’ll ever make in your company.
This is how fast (agile if you will) the world is changing. There is a person that you need to hire today into your company, but there is no real title for them. You can’t find a them under a category under Monster.com. In fact, it’s amazing to say, but the most talented person out there for the job may not even know that they are the perfect candidate. What I’m speaking of is a Community Evangelist or Community Manager (again, there are all sorts of titles. At Microsoft, they call them Community Program Managers). For simplicity, I’ll stick to the title, Community Evangelist for this title since I think that it’s most appropriate being that the job is one that requires a great deal of faith, belief, and passion against the odds of encouraging people to change the way they communicate with others.
At a very high level, the Community Evangelist will:
- Teach all in the company to create dialogue with the outside world using blogs and other Web 2.0 tools.
- Be aware of all information on the Internet related to your company and either directly respond to it or have the right people in the company respond to it to further create dialogue.
- Know and teach all about new technologies like Twitter.
- Inspire an ‘aloha’ spirit in your community.
Community Evangelist are a must to inspire that aloha spirit in your blogging and Web 2.0 communications
From a practical business perspective, it’s also good to hire them now before the best are taken and the cost rises. There are a solid group of talented, passionate people who would love this job. As the role becomes more formalized within the next 6-12 months, I believe that it will be harder to find the best, most talented Community Evangelist and their market rate will significantly increase. I actually had this exact experience with an amazing Ruby on Rails developer that I worked with (and became good friends with). Only one year ago, his salary was below $50K. Today, he is making over $100K at a major Internet company. The biggest observation for me was that I can no longer find anyone of his talent anymore under $100K. For some businesses, this can mean the difference between success and failure if there isn’t a big enough budget to hire the best in today’s fast business environment.
Find a Community Evangelist now to take your company into the future of customer dialogue using Web 2.0. Your customers will love you and you will see a measurable and significant ROI on this investment.
MORE LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:
- Jeremiah Owyang: Understanding the Community / Evangelist Role, and profiles of a few of my favorite folks
- Mack Collier: Where Are the Community Evangelists?
- Posted by Mario Sundar: Live from Web 2.0 Expo: Community Evangelism w/ Anil Dash and Deborah Schultz
- Christopher Salazar: Who can be a community evangelist
Thank you for the comments.
You both bring good thoughts into what the Community Evangelist will and should be.
It is so much about bringing in the right culture into a company. As we know, however, this is a hard job. Most companies (but not all) have strong leaders that are not very accepting of change.
I think that a lot of Community Evangelism begins with proving the value of the online community to a business.
As ‘HRlog.nl’ had mentioned, the Community Evangelist is a trend watcher. This is very true. Not only are they trend watchers, they are information watchers.
So one way I can see Community Evangelists proving their value in small baby steps is to show company leaders what is being said about their company online. The good things and especially the bad things.
This may open up the eyes to some company leaders that there is a whole new separate conversation in the world that is going without their participation unless they hire a Community Evangelist to be a part of that conversation.
So many good points! Baby steps are essential because it takes awhile for the community to build. Imagine if an analyst came in & said, “here’s a plan”, then as it’s implemented, users (the community) don’t respond as expected. Aren’t there so many unknown variables when working with a large group of people that makes it difficult to predict how the engagement will progress? What if brand Y is released midstream. I think creativity & flexibility are key.
From my experience, I think that the most effective Community Evangelist is someone who isn’t within the company. One of their jobs is to “Be aware of all information on the Internet related to your company and either directly respond to it or have the right people in the company respond to it to further create dialogue.” But I have found it to be more than that… it’s a role of serving as translator between the customer & the company. What’s the point of advertising a product to the customer if a connection isn’t being made? A Community Evangelist can teach the marketing dept. what the community understands & what they relate to (their values & needs). After all isn’t that what you want to connect with? QA needs to understand ‘why’ the product isn’t performing as expected & a translation needs to be made in how the customer would like it to behave. Tech support & the FAQ’s offer great help, but it’s in the industry’s language. A Comm Evang can translate that in both directions & provide assistance to both tech & the customer. And finally there’s R&D, and the Customer Evangelist that’s in tune with the community can provide a comprehensive feedback of what the customer is interested in & wants for improvement of the product. What’s the point of creating a product with lots of bells & whistles if they’re not practical? I think that the Comm Evang can provide the company with valuable insight to maximize their sales in a customer driven society. Add on the positive PR aspect the Comm Evang fosters & maybe the concept is invaluable?
James, I see ‘crystal ball’ as a tag. Do you think in 5 yrs companies will look back & wonder how they existed without a Comm Evang? and say, ‘remember when we were talking at our customers?, look at how things have changed since we’ve been talking with them.’ Do you think that companies will have identifiable benchmarks as they engage comm evang’s? Have these positions been utilized long enough for there to be any data on that? (Will you research that please? As a librarian, I’d say that’s a great reference question!)
Great addition of thoughts Connie
I do agree that a great evangelist can come from the outside, but they have to have executive support. There is really no other way to enforce the cultural transformations that need to take place in a company to be in line with Web 2.0.
With regards to a Community Evangelist being a translator, I absolutely agree with this point. In a way, they are a true counselor between businesses and the customer they serve. Like in any relationship, the inability to step back prevents you from seeing the original intent and value of the relationship.
As for the ‘crystal ball’, I think that within less 3 years companies will wonder how they existed without one. The benchmarks are still being created as we speak. As of now, they are still related to more traditional web analytics with a focus on unique visitors, new member registrations, page views, etc.
In the future, one way a Community Evangelist can be measured is by the source by which customers discover and take action with a company or product. For example, if the answer to ‘How did you hear about us?’ increasingly becomes ‘blogs’, ‘Google’, or ‘internet’, the value of a Community Evangelist can be quantified.