I thought it was about time to re-visit the role of the “buzz director” – flesh out the role I first floated last October.
This is especially urgent given that much of the action is now taking place away from your own (increasingly irrelevant) website, ‘out there’, in social networks and online communities.
A good example of this is the dispersed hoohah generated by the London 2012 Olympic logo. An immediate ‘loss of control’ if ever there was one. Ben Whitnall asks whether the powers that be will be happy to engage with the debate where it is already happening (e.g the 100+ groups set up on Facebook in the last few days)… or will this be a job turned over to the suits and bean counters in the Ministry for Herding Cats?
Through this post, I’ll ping Jeremy Gould, who hints that heads of “e-communication” in government departments regularly re-assess their “roles and skillsets” now the goalposts have moved. But I reckon this awareness is unlikely to have yet ‘trickled up’ to the accountants.
Another favourite blogger of mine, Jeremiah Owyang, has also chipped in with some suggestions.
Last month I noticed that Shane Atchison included elements of the buzz director role in this post describing what a “Social Network Analyst” might do. I emailed Shane via the ClickZ website. Hope he received it.
Perhaps the “buzz director” label (which was always just a working title) sounds too marketing-centric; I don’t mean it to be; buzz directors need to be able to apply this thinking to online communities and activist networks. I’m talking ‘people’ rather than products.
Anyway, I’m going to quickly throw down some further thoughts. I fear they’ll come out in no particular order, but you’re invited to help me knock this into shape by commenting below. I’ll also set up a wiki (Update: here’s the link).
Oh, by the way… when you do come to recruit for this role, consider putting the word out like this!
Job description
You will:
- Learn how to be in more than one place at once!! i.e. not just a space ranger but a ‘ranger of spaces’.
- Co-create targeted engagement strategies with appropriate colleagues, especially social reporters and community technology stewards (if you have them), brand ‘ambassadors’, and ’cause evangelists’.
- Bring the senior management team with you; earn their respect and backing.
- Develop and coach on tactics, seeding networks, ‘brand’ positioning, etc.
- Expect the unexpected, and be resourceful in responding in the moment. Improvise.
- Funnel organisational strategy into focused activity.
- Be pivotal in mapping the organisational structure onto web innovation.
- Be generous. Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.
- Recruit virtual volunteers and sprinkle confetti liberally, so that you yourself can leave a ‘light footprint’.
- Identify and define new measures of engagement, social capital and social impact.
- Encourage culture of collaboration and joined-up thinking and confront ’silo’ thinking wherever you encounter it.
- Call on ‘peace-keepers’ (strictly non-combatants) to follow guidelines (which you yourself have drawn upco-created with key stakeholders.
- Pull the highlights from the ‘dashboard’ [see below…] and prepare monthly reports of activity and impact. Distribute widely within the organisation and beyond.
Skills
- Be able to see the wood from the trees and ideally have an eye for visualising data.
- Be the consummate diplomat and demonstrate the ability to slip into the role of chameleon or conductor when appropriate… and very very occasionally don an invisible cloak (but leave dagger behind).
- Show good judgement.
- Some legal nous would be desirable, as would be the ability to conduct risk assessments around ‘user-generated content’.
- Know how to take calculated risks.
- Be a good listener.
- Be inspired and inspire others.
- Coach.
- Possess a sixth sense.
- Be as light on your feet as a prizefighter. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
- Instinctively recognise when serendipity occurs; capture it, bottle it… and pass on the recipe.
Dashboard
Back in the 1980s we had the press cuttings service (as well as the telephone tree). New functions and responsibilities require new tools and devices.
Ed Mitchell, Nigel Dunn and I have been discussing the concept of a “dashboard”. Now, none of us is absolutely certain yet how or what to measure – well, not everything – although I think we’ve got a pretty good foundation.
Bear with me. I visualise this dashboard as a ‘virtual’ mixing desk… with levers and buttons, dials, green and amber lights, a few scary red ones, a built-in early warning system. Basically, this ‘thing’ would be so cool that nobody will want to be without one. Not if you’re a buzz director, anyway.
The dashboard would reflect the different activities and behaviours around ‘your’ cause. It would aggregate all the conversations (see Pageflakes, Netvibes, and coComment), but be much more than that.
Check out London-based Onalytica who have updated their website. It now features live graphs offering – as they put it – “an unprecedented X-ray of the stakeholder universe”.
Right, need to set up that wiki…
Caveat: this is a work in progress.