Categories
postcrossing

what exactly does a community manager do?

i was thinking of doing a short series of posts about some of the questions we get a lot, when we explain to recent acquaintances what we do, or how we live. here is one i get rather frequently:

“what exactly does a community manager do?”

well, basically, a community manager… manages… a community! shocking, i know, but true! :)

above all, my job is to listen to people. i think that’s the most important thing you can do when you offer a service: your members are your most valuable asset, and your goal is to keep them happy. i keep people happy by reassuring them that someone cares.

our community is online, rather than offline – but you can imagine it as a neighbourhood association. the people in our community have a common interest, and plenty of concerns, worries and ideas about it, which they voice all over the internet. my job is to listen to them, and do something about it. most of the time, it involves answering a looot of questions, guiding members, mediating disputes, and welcoming the new-comers.

i also help gather community input. lots of users have ideas on how to make things work better, but more often than not, they don’t know enough about the product/service to judge whether their ideas are feasible or not. my job is to be the middleman between them and the programmer, filtering the ones that are well-intended but unfeasible, from the ones that might actually be genuinely good – and passing those on.

additionally, i help the community come together. i promote the events they organise, manage social media pages, organise contests, and generate and curate content about themes that are relevant to their interests – all to keep them happy and excited and to keep the conversation going.

that’s it, i think! i’m a sort of ambassador/helpdesk/peacekeeper/spec-gatherer/social marketeer :)

Categories
links and ideas postcrossing

lifestyle businesses

“There are more than 27 million businesses in the United States. About a thousand are huge conglomerates seeking to increase profits. Another several thousand are small or medium-size companies seeking their big score. A vast majority, however, are what economists call lifestyle businesses. They are owned by people whose goal is to do what they like and to cover their nut. These surviving proprietors hadn’t merely been lucky. They loved their businesses so much that they found a way to hold on to them, even if it meant making bad business decisions. It’s a remarkable accomplishment in its own right.”

from this nytimes article, via swissmiss.

we might not have a brick-and-mortar business, but this is us, word for word. :)

ps – plus, we’ve just hit 12 million registered postcards. another good day at “the office”!

Categories
foooood postcrossing

postcrossing cookies

(10 million cards is such a big number, i confess we still have a little trouble wrapping our heads around it… it feels strange to know that you are, in a way, responsible for all these postcards being purchased, written, stamped and delivered. 10 per minute, or so. yeah.)

we end up thinking about postcards (and postcrossing) all the time. that, and food.

so our friend c. surprised us by baking these cookies for us, a while back. she even did the icing with special sparkling dust!

we were so happy and surprised! aren’t they adorable? our friends know us so well! :D

Categories
in the netherlands postcrossing

the postcrossing stamps

i shouldn’t let the week pass without mentioning the new postcrossing stamps. they’re the reason we detoured our vacation to the netherlands, so that p. could receive the first sheet of stamps from the hands of postnl’s marketing manager.

it’s a true honour to have your work immortalised in a stamp, and somewhat of a surreal feeling too. we’ve bought the stamp and used it on postcards, but it still feels strange to think that people out there are sending postcards with it.

stamps are reserved for remarkable things, the kind that we want to collect and remember – and having postcrossing up there in that category is pretty neat. after all, how many websites have their own stamp? :)

Categories
postcrossing traveling

suomi

\\\

attending a big international postcrossing meet-up has been a dream which so far had been put on hold – for the great part of the last few years we were far away when these happened. not this time though, so we said, why not? we were in europe, the trip is quick and plane tickets are not that expensive, we didn’t know helsinki (but were extremely curious), and after a summer working from home, we could use a vacation. also, our dear friends nathalie and mikko live in helsinki, so it was a very nice opportunity to visit them :)

so we came to helsinki on a mission, but boy, were we in for a treat. stay tuned for an avalanche of nordic posts! :)