Community Manager Appreciation Day

Photo by elkokoparrilla, on Flickr

Unless you are a community manager (and maybe not even then) you probably don't know that today is Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). Well, guess what? It is! Two years ago Jeremiah Owyang suggested that the fourth Monday of January be a day to "take the time to pause, recognize, and celebrate the efforts community managers around the world to improve customer experiences."

Three and a half years into my career as a community/social media manager, I can attest to the fact that it's a demanding, exhilarating, exciting, and life-encompassing job. It's customer service and marketing and content creation/curation/management and who knows what else, all rolled into one job that, in most organizations, is new and often not well understood. It's at the same time an established profession, as there are community managers who have been at it for over a decade, as well as such a new one that there's a ton of confusion still about what tasks the role includes, what pay grade it should be, which department it belongs in, and even whether it is a role worth paying someone to do in the first place.

In honor of CMAD, here are a few links about community management--the fun of it, the trials it involves, and just some fun resources:

• The Incredibly Difficult and Important Job of Community Manager 
•  A Day in the Life of This Community Manager
• Community Manager Appreciation Day cards
• Community Manager Burnout

Ok, those are just a few--please feel free to add others in the comments.

And, if you're a community manager--happy CMAD!