Internal Community Management/Basics

Definition

Community Management is the management of social relationships between people and people (e.g. communities of interest, project communities) or people and organizations (e.g. customer communities). Community management covers all operational and strategic tasks according the design and development of a online community. The area of responsibility covers aspects of community members support but also to ensure technical, legal and financial requirements.

Literally "community" means a collectie of people with a sense of belonging. To sharpen the definition one can use the term "social group" coming from sociology. A social group consists of at least three persons wit a direct relationship and with having an awareness of group membership. In public online communities the distribution of user groups looks typically like this:

Community Types, Examples & Use Cases

• Whole Organization as a Community
• Departements as Communities
• Projects als Communities
• Communities of Interest as Communities

Types	Community of Interest	Projekt Community	Departement Community
Example	MS Excel, Project Management, Expats	Project Team, Work Force, Committee	Marketing, HR, Purchasing
Use Cases	Provide information, Link employees, Questions&Answers, Prepare and follow up Meetings	Replace Meetings, Communicate project status tranparently, Prepare and follow up Meetings, Coordinate tasks	Manager Blogs, Participatory decision making, Involve employees in planning of events, Distribute internal information, Onboarding of new employees

Community Benefit

Infrastructure for Communities

Corporate Social Networks

Practice Cases

• COP case study.pdf ConocoPhillips
• Continental (in German)
• connect.BASF (in German)

Community Management

Definition

Community Management describes all methods an tasks for the design, set-up, leadership, operation, support, and optimization of virtual communities as well as their equivalent in the physical space. Bundesverband Community Management e.V. , http://www.bvcm.org

The Role of a Community Manager - Personal Requirements

• likes to work in a self-organized way
• is open for change
• likes to get in contact with new colleagues
• is proactive and likes to design
• is open for social media

The Role of a Community Manager - Organizational Requirements

• Organization pushes cross-departmental collaboration
• Community managers are provided with resources for their tasks
• Community infrastructure is accessible for all relevant stakeholder