By Mike Stiles

The demand for community managers continues to climb.  No surprise.  Companies and brands are realizing it’s not only a big job that can’t be relegated to being “part” of someone else’s duties, it’s a critical job.  A specialized job.

So you might be thinking here’s a career path you’d be perfect for!  Maybe, maybe not.  Whether you’re considering becoming a community manager, or you’re a community manager who’s started asking, “What am I even doing here?”

Here are some warning signs that you may just not be community manager material:

• -You don’t really like the brand you’re representing.
• -You don’t use it, and frankly, you don’t know why anyone else would use it.
• -You feel like what your brand offers isn’t that important and doesn’t really matter.
• 

  High Maintenance = NOT good Community Manager

  -You want to be noticed, praised and thanked all the time.

• -You hate herding cats.  People who don’t do or say what you want them to or think they should really gets under your skin.
• -You hate making conversation.  If you had to go up to a crowd at a party and get some small-talk going, you’d freeze and stare at the floor.
• -You hate babysitting.  You feel like everyone online is an adult, so you shouldn’t have to read everything they write to make sure it’s okay.
• -Jimmy Carter you’re not.  If you see two people flaming each other online, not only do you have no real desire to stop it, it amuses you and provides a nice little break to your otherwise mundane day.
• 

  The Community Manager Prototype?

  -To be honest, you think anyone who would “Like” a company, much less write about it, is weird.

• -If anyone takes a shot at you, your immediate reaction is “Oh no you didn’t,” and you snap back at them twice as hard.
• -You’ll put in your 8 hours a day, but that’s it.  Anything anybody posts at night or on the weekends can wait ‘til later.
• -You genuinely don’t care what anyone else has to say.  You’re only interested in the genius material you want to write.
• -You absolutely mastered corporate marketing-speak in college.  You can sound like a Powerpoint presentation with the best of them, and have no interest in sounding human.
• -You are terrified of superiors, and the last thing you would ever do is tell them the truth about what you’re hearing from the company’s Fans.
• -You have about 2 original ideas per year.
• -You get defensive if you post something your company doesn’t like or approve of.  That’s what they get for giving you so much responsibility, right?
• -You have no idea what’s going on in other departments or with the company as a whole.  And you don’t really want to know.
• -“They want me to pull together metrics and do a report on how our community is trending?  Yeah, right.”
• -I’m not exactly the goodest writur.