Loudmouthman

feel  we are reaching that stage in the curve where the early majority and the incoming masses are changing over. We are crossing that chasm where corporations are asking , Do You Blog ?

It seems these corporations  go through this stages on a regular basis, everytime asking a new question.

• Do you have a phone ?
• Do you have fax ?
• Do you have email ?
• Do you have  a Web Page ?

Each of those technical advances has required a redefinition of roles and responsibilities within the corporate. Early adopting companies have approached blogs as an extension of their public announcement and press release platforms, they assign the roles to Marketing and PR departments  and task  some engaging employee with the responsibility of “letting everyone know”.

Though many more corporations are still dragging heels and raising excuses and for which I point them to some of the sage advice over on SearchRank.

However those that are posting new posts and creating communities are having to define what that means as a role within the corporation. The role of community manager will provide HR departments with some interesting challenges when it comes to Hiring, Firing and Promoting an employee. Like Salesmen before them the community manager is likely to come with a predefined set of leads, their audience, whom have tracked their progress and activities constantly. A community manager will be building new audiences and finding new ways to connect the business with its clients and in doing so forming relationships as individuals.

Whilst the role of community manager and their responsibilities is  being discussed by Tamar Weinberg and Connie Benson the issue of managing and employing for the roles is still being decided upon.

In many ways this is not too dissimilar to issues faced by media in hiring celebrities to host breakfast or chat shows. The expectation of that mass of interested followers add value to the celebrity and can add value to that companies brand.

What will be interesting to watch are not the first hires into new roles for corporations but how those corporations deal with transition and change of those community managers.

No matter what happens I certainly hope they Blog it.

Thanks for reading.