A lot of folks are talking about bringing in Community Managers these days.  Who else is going to answer all those annoying questions on the boards and keep up the witty banter on your Facebook & Twitter? (I kid) 

Honestly, who is the best person for the job?  You want someone that can  write fast, so do you get yourself an out of work journalist on the cheap?  Then again, You need someone with some heavy duty communication and relationship building skills though.  Maybe a young up and coming PR pro?  You could always hire within and give that new whiz kid in the office a shot. after all, he seems to glow with your brand's personality and swagger and does well with the corporate high ups.  Of course a lot of this depends on your brand and your product.

This is the best part of a position that hasn't competely emerged yet.  Since there isn't and understood "right" answer yet, it allows people to get messy and throw ideas around.  In the issue of community building, I find myself looking towards the video gamers and the people who make said games.  These communities have been around for a while as have the mass chat boards, fan clubs, and community events including them.  This gives them a bit of a rare head start as far as relationships with communities go.

More specifically, I have been looking at Capcom, the maker of the world famous Street Fighter & Mega Man franchises.  Both games hold a special place in the hearts in most of us that grew up as Nintendo kids.  These legendary series' are still alive today and as you can imagine have a powerful community surrounding them both in Japan as well as the US.

How did Capcom fill their need for a Community Manager in the States?  They hired Seth Killian.  Seth's background is interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. Working at a university in the physics dept., working in publishing with books on fascinating topics such as gender relations from 1872-1874, and even a German to English translator.  Nothing screams Community Manager for a video game company yet huh?

thanks G4 for the photo of Seth in front of this SFIV banner

Seth's occupational background might not sing the song, but that's not how he got his current gig.  What I've left out is Seth's passion for the arcade fighter Street Fighter 2.  The game that re-invented the American arcade and even put out one of the worst big budget movies starring Jean Claude Van Damme in a time when that was pretty kick ass.

Years before he started working for Capcom Seth spent years helping create the American Street Fighter 2 community by helping host and setup the fan made and very popular EVO Championship Series of tournaments which became famous for it's gathering of gamers from accross the globe.  That and Seth is really freaking good at the game itself.  Many would argue that the Japanese gamers didn't even take Americans seriously until Seth came around.  The guy is so good that they named a character in the recent Street Fighter IV game after him.  Yeah, I said it.  Not just a character but the final and impossibly difficult to beat final boss of the game. 

When Capcom was looking for someone to bring their community together under the brand's own website, they looked within the community itself and hired one of their leaders.

  By doing this, they took advantage of one of difficult ingredients of a successful Community Manager.  Trust!  Seth was already trusted by the community.  By bringing him into this position, Capcom had just made a promise to the community.  Capcom knew that since Killian was already a trusted part of the community, that he was bound by that trust to listen and speak for the community even though he was now getting a paycheck.  This can get tricky, but in Capcom's world, it seems to have been a success.

Seth's also highly respected within Capcom (if that wasn't evident by the character naming thing).  Capcom understands that his position isn't just a community baby sitter, but a funnel of information from the most important source, the gamers and fans themselves.  He is able to speak to the devlopers themselves to share the community's messages regarding hiccups in the game, overpowered or underpowered characters or parts of the game that well well or ill recieved.  It's this mutual respect and understanding that makes things run so well.

The power of the community isn't just in getting them to buy into the next game, but better judging what that next game should be or even fixing their existing product and making it better. 

Capcom and other gaming companies are in a very unique position in that their communities are already so large and so vocal.  However, with the the speed of which communities are beginning to form with the help of social media juice, it's not a leap to figure that it won't take long for other companies to catch up.

Let me know if you've had any experience with Community Managers.  Is Seth's story a rare one?  What qualities have I missed?  Feel free to leave comments and thanks for reading.