Inevitably I’m asked at a party, “so what do you do?” And my answer of “community manager” never fails to confuse people. Sometimes they respond, “you mean, you run a senior citizen community?” or “you’re like a property manager or something, right?”

People never seem to get what I do.

Calling all unicorns

Part project manager, sometimes party planner, temporary hand-holder and erst-while cheerleader, community managers have a wide mix of skills and areas of knowledge where they must have expertise. See How to write a Community Manager job description for the dizzying array of talents required. It’s nearly impossible to find this list of skills in one person, so hiring for a community can be very difficult. On top of that, experienced CMs are few and far between. I would argue that community managers are the unicorn of the 21st century. So to all of the other unicorns out there I say: “UNITE!”

I can say without a doubt that each of us is a rarity in our own company. Very few companies have more than one or two community managers on the entire staff. There’s typically no job classification for us and we are often entered as Marketing Specialists or Communications Experts or even IT Managers. But we know the truth because we live and breathe community. Call us what you will… we are COMMUNITY MANAGERS.

It might be slightly dramatic to say that it can be a lonely life (I do love a little drama). At the very least, we must look to each other in the Jive Community to get our tough questions answered and celebrate our wins because there is most likely no one else at your company that knows the trials and tribulations of ‘community’ better than you do.

Celebrating our customer’s communities

View this outstanding Customer Success video, highlighting the ways DIRECTV leveraged Jive as a Social Intranet for Employee Engagement and Support.

In the spirit of Community Manager Appreciation Day, we are celebrating our customers and their communities! In the Jive Community, we asked customers to share their communities with us and they’ve responded with rich examples!

An amazing example of community came earlier this week from DIRECTV. Their human resources organization created a video you can see here which is authentic and entertaining while perfectly illustrating the power of community.

Find out more about how we are celebrating our customer’s communities by reading the rest of this blog in the Jive Community!