It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for me. I recently landed a gig as an online community manager for a prominent social gaming company. More on that later, but the short version has me living in San Francisco and kick-starting an exciting new career. Good times!

As a result of this long job hunt, I’ve been through a lot of job interviews. Some good, some bad. With the economy as rough as it is, and considering how competitive both the video game and social media industries can be, even a great interview often ends with “good luck in your search.”

But this post isn’t about how to land any community manager job (check out Blaise’s fantastic article for help on that front.) It’s about how to figure out if that specific position is right for you.

Nearly all interviewers will end with “So, do you have any questions for me?” Once you’ve finished impressing them with your savvy, well-informed questions about their products and company history, make sure you ask:

Where does the online community manager sit?

Will you be sitting with the engineers, the marketing team, or the customer support team? Or another team entirely? Because of the jack-of-all-trades nature of community management, and because many companies are hiring one for the first time, every organization has a different view on the CM’s role. The physical place that you sit gives you a great snapshot of what your primary tasks will be.

If you’re sitting with the engineers, your primary task is probably to engage with your members and relay bugs that the community finds. With marketing, you’ll be more focused on blogger outreach, social media and community involvement. Of course, you’ll probably be doing all of this regardless, just in different proportions.

The good news is, community management is such an encompassing role that once you get in the door, you can mold it into your ideal mix of abilities. All you have to do is be awesome at it.

Find out where your chair is, and you’ll learn a lot more than if you asked “so tell me about the position.”

Last week I attended a presentation by Shama Kabani as part of a lecture series put on by the Dallas chapter of Social Media Club (and also featuring a fantastic talk by the inimitable Eric Swayne). Shama is the president of the Dallas-based online marketing firm Marketing Zen Group and author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing.

Shama’s presentation was loaded with wisdom for exciting a social media following. The most important takeaway: people use social media to show off their identity. Keeping up with friends is nice. Sharing photos is cool. But showing yourself is what it’s all about. Any brand trying to build a community must first figure out how people will incorporate that brand into their online identities. (Social game developers know it’s also the secret to selling virtual goods.)

To accomplish this, Shama coined the ACT model for social media marketing — Attract, Convert, Transform. And it’s a great way to look at online community building.

Shama details the ACT model over at the Marketing Message Blog:

A is for Attract. To attract means to get attention or stand out. Practically, this means attracting traffic to your website—your main online marketing tool. Nowhere is social media marketing more successful and useful than in the “attracting” phase of online marketing. During the attraction phase, you are trying to drive traffic to your site and stand out from the masses.

C is for Convert. Conversion happens when you turn a stranger into a consumer or customer. And there is a difference between the two! A consumer may take in your information or even sample your product, but he or she may not always buy. That’s okay! Over time, that consumer may become a customer. The more expensive a purchase, the longer it may take. This means that you constantly have to work to convert people into consumers and customers.

T is for Transform. You transform when you turn past and present successes into magnetic forces of attraction.

Looking at this strictly from an online community management perspective, the ACT model matches both the lifecycle of a successful community and the lifecycle of your members themselves. When you’re first launching, your goal is to attract new members (but not too many). As your community matures, your membership coalesces into a more active group. Maybe they start referring to themselves as “Goons” or “Redditors”. Maybe they start holding offline events. Finally, once it hits critical mass, your community (hopefully) becomes a self-sustaining force that uses a rich history to draw in new members.

The ACT model also dovetails with the Membership Lifecycle for Online Communities, first put forth by Amy Jo Kim. According to Dr. Kim, online community members go through five stages:

1. Lurkers – newly exposed members who consume content without creating any. Many won’t even have registered. You’ve attracted them, but haven’t yet converted them into a real member.
2. Novices – Something triggers the lurker to contribute. For instance: a heated debate, an interesting topic, a new game release, a need for technical support, or a witty comment. The lurker has built enough comfort and trust to be willing to join up, but is still low on the reputation totem pole.
3. Regulars – After a period of sustained contribution, the novice becomes a regular both in terms of proficiency and in reputation. They are fully converted and participating in your community, rather than just consuming it.
4. Leaders – Your most valuable regulars will eventually take ownership of different aspects of your community. They have earned so much respect that, even if you haven’t endowed them with moderation-type powers, they still wield a great deal of influence. These are your movers and shakers. They create the memes, in-jokes and conversations that constitute your community’s engine.
5. Elders – Inevitably, users move on. This is another part of your community’s transformation. It must have an ability to adapt to a new environment. An elder still has great influence in an online community, but is probably no longer actively contributing.

Your goal as online community manager is to guide both your community and your members through each of these steps. Attract the right people. Convert them into useful, content-producing, experience-improving members. And then build on those successes to transform the community as a whole.

Major thanks to Shama for the fresh perspective.

Image credit: Steve Snodgrass

Social Media (and it’s parent buzzword “Web 2.0″) proves one thing: the most powerful force on the internet is narcissism. Well, and cats. Whether it’s a tweet, a blog or a Facebook status update, people love to talk about themselves. And when other people talk about them, they love it even more.

Is your online community hurting for activity? Then it’s time to stroke some egos. Here are 5 ways to turn everyone into frothing narcissists.

1) End of the Year Awards

Is it December? Good. Start your annual award thread. It’s not December? Then make some other excuse. With a good mix of categories, you’ll have a fun forum event that gets everyone involved in complimenting each other.

Get your community voting on as much as possible. Ask for categories and accept both the sensible and the silly. Once the categories are set, have a nomination period. And once the nominees are filtered down, begin final voting.

Possible forum award categories:

• Most helpful – who’s always the first to help a newbie?
• Smartest member – who always kicks your ass in forum debates?
• Spamtastic – but Matt! Spamming is against the rules! Yes, but every community has that overenthusiastic member who is online 24/7 and answers every post, without violating the rules. Make them smile.
• Sexiest mod – again, don’t take it too seriously. There’s a line between having fun and flouting your own rules. So long as you can enforce that line, this is always a popular category.
• Member of the year – “Best in Show,” only with less tail wagging and drooling. Ok, maybe just less tail wagging.

Forum awards are a fun way to get your community to reward your best posters. But! Do not give actual prizes. This is about social recognition, which is much more powerful. The more you pay to forum award winners, the cheaper the award itself.

2) Call your users a bunch of dogs

You’ve seen those infernal Facebook quizzes. What animal are you? What Apple product are you? What toenail clipper are you? “What ____ are you” games are annoying in your feed, but are always a hit on message boards.

Create a thread where you compare 10-20 of your top, most beloved members to anything. Animals, Pokemon, household appliances, whatever. Make sure you’re saying good things about them – or at the very least, giving them a loving punch to the shoulder. The goal is to get everyone agreeing, disagreeing and laughing. More importantly, you want them making more comparisons. End the post with “what ____ are you?” Invite everyone to keep the game going.

3) Spotlight user generated content

This holds doubly true if you run a community focused on said user generated content. But even if you don’t, there are things you can do to make a member feel awesome. For example, if you manage a forum, start a “weekly sticky”, which sticks a new thread at the top. This has the added benefit of praising good behavior. It sets an example that for what a “good thread” is.

More random ways to spotlight a member:

• Create a “Member of the Month” award
• Promote fan-made artwork to the front page
• Feature a user blog post in the site news
• Supply commentary to an online gaming match

Use these spotlights to give your users something to aspire to. Think of it as an “Employee of the Month” program, only less soul crushing.

4) Trophies, achievements and badges

Foursquare and Gowalla leverage this to great effect. Xbox Live discovered that achievements excite both the completionist and the casual player. In some ways it’s obvious, but there are still communities out there that don’t have any kind of reputation metric whatsoever.

These virtual trinkets turn your community into a powerful Skinner Machine. So long as they are a publicly visible status symbol, they will create excitement. (Remember: the whole point of virtual goods is to look awesome in front of your friends.)

5) Give your members cameos

Admit it. You’ve done it. You’ve gone into a thread and done a Ctrl-F for your name, just to see if you were mentioned. Users love to be mentioned by name. Find some way to incorporate a popular user into your content. The more in-jokes and references you can cram in, the healthier your community. Just don’t let all of your content become self-referential. The goal is occasional ego indulgence, not ego masturbation.

A few ways to give a community member a cameo:

• Create a webcomic starring caricatures of your members
• Interview top users
• Start a collaborative fan fiction based on your community (does it get any more delightfully nerdy and self indulgent than that?)

If you do it right, then many members you include will become evangelists. They’ll feel like they “own” a piece of your community. Which is a good thing.

The power of a grassroots gaming community is that your members are the ones spreading the word. Get them involved by stroking their egos, and your community will reap the benefits.

Photo credit: Marina(im.back)