Can YOU Post On Message Boards? Then An Exciting Career In Community Management Awaits!

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 28 Comments

EM Stock of SOE explains how community relations is, like, rilly totally awesome, and, like, way cooler than you thought, right?

Do you know HTML and run your own website? It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. If you can create pages, manipulate graphics and write good text… you do some of what community professionals do every day.

picard2

Have you ever implemented and moderated your own message board or volunteer moderated on someone else’s board? That is incredibly valuable and applicable experience for this line of work. If you have, chances are that you know more than you think you do about online player behaviors and how to handle them. Knowing that stuff is half the battle for community specialists!

facepalm2

If you’ve ever thrown a contest on your site or ran fun activities for the people who frequent it…you’re again right on par with what community folks have to dream up on a regular basis for their player communities.

facepalm4

Have you ever played an MMO? Then that’s also a valuable skill for community relations! You’ve talked to people while playing, right? You’re taking the pulse of the community, and can report back on what they had to say! See, it’s really easy! You can do it!

292px-jean_luc_picard_2364

 

OK, OK, you caught me, Jean-Luc, I made that last one up. But come on, could you really tell?

I realize that this is really a breezy recruitment letter for new forum moderators, but come on. If I wanted to write a post that was as blatantly insulting to community people as I possibly could, implying that they have no real job skills other than possibly being able to run a web browser, talk to people without drooling, and having a pulse, I couldn’t have done better. I mean, come on, it’s not like taking the pulse of your community has any impact or anything.

It’s EASY! Anyone can do it! ANYONE! Even you, and clearly we in the MMO industry think you’re an idiot. Just, you know, read the article.

This entry was posted in Burned Bridges Are Pretty, Community, Featured. Bookmark the permalink.
  • Cowardly Anonymous

    THANK YOU.

  • dartwick

    I think the skill required to be a community manager is often over stated.

    Although I think people with the personality and patience to practice what they know they should do as a community manager is rare.

  • dartwick

    Oh ya they need to have better grammar than people like me.

  • Calandryll

    @Dartwirk

    I think the skill required to be a Community Manager at a minimum level (posting on boards, updating the site, etc.) is often overstated. But, I think the skills to do it *well*, to do it at a level beyond those things, is more often understated. It makes me cringe whenever I read an article that boils Community Relations down to posting on boards and updating a website. The field is a lot more than that.

  • http://www.cuppycake.org Cuppycake

    Wow, really? I know HTML…maybe I should apply!

  • http://theservitor.blogspot.com/ Servitor

    OMG SIGN ME UP

  • Naladini

    A new internet behavior has been discovered and added to your achievements tab: Feign Disgust

    The problem with Community right now is that outside of the organization, folks don’t have a lot of visibility into layers within a team. Where one organization might have a full team, others do what they can with just one or two people. If you compare an entry level recruiting letter with the skill set of a department head, its going to be insulting to just about any profession.

  • http://www.mmohell.com Garthilk

    Pretty damn funny. 2 steps forward, 3 steps back… Then again the post is coming from SOE….

  • Scott Jennings

    A new internet behavior has been discovered and added to your achievements tab: Feign Disgust

    I’m not sure why you think it was feigned. Should I have used more Picards?

  • Dan Gray

    Fantastic Picard use, and I concur fully. :)

  • http://antipwn.wordpress.com/ IainC

    There are a lot of CMs (and plenty of companies who hire them) who see the extent of their job as being nothing more than forum mooks. This attitude goes a long way towards explaining the state of many modern MMO communities.

  • dartwick

    Well I thing any decent troll knows how to be a great community manager. An there are a lot of troll out there.

    But that doesnt mean they would have the nature to do what they know they should do.

  • ello

    obviously the best route is to become a guide. write a post going off on everyone, get canned and then use internet fame to be hired a community manager in a nice PR spin.

  • http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org Sanya

    /snicker

    Yes, Ello, but you’re leaving out the part where I’d been writing professionally for a decade, and had a resume including marketing, trade show presentation, public relations, and production.

    There’s always a right place, right time element – but you have to have the skill set to take hold of the opportunity when you wind up in that place at that time.

  • Another Anonymous Coward

    Additionally, you need to be able to make totally awesome 600×450 sig images if you want to post on any SOE boards.

  • Vetarnias

    At least they don’t bring the propaganda to its logical conclusion: that you might start out as a lowly Community Manager and rise through the ranks to one day end up with Smedley’s job.

    Might be fun to see, though.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Hammer! The one tool that can do it all!

  • Ubvman

    This kind of explains all the SOE hiring disasters dating all the way back to Abashi in ’99.

  • UnSub

    By the same token, I know a bit of Visual Basic, have played quite a few games, have an inflated sense of self-importance and love to criticise others! Ergo, I’m perfectly qualified to be a game designer!

  • ello

    ======
    snicker

    Yes, Ello, but you’re leaving out the part where I’d been writing professionally for a decade, and had a resume including marketing, trade show presentation, public relations, and production.

    There’s always a right place, right time element – but you have to have the skill set to take hold of the opportunity when you wind up in that place at that time.
    ==========

    Absolutely. Just pointing out there have been stranger paths to getting a CRM job :)

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  • UndunseJess

    I am here at a forum newcomer. Until I read and deal with the forum.
    Let’s learn!

  • DLacey

    “To be a good community relations representative it’s most helpful to have stellar and varied writing skills, what I like to refer to as “community instinct” (the natural born instinct of knowing how to handle difficult people/situations in a public online arena), and a very, VERY thick skin.”

    This quote appears above the section you have excerpted in your article.

    And this one appears below it:

    “Now granted…all of these things are not the only aspects involved in conducting good community relations. ”

    You have taken the encouraging-novices parts of the article a bit further out of context than necessary. I do not think Picard would do that :)

  • Lucas

    Loved how you picardized this :D

  • Oz

    Wow, Patrick Stewart was awfully skinny starting out on the series.

    What? That’s not community management? Never heard of Trekkies?

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