Community managers: a picture of the present and the future of an emerging professional figure of the Web 2.0. His influence on the online reputational profitability

Fruto de la expansión del software social, las empresas necesitan desarrollar estrategias que faciliten la comunicación entre usuarios y organizaciones. El profesional que realiza esta intermediación es el community manager. En España aún no están definidas las competencias necesarias para desempeñar esta reciente profesión de la comunicación online. El objetivo de este estudio se centra en profundizar en su perfil formativo y profesional e indagar si se trata de una popularización circunstancial o si se normalizará la figura profesional como parte de la plantilla de las organizaciones. La investigación se ha abordado principalmente a través de entrevistas cualitativas realizadas a distintos expertos. Su evolución en España revela una marcada tendencia hacia la profesionalización, canalizada por la autoformación en lo referente a los conocimientos técnicos. Sin embargo, la necesidad de poseer habilidades comunicativas refrenda el 1.0 como la base del trabajo del community manager. Si la empresa tiene presencia en el mercado digital requiere de nuevas fórmulas para llegar al consumidor-productor de la era 2.0. El community manager encontrará, entonces, su razón de ser en las organizaciones.Due to the expansion of social software, companies need to develop strategies to facilitate communication between users and organizations. The professional who makes it possible is the community manager. In Spain, the competences for this new job of online communication are not defined yet. The target of this research is focused on dealing in depth with his formative and professional profile and searching on whether it is an incidental popularization or if this professional figure will be normalized as part of the staff of organizations. Research has been mainly approached by quality method through interviews with several experts. In Spain, the evolution status of this role shows a clear trend towards CM’s professionalization as a must for the online organizations. In this process, CM’s self-driven training in the area of technical knowledge is also crucial. However, communication skills are imperative within the 1.0 environment so, are the key to fully expand his work. Should companies need to interact within the digital marketing and social media, then, they would require a new approach to fulfill with what the 2.0 era new consumer-content producer demands. So, the community manager will be a key value in the organizations