Connie Bensen, Chief Community Officer at Techrigy SM2 is our next keynote speaker.

Her topic of the death of traditional corporate communications focuses on the critical role of the community manager within companies to generate awareness and engagement with the customers in the community.

Connie begins by discussing the community manager as the 'MetaCustomer' an individual that builds relationships across your customers and within your company. Her focus is that your community is the untapped channel, incorporating Potential Customers, Customers, New Markets that ultimately will all lead to revenue, and the community manager is a critical agent to achieve.

As companies consider the decision to launch a community, they must determine where their customers are online, what they are saying about the company's products & brands, and at the same time do know what they need and want from these products.

Therefore, the Community Manager is an all purpose position, working on online marketing & communication, PR, customer & technical support, product development & QA, among others. Because of this she insists that 3 months is a good time frame for a community manager to build visibility, and then ultimately ROI within 6 months.

Community managers effectively acts as a translator, translating communications from the company to the customers and back to the company. Individuals in this role are people oriented, ability to work cross functionally, excellent communication skills, project management, possess leadership skills, and possess the knowledge of how to leverage web 2.0 for business collaboration.

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