ASAE's Community Manager Position

Have you seen the movie White Chicks? If so, you know that part where they say "OOOH, you want to talk about mothers?!" Weirdly, that scene was what I thought of when I saw ASAE's listing for a community manager. Why? Because if you read this blog you know if I have one pet issue, it's social media salaries, especially in the context of associations. So here is the association of associations, finally hiring a community manager...and the salary range is $48,000-$52,000. A figure so ridiculous I could not, try as I valiantly did, NOT blog about it.

So like the White Chicks wanted to talk about mothers, I want to talk about why this salary is just plain sad and wrong and sets a horrible benchmark for other associations.

Let's just take this recent Ogilvy post about finding the right social media strategist. It echos all the other advice I've both read and given about the challenges that face social media/community managers (actually, social media manager and community manager are not the same thing and I/we need to stop lumping them together, but that's a post for another time. Actually, scratch that--Rachel Happe's post about this says everything that needs to be said, and better than I'd ever say it.) In order to be successful in leading and implementing social media in an organization you need to have executive level buy-in. The person leading the charge, if not at the exec level, needs to at least have an exec level champion to make sure the things they suggest get buy-in. They need to be able to, as the Ogilvy post puts it, bust silos. This is especially important in the association context--including, I'm sure, ASAE. A quote from the Ogilvy post, in case you didn't click on it

The social media lead should be prepared to give non-threatening advice to an executive who is much more senior but also, work closely with communications managers to execute on the strategic plan.

Now back to the ASAE position. What level candidate are they going to get for the salary they're offering? I mean, it's not horrible or anything...but let's look at the still-paltry salary ranges that are out there for community and social media managers:

• Socialfresh research did a great community manager infographic, which includes the average salary figure of $61,800.
• Back in 2010 I blogged about Forum One Network's Online Community & Social Media Compensation Survey, and the reported averages were $86,644 (for men) and $75,624 (for women). Ridiculous about the gender bias but I already covered that in my post so I'll do you all a favor and digress.
• Going back another year I did another post about some more community/social media manager salary figures
• This past year I've seen several associations hiring for this role at the $70-$90k range. Granted, they are by far the exception rather than the rule, the rule is, in my opinion, wrong. Hiring one person to basically serve as an association's social media consultant and thinking a junior-level staffer making junior-level pay will be willing or able to accomplish the job is, to me, crazy.
• Speaking of consultants, in case you don't know what they charge, Mack Collier did a great post about what social media costs companies in 2011. Hourly rate for social media consultants? $50-$500 an hour. Why else would everyone and their brother want to be one?

"Doing" social media for an association is a very tough job. Sure, it looks like a lot of playing on Facebook and Twitter to most people, but it's much more than that. It's working well beyond the regular workday, every day. It's dealing with internal resistance, and having to constantly have to sell ideas and prove results. It's doing crazy math and tracking and spreadsheets. It's spending so much time online that your eyesight will suffer and your family will complain. It's being on call 24/7 in case the shit hits the fan in the form of a blog post or a comment on a Facebook page or an angry tweet on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon or over a holiday weekend.

I know--cry you a river, right? That's not my point. My point is that it's an uphill battle job every day, on an ongoing basis. And one that requires, in the association context, someone who is savvy about associations and social media and community management and a bunch of other things. Granted, we're still coming out of a recession, but seriously--thinking you're going to get a well-qualified candidate for $48k? In DC? Good luck with that. And the person you do get--ASAE senior staff are going to let that person lead the charge in changing internal politics? Busting silos?

Say they do get someone great--because everyone wants to be a community manager these days. How long will that person stay at ASAE making that money, when every day another company is looking to hire social media/community managers at the $60k, $70k, $80k and up range? Ok, maybe not every DAY but certainly every few weeks if not every week I see postings for social media jobs in the DC area.
I'll just leave it at this, since I'm boring even myself at this point: as an ASAE member who just spent the better part of 2010 fighting to be paid fairly for the job I do--a job very similar to the one ASAE is hiring for--and, ultimately succeeding, by the way--seeing them value the position at this level, is just insulting and depressing. And serves as a terrible example to other associations who will now see that range and think that's what the position is worth.

PRSA Misses PR Opportunity of the Decade

Wednesday night is date night in the McGary house. So why am I blogging on date night? Because I just read this post on Forrester's Empowered blog while checking my email on my phone in the car on the drive home from the movies and was so horrified/depressed/amused that I told my husband this was a blogging emergency and I had to write about something right away while the mood struck me.

Blogging emergency? Seriously? Honestly, yes. I blog about social media and associations--sometimes association social media, sometimes just association stuff, and sometimes just social media. It's not often that there's a perfect storm of an association totally messing up both simultaneously, but PRSA has managed to do both. "Both" as in prove itself to be totally dated and basically needing to just close its doors today because there's no way they can serve as the association poised to lead the PR industry when they are so woefully out of touch with the reality of PR in the current day and age. And--sorry, that sentence was too long to add the second half of the "both"--they managed to totally miss out on a huge social media opportunity.

How often is it that one of the most respected--and, to use a beloved PR term--influential--companies in the social media world--if not the business world--basically invites an association to bask in the glow of the center stage? That's what Forrester's Josh Bernoff did in his post calling out the PR industry for bad email practices and issuing a call to action to PRSA:

 ...you need a code of conduct that reflects the difference between right and wrong, and you need to withhold certifcation from people who violate it. You need a grievance policy that goes through you, so we can report people like 5WPR who don't appear to care. If you want to serve your industry, then create a certification for people who behave properly. Because right now, every failure to respect an unsubscribe tarnishes your industry.

What would any self-respecting PR agency do if a Forrester analyst named them in such a call to action? Milk the shit out of it for the sheer PR value. Agree and ask Forrester to partner with them in getting the word out. About how responsive and forward-thinking an agency they are to rise to the occasion and work together on helping to clean up the PR industry. Something. Anything. Anything, that is, other than what PRSA did, which was basically respond with "thanks for the opportunity in the limelight; the opportunity to get our name out in a good way, to possibly attract new members and reinforce our relevance in the PR 2.0 world....but no thanks." Thanks for the suggestion but we don't do that? How about thanks for the suggestion...we'd love to collaborate and explore this idea with Forrester?

In a world where "Brand X creates a Facebook page and a Twitter account" is all too commonly considered worthy of a press release...why would PRSA flat-out turn down the opportunity to capitalize on something most companies would kill for if for no other reason than the PR value? Has anyone at PRSA read Groundswell or Empowered? I would imagine so, since Charlene Li was one of the keynotes at their 2010 conference! Did it occur to anyone there that PRSA could have been featured as a case study in a future book or, at a minimum, on Forrester's blog? You can't buy PR like that, yet there's PRSA's VP of PR totally missing the mark, showing how archaic and rigid PRSA is on the Empowered blog. Smooth move.

I'm no PR expert--I'm not even a PR person--but even I am smart enough to realize that PRSA's response on this was the stuff of #epicfail legend.

Update: I find slightly at odds the comments from two PRSA representatives on this post and the comment from William Murray, CAE, PRSA's COO on Maddie Grant's post about How the PRSA Uses Social Media. He talks about the number of times the tweet announcing their social media policy was re-tweeted and the nubmer of times it was downloaded, and talks to Mark Ragan about how important social media is to PRSA and the field of PR. So, going by William Murray's own assertions of how important social media is, and how he clearly values retweets as a measure of success, I think that makes my case on this even stronger. I wasn't blogging about the ethics of this; I was blogging about it from the standpoint of a missed social media opportunity--something Murray clearly sees value in. Look how many times Bernoff's post about PRSA's response was retweeted and the sentiment of those tweets--clearly I'm not alone in seeing their response as a #fail. Here are just a few quotes from some of those tweets: "PRSA is outdated and soon to be irrelevant" "PR pros: important read...time to clean up email practices (w/o PRSA support" "Oh - and here's PRSA&'s response:... #sigh".

Trendsetting

One of the good things about having a blog is that you can write about whatever you want. One of the weird things about having a blog is balancing creating content that others find useful and being self-promotional by either linking to your own posts or talking about yourself.

So what happens when something cool happens to you that you're proud of, but you don't want to seem overly self-promotional? You have the choice of either not blogging about it at all, or writing about it at the risk of sounding arrogant. I recently won an award and was going to go with "just not mentioning it"....but where's the fun in that?

So forgive me while I wax self-promotional and mention that I recently was named Publishing Trendsetter of the Year by the Angerosa Research Foundation.

Huffington Post Bloggers Aren't the Only Ones Getting Punked

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know I have a long-standing obsession with citizen journalism and how it benefits companies but takes advantage of content creators. Almost a year ago I pondered what would be the tipping point for people deciding they're tired of providing free content to media outlets who then make money off their free labor.

"But how long will people be willing to put the time and effort into creating high-quality blog or video posts if they're not being compensated? At what point do citizen journalists basically become freelancers working for free? If I had to guess, I'd say right about the time when statistics start to show that websites are generating a bunch of revenue as a result of the content users are providing for free."

Well, fast forward not even a year and--bam!--AOL buys the Huffington Post for $315 million. And suddenly the idea of payment in traffic and recognition didn't seem so great to the bloggers who had--with their own free labor--made the Huffington Post a thing worth paying $315 million for.

Here's the thing: the bloggers who are complaining that they should be getting paid now that Arianna Huffington got hers should have thought of that when they agreed to write for free in exchange for notoriety and traffic. The choice was theirs to make and they made it--they decided free was ok with them. Live and learn.

But are any of us learning? Even if we're not blogging for free, are we using Twitter? Facebook? Quora? This New York Times article spells it out: we truly have become a nation of free laborers. 150 million of us log into Facebook daily, providing data that Facebook in turn sells in one way or another, boosting Facebook's worth to an estimated $100 BILLION. We tweet away, thinking nothing of it; meanwhile, Twitter is making up to $120,000 PER DAY per promoted trend. Are any of us ever going to see a dime as a result of the free content we're providing to the social networking sites that have become so indespensible to many of us? Content that's making plenty of other people plenty of money? Of course not.

I'm not saying stop using Facebook or Twitter, or to stop blogging. God knows I won't be stopping. But I am saying at least be mindful of the fact that you are being gamed. You may think you're tweeting more to increase your Klout score, or that that playing Farmville or Mafia Wars is just fun, or that "liking" a brand or checking in using Facebook Places is a great way to share your interests and whereabouts with friends. What you're actually doing is taking time out of YOUR life and putting money into someone else's pocket. As long as it's worth it to you, it's fine. If it's not fine with you....well, the ball's in your court.

Klout as a Tool for Community Managers: Why I Don't Buy it

I've recently been seeing a slideshare presentation about Klout for Community Managers making the rounds to general fanfare. No offense to the authors of that presentation, but I totally don't buy it.

The biggest factor that goes into a Klout score is Twitter use. The more you tweet and the more followers you have, the higher your score. People have proven this theory by setting up bots who, just by tweeting at a set interval, have achieved high Klout scores in a few months. People with high Klout scores have seen them plummet if they happen to take a break from tweeting for a few days or a week. There's no denying that Klout score is intimately linked to Twitter use--after all, it's tied to your Twitter account, isn't it? What else, besides Twitter, does Klout even measure? For now, Facebook--although what, on Facebook, I'm not sure. Not blogging. Certainly not any activity that takes place offline. So basically, Klout score is a Twitter score that rewards prolific Twitter users.

Now picture the community you manage: does every person in that community use Twitter? Almost certainly not. And say there are a few prolific tweeters among your community members; are those people the ones who will automatically be the most engaged and/or influential in your community? Maybe, but equally likely, maybe not. Especially if the community you manage is an association community, not a brand community--the liklihood that many of your members are prolific on Twitter is pretty slim. Or say some of them are big on Twitter and have high Klout scores--would this make them more valuable than other members of your community? More engaged? More anything? Sorry but no--the only thing it would indicate is that they use Twitter a lot.

I suppose if you manage a brand community on, say, Facebook, I could see where members' Klout scores could be slightly relevant, but honestly, it's a reach. And going out of your way to identify these people and give them preferential treatment above other non-Twitter-crazy community members? A waste of time, in my opinion. Instead of preparing elaborate spreadsheets of Klout scores and influenced by/influencers of as the presentation I mention above suggests, use metrics relevant to YOUR community. Spend your time identifying which people are most engaged in your community, not on Twitter. Who takes the time to share thoughtful suggestions or offer help to members of your community? Who logs in regularly? Who is active in offline communities of potential new members--for instance committes or other associations? Those are the people you should pay special attention to, not the ones some broken cookie cutter formula based on Twitter use deems perk-worthy.

Facebook Comment Notifications Suck

Ok, maybe this doesn't warrant a whole blog post, but since I crowed yesterday about how Facebook is finally offering Page Admins notifications via email when someone posts or comments on the Page's wall, I think it's only fair to quell the expectations that now all will be right with the world for Facebook Page admins. Since I changed one of my Pages over to the new format and opted in to email notifications for posts and comments, I've received exactly ONE email about ONE comment. Meanwhile, Hyper Alerts continue to be spot-on and arrived for each of the dozen comments or posts to the Page during that same time period.

So, shocker, Facebook disappoints and proves to be unreliable. What else is new? Do yourself a favor and don't turn off Hyper Alerts anytime soon.

New Facebook Page Admin Tools--Including Alerts!

Earlier today I saw that Facebook has added keyword moderation and profanity blocklists to the barely effective spam filter it introduced a few months ago. I say "barely effective" because my experience with the spam filter has been that it blocks posts that are fine and lets actual spam posts through.

I'm the first to admit I do a lot of complaining about Facebook, particularly about privacy stuff and the lack of functionality for Page admins. So it's nice to see that they are at least thinking about Page admins and attempting to incorporate more control into the available admin tools. So, in a departure from my usual ranting about how Facebook sucks, I'm going to try something new: a list of what I WISH Facebook would offer Page admins.

1. Actual Spam Controls--the spam filter is a nice idea and better than nothing, but in reality it doesn't do much but add yet another headache for Page admins. First of all, I'd be willing to bet that many Page admins don't even realize there IS a spam filter because Facebook doesn't really advertise it as a feature. Second of all, I find the filter tends to trap mostly posts that are fine and plenty of spam still makes it to the Wall. How about let Page admins define what is spam and isn't? It would make my life MUCH easier if I could whitelist someone ONE time rather than see the same posters show up in the spam filter over and over and over again. So Facebook, if you're listening, how about adding a "unmark as spam and whitelist" feature?
2. Comment alerts--after going for two years with no way to be alerted to new comments or posts on the wall of the Page I admin, I'm delighted to see new tools offering this capability. But if third party platforms can do this, Facebook, why can't you just add it to your admin toolbox? ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE! When I drafted this post I wished for comment alerts; about an hour later when I went to Facebook to check my Page, I had a notice that there's a new look for Pages. Not only a new look but new functionality--including NOTIFICATION WHEN SOMEONE POSTS A COMMENT ON YOUR PAGE! You're welcome everyone. ;)
3. Updates on New Functionality--it's bad enough to have to spend every waking hour obsessively checking the Page you admin for fires you may need to put out; it's beyond insult to injury that unless you work for a big brand or agency, the only way you hear about new features for Facebook Pages is via blogs or other admins happening to mention that something's new. Take the spam filter, for instance--I didn't even know that it existed until it had already been there for over a month, then I had to sleuth out how to even FIND the filter because Facebook's help section only says that there is a filter, not how to access it. Pretty please, Facebook--can I at least get on the email list that announces new functions when they're released?
   

Ok, actually, that turned out to be a short list because off the top of my head I can only think of those three. What would you add?

The Myth of Influence

I'm by no means the only one who has called BS on the concept of influence; others have done a much better and thorough job of pointing out the problems inherent in the current crop of influence-measuring tools. When even the CEO of Twitalyzer says "to use Twitalyzer (or Klout for that matter) to make any decision about an individual other than broadly how they use Twitter as a tool is a mistake and does disservice to the individual, Twitter, and our analytics platform." ...you know there's a problem. Yet, like so many things in life, hype is prevailing and PR firms, brands and even employers are looking to Klout scores and the like and bestowing swag, brand ambassadorships and even jobs on those who confusing algorithms have deemed "influential."

Who wouldn't want to game this system?

Tomorrow night at 10 pm ET some super smart and cool people will be chatting about Internet Fame and the True Impact of Influence on BlogTalk Radio. Danny Brown will be hosting the show, and Tamsen McMahon, Lisa Thorell, Allyson Kapin, Rich Becker and Olivier Blanchard will be chatting live with him. If you're so inclined you'll be able to call in and participate in the discussion too.

Be there or be square! And in the meantime, what do you think of all this fuss about Klout and influence and the rest of it?

"Social Media" or "Social Networking"--Which Term is Correct?

I recently learned that Forrester Research has launched new online communities aligned by professional role: IT, Technology Industry, and Marketing & Strategy professionals. Curious to see what was going on, I joined the marketing & strategy professionals one.

The first discussion thread I noticed was titled "Please, please, please don't call it "Social Networking", unless you wanna look clueless." The poster included a link to a helpful diagram to prove his point.

Well, color me clueless because I do sometimes refer to the platforms I manage as "social networking platforms."

I personally don't totally agree with this, especially in the context of association communities. To me, when you participate in the online community of an association you belong to, the term "social networking platform" is correct because you are there to connect with colleagues...hence NETWORK. Socially.

What do you think?