Is Product Management the same as Community Management?
Michael | October 8, 2008
One of my coworkers read my post yesterday and, stopping me in the hall said “But isn’t your job (Product Management) basically the same as a community manager?”
I’m just going to cut straight to the chase with this one and say it… No, Product Management is not the same as Community Management (unless the community is your product I suppose).
Although there are overlaps.
For instance, if your organization has a product management team, but no community team, then your product managers need to take on the role of advocating the customers voice within the dev process; and making sure the development cycle works FOR the customer (and not for the MACHINE!). I also produce my fair share of content and wrote for the company blog and newsletter (both of which are currently defunct unfortunately).
And while this is all important, and the product managers should always consider the end user as one of the most important share holders during their research cycle, they will never (or should never anyway) have the amount of time needed to really engage, foster and build a community.
Enter the Community Manager.
The Community Manager has the enviable job of, if not defining then at least executing your companies overall outreach strategy. Think: Advocate, Evangelist, Promoter, Conversationalist, Schmoozer, Moderator, Networker, Coordinator and so much more.
Of course there’s tracking and reporting, analyzing and metrics, worrying about ROI (which can be more difficult for the Community Manager), producing multi-channel content, staying up to date with the latest online social tools, ferreting out hidden communities and working varied hours (unless of course you can convince your community to stick to YOUR 9-5 schedule!)
So yes, there are similarities, but no, a community manager is not a product manager.
| 2.4 |
Topics: Community Manager | Comments
Community Manager
Michael | October 8, 2008
I’ve spent a good amount of time this week looking into the roles of Web Strategist and Community Manager and the one thing that I can say I’ve learned without any doubt is that the responsibilities that fall within these roles seem to be as varied as the companies that staff them.
For instance:
Some companies seem to staff the community manager as an entry level position, with little more to do than write for a blog or moderate a forum.
Other companies (seemingly the ones that get ‘it’) offer this as a senior management role with salaries rising well beyond the 100k mark (although the average seems to be in the 80k neighbourhood) and including a broad range of roles and responsibilities.
Currently we don’t staff for a community manager at 1ShoppingCart; we have a few people carrying out what I would consider to be community manager tasks like monitoring external forums and I personally watch our brand across multiple channels (like Twitter and Facebook); but these aren’t our primary roles.
I read somewhere today (and I can’t find my reference note at the moment unfortunately, I think it was from a Gartner report, but will update my post when I do find it) that 60%+ of all Fortune 1000 companies will be fostering online communities by 2010. So do we need a standardization of the Community Manager role?
This is a topic I will be delving into a little deeper in the coming weeks, and I hope you’ll join me by adding your own feedback in the comments section (I know there are people reading my blog that know more about this than I do!)
For now, I thought a good way to get the ball rolling would be to break down what the role/roles looked like, from a responsibilities POV. Click the image below to open a mindmap I’ve created and be sure to share your thoughts & corrections! Thanks!
> click for full-sized image <
FYI the mindmap is an aggregation of dozens of sources (esp. blog posts & job postings), as well as the culmination of my thoughts over the past year.
For more information on the subject (and I will be compiling more resources as I identify them) the two single best sources of information on Community Management that I can recommend are Connie Bensen and Jeremiah Owyang (both of whom I’ve also been following on Twitter for ages)
| 2.6 (1 person) |
Topics: Community Manager, Uncategorized | Comments
OMG! Off to SF for OMW!
Michael | September 30, 2008
Ignore the title of this post, it just sort of happened…
Tomorrow… actually, a little later this morning (I can’t sleep), I’ll be heading to the airport and off to the west coast to attend the Online Market World conference in the Moscone Centre in Sunny San Francisco (IS it sunny in SF?)
I’m looking forward to the event, even though I have to leave a little early and won’t make it to any of the sessions held on Friday.
If you are in SF, or will be for the event, drop me a line and we’ll hook up for coffee! (or tea, I hear there is an amazing Tea House in MC north!) I’ll be checking blog comments, twitter and email while I’m away, although will be refreshingly unplugged for the most part.
okay, that’s it, short and sweet. Look for me in SF… I’ll be looking for you!
| 2.4 |
Topics: Conferences, Product Management | Comments
1ShoppingCart Buttons
Michael | September 11, 2008
Periodically we receive requests for the ability to remove the ‘continue shopping’ button from the shopping cart checkout page.
This is a common request from merchants who are only selling a single product (or at least a single product per site) and therefore have nothing to Continue Shopping for!
Well, we don’t have a solution yet (sorry) but I do have a work around for you!
One of our merchants, who is a much better CSS guy than I am, provided me with this:
/* Temporarily Hiding the Continue Shopping Button */
#ctl00_scPageContent_continueShoppingButton { display: none; visibility: hidden;}
I tested it and it works, the Continue Shopping Button disappears when the code snippet has been used.
But Where Do I Stick It?
um… yes.
Simply copy the 2 lines of code above and paste them into the ‘Custom CSS’ field on your ‘Options >> Cart Customization’ page within your account. 
I should also mention that this should ONLY be used if you are ONLY selling 1 product and ONLY if you are using the 1 Step Checkout Links!
If you are also using a 2 step process through the same account, the Continue Shopping button on the ‘View Cart’ page will also disappear as it shares the same name!
Hope this helps - caveat emptor!
| 2.3 |
Topics: 1ShoppingCart | Comments
Techcrunch 50
Michael | September 8, 2008
Techcrunch started this morning. I’ve been watching/listening to the great live video feed (although I missed the Aston/Goldberg presentation).
I’ve been looking over the program and I’m looking forward to playing with some of these new services! Check it out:
TechCruch50 Program - Get more Information Technology
| 2.3 |
Topics: Technology | Comments
Ecommerce Tracking through 1ShoppingCart’s Google Analytics integration
Michael | September 5, 2008
It has been brought to my attention that I completely glossed over a fairly significant aspect of 1ShoppingCart’s Google Analytics integration in last weeks post.
Sorry, I included a link down at the bottom of that post to cover the topic, but didn’t say much about it.
But now, thanks to the wonders of social media and the smart people who follow me, I will correct that!
Ecommerce tracking through 1ShoppingCart’s Google Analytics integration…
Basically the end result of this is that Google Analytics will track and display transaction related stats right from your Analytics account dashboard.
This is a great feature and I highly recommend using it, unfortunately 1ShoppingCart didn’t integrate this portion of the tracking script.
The reasons are two-fold:
- I had the opportunity to squeeze through a SMALL project and get it released quickly.
- You can still set it up and use it (/track it) manually!
I won’t go over ALL the details here, because Googles help is actually pretty good for this topic; which you can find here.
What’s Required?
This is going to be a ‘little’ sketchy, because I haven’t set this up before, so keep that in mind:
The Google Analytics script has the ability to capture transaction details from the Transaction Thank You page. All you have to do is install the Google script on one of your own pages, tell your analytics account to start tracking and tell your 1ShoppingCart account to use your new page as your default order thank you page.
Then, after every successful transaction on the 1ShoppingCart system we’ll automatically post the details of the transaction to your thank you page (no sensitive information is sent of course!) and your google script will capture the information.
Once you have your Thank You page setup and ready, update the ‘Thank You URL:‘ field on the ‘Setup >> Orders‘ page with your new URL. * Remember, this is your account default setting, there is an over-ride on every products details page!
That’s about it! It’ll take a little while to get your Thank You page setup just right I imagine, but the rest is pretty straightforward.
Information that the google script will capture:
Order ID
Affiliation
Total
Tax
Shipping
City
State
Country
Order ID
SKU
Product Name
Category
Price
Quantity
You’ll have to remove the Category option from the Google Script, since this is not information that we currently pass to the thank you page!
| 2.3 (2 people) |
Topics: 1ShoppingCart, Google | Comments
Good News Canada
Michael | September 5, 2008
Some good news for Canadians today.
The NewYorkTimes reported a 6.1% increase in unemployment south of the border today. The highest level in 5 years, this accounts for more than 84,000 slashed private/non-farm jobs in August.
North of the border on the other hand, our outlook is a little sunnier; not sunny, just sunnier. Canada added a modest 15,000 jobs in August, lowering our unemployment rate to… 6.1%.
It looks like our North American community (of two!) is continuing an ongoing trend of reaching parity on multiple fronts.
| 2.3 |
Online Ads Work
Michael | September 5, 2008
This week I’ve been dabbling my toes in the perpetually ongoing ‘Online Ads’ debate.
Specifically looking into the ‘do people really click on ads’ portion of this multi-armed octopus.
And then it hit me… even I click on ads all the time!
The realization came to me on the NewYorkTimes website as I tried to click-through to a specific article I wanted to look at. Up popped the hated & intrusive Interstitial Ad; and right away I raced my mouse to the top right corner to seek out and click on the “Skip This Ad” link.
So you see… Online ads really do work!
| 2.3 |
NoFollow links at Twitter
Michael | September 5, 2008
I don’t usually make posts like this, but:
As both a practitioner of ‘the arts of SEO’ and a regular user of Twitter I completely agree with Rae Hoffman - And whether blame lies with Twitter, or Google, or both, this boils down to a kick in teeth to all legitimate ‘customers’.
(& yes, I know I’m a couple days behind the times on this, but I’ve been on vacation…)
| 2.3 |
Topics: Google, SEO, Twitter | Comments
1ShoppingCart & Google Analytics
Michael | August 21, 2008
On July 10, 2008 1ShoppingCart released a new Third Party Integration with Google Analytics to all Basic and Pro package accounts.
It’s a great feature that has been requested for ages and I’m happy to have been able to push it through.
Generally 1ShoppingCart doesn’t offer a ton of support or more than basic help information for our Third Party Integrations, typically letting each third party provider support their own products instead.
This usually isn’t an issue as most of our merchants using an integrated third party solution (henceforth referred to as TPS) tend to know more about that solution than we do. But Google Analytics seems to be a little bit different.
Not that we know more about Google Analytics than our merchants, but there is definitely a unique dynamic surrounding this particular integration that hasn’t occurred with any of our previous TPS integrations and I’ve been approached a few times for more information on how this new integration works
I’m sure that the major differentiator is simply that, while most of our TPSs are fairly specialized, Google Analytics is fairly mainstream and widely used (for obvious reasons… I use it myself!)
Anyway, I’ve talked to our support team about creating a guide of some sort, but in the meantime I thought I would clean up my notes and post them here as a short term solution.
*Disclosure: I don’t talk a lot about my great ‘day job’ here, so if I’m confusing any of you right now here’s the skinny: I’m a product manager for 1ShoppingCart.com (a web.com brand). There aren’t very many corners of the app that I haven’t had a heavy-hand in improving (and occasionally breaking – sorry about that) over the past few years and Google Analytics was one of my pet projects earlier this summer.
Google Analytics
This integration was pretty simple and straightforward, which is one of the major reasons I was able to sneak it into our busy development cycle.
The Basics
We took Google’s provided script and coded it right into our shopping cart process. The script itself is exactly the same for everyone using Google Analytics, with the exception of each user’s Unique Identifier (referred to within the script as the ‘UA’).
So all you have to do as a (Basic or Pro package) merchant of 1ShoppingCart is find your UA and type (or copy/paste) it into the Google Analytics field on the Setup >> Third Party Integrations menu within your account and then update your product links (to tell Google that the destination needs to be tracked also.)
The Slightly Tricky Stuff
The one caveat to this is:
You need to be using the CORRECT script on your own website to make this work… and you probably aren’t yet
Google provides 3 or 4 different scripts; there’s at least one legacy version (legacy=old… i.e. don’t use!) provided as an urchin.js file and 2 newer versions provided as ga.js files.
I’m not going to talk about the legacy version here other than to say: UPGRADE! The urchin.js file doesn’t even offer the same functionality as the newer versions, and it won’t work with the 1ShoppingCart Google Analytics Integration.
Of the two new versions, there is a standard version and another provided to ‘track a 3rd party shopping cart’ (that’s us!)
You’re most likely using the standard version on your site now (assuming you are using Google Analytics already of course) but will need to update your site to use the ‘track a 3rd party shopping cart’ version in order to use our Google Analytics integration.
The ‘track a 3rd party shopping cart’ Script
I included a link to Google’s help page at the bottom of this post; I pulled all my information from there but I’ve been told from less tech savvy people that Google’s pages are difficult to understand. I hope my explanation is a little easier to digest, but if not, just let me know!
1. Get the right Analytics Script - Copy the code that follows and paste it into all the pages on your site (typically you would do this once time in a standard, site-wide include; like a footer):
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._setDomainName(”none”);
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
2. Add your Personal Identifier to the script - In the code above, replace the (”UA-xxxxxx-x”) with your actually UA #. As I understand it, the #’s between the dashes represents your individual Google account, and the last # represents which site profile you are tracking.
You can find your UA within your existing script or within your Google Analytics account:
From the appropriate site profile within your Google account, click EDIT from the Settings column. At the top right of the Main Website Profile Information box, click Check Status. Your standard tracking code will appear in the text box that appears in the ‘Instructions For Adding Tracking’ section.
3. Update your product links – This step may be a bit of pain for any merchants with a large number of products… sorry, but it’s the only way.
You have to add the following to the end of every link on your website that sends traffic to your shoppingcart on our site:
onclick=”pageTracker._link(this.href); return false;”
So, if your link looks like this currently (These are some test products on one of my accounts!):
<a href=”http://www.marketerschoice.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=3C302D4E-0B99-40F9-99A7-F10D301CEFEB&pid=a5ad01402426c53ebd68f803e664b38f”> Buy Me </a>
It should look like this, after you add the new bits:
<a href=”http://www.marketerschoice.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=3C302D4E-0B99-40F9-99A7-F10D301CEFEB&pid=a5ad01402426c53ebd68f803e664b38f” onclick=”pageTracker._link(this.href); return false;”> Buy Me </a>
4. Test that you did it right – When I was poking around I came across a service that offers Google Analytics Site Scans. If you have any doubts about whether or not you installed the Google script correctly, head over to http://www.sitescanga.com and see!
5. Watch your stats roll in!
Linkfest
If you want to go to the source, I’ve included links to pretty much all of the pages I visited to find the above information:
Google Analytics Site Scan:
Tracking Transactions:
https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55528&ctx=sibling
Google analytics on an ecommerce site:
https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55528&ctx=sibling
tracking a 3rd part shopping cart:
https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55532
Confirm tracking code on site is correct:
https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55480&ctx=sibling
*** Update 9/5/2008 - Apparently I forgot to talk about the all important aspect of Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking… so I wrote another post.
| 2.7 (5 people) |
Topics: 1ShoppingCart, Analytics | Comments
