Every Friday I post links to a few of the blog posts that I read during the week that I found interesting and insightful.

Included in this week’s round-up is a discussion about the  confusion surrounding the title of community manager; why you should do a check-up on your community every six months; best practice for finding opportunities to guest post for a blog; and how strong and weak ties affect online communities.

The Confusion of the Community Manager Job Title

We are seeing a lot of people hiring “community managers,” who are really just taking a lot of marketing, public relations (PR) and customer support tasks and throwing them under a single title. PR, marketing, customer support and community are related in some ways, and the lines of communication between them should be open, but they are also not the same and it’s important to recognize that. They have different goals that don’t always align.

It’s Time For Your Community’s 6-Month Check Up – Are You Prepared?

Make managing your online community a part of your daily routine. Though it doesn’t need to take up too much time, those valuable 20-30 minutes a day can make or break your site, if spent wisely. Look at your articles and see if there’s anything that needs to be covered for the week. See who’s talking about you, and conversed back with them. Post a picture, a video, or swap out an advertisement. By staying involved with your community you’ll be the first to know what’s working, or what needs to be changed.

My 3-Step System For Finding Guest Post Opportunities

Every time a blogger turns up who’s doing the same thing you are, enter them into a spreadsheet. Enter in their name (Lucille Ball), the keyword anchor text they used (comedy tv) and who they listed as their employer, if any (TBN). As your list grows, you can start to group the bloggers into various categories that might help you later, depending on what you want to write.

The Value of Latent Ties & Communities

Communities maintain relationships between the episodes of rich collaboration and latency and accelerate the ability to execute when new issues and opportunities arise. We often don’t value the middle path because we see it as a partial solution and not necessarily as exciting or interesting as the extremes, but it is where long term sustainable value lies.

Think there’s something missing from this list? Leave a link in a comment, or tweet me @BenLaMothe!