A Day in the Life of a Community Manager
Over the next few weeks, we are taking you beyond the screen and into what a typical Day in the Life looks like for Bloom’s team members. This should give you insight into what it’s like to work at Bloom, what we do outside of Bloom, and the benefits of having a distributed team.
Derek E. Silva joined the Bloom team in February 2018 after spending several months being an active member of our community. He’s now the Head of Community & Developer Relations, helping take care of all our social media, running our Telegram group, writing content, handling support questions, and much more. Let's find out what Derek’s typical day looks like.
What does a Community Manager do?
A Community Manager does their best to ensure that the community has the information they are looking for, to stoke the conversations happening, and to generally make the community a pleasant and fun place to be. Whether you're engaging with people on Reddit, Telegram, BitcoinTalk, or another platform, you are there to help, but also to enforce the rules. Rules are important to prevent people from doing silly things like starting flame wars or to ensure they aren't engaging in speculative discussion, which many projects can't allow in their official channels.
This is a very unique, modern position today. How has this role evolved over time?
I think it has evolved quickly from a very customer service-centric position, as you would see in a gaming company's community, to more of a role designed to help spread news, foster discussion, offer customer service, and assist with marketing. It's a very fluid role that, for me, makes it a lot more interesting since I am able to be as involved as I want with the product, technology, marketing, and even beta testing, instead of just waiting for things to happen. So when you are looking to help foster discussions, that's how events like the Bloom Meme Contest and Trivia Night come to fruition!
What's your favorite part of your work?
Definitely seeing other people have intelligent discussions about blockchains, tokens, where the Bloom protocol is needed most, the partnerships we are striking, and all kinds of other interesting topics. I like to just sit back and let other people have their say without jumping into the middle of it, letting other community members talk amongst themselves. If something factually inaccurate is said, or someone asks a question, then I step in to help with that.
Walk us through a day in the life of Derek!
Oh boy, I am a father of two, with a third on the way, and a local municipal Councillor, so my day can get broken up into different segments but I always come back to Bloom. My day typically goes something like this:
- Wake up!
- Check Telegram and Reddit for spam and any urgent-sounding questions
- Get my children fed, dressed, and on the school bus
- Drink two coffees
- Come back to resolve anything I missed earlier in Telegram
- I also check Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook at this time
- I check our support and general inquiry inboxes for any support issues or partnership requests and handle those
- Depending on the day, I could have calls with partners, other team members, be hosting an interactive event, or recording a new Bloom Guide or Bloom Fireside
- Interact with team members on Telegram regarding day-to-day operations, always keeping an eye on our official communication channels
- The kids come home and I make dinner, and go about other family business while keeping an eye on Telegram and Reddit throughout the evening
- In there somewhere I also respond to emails and phone calls from constituents, take the kids to sports practices and games, and other things like that while ensuring the community has everything they need!
What is the Bloom Community like?
I would say it is made up mostly of very intelligent people who truly understand the need to build out our decentralized identity and credit scoring platform. They are from all over the world, which is really neat because I know I'm interacting with fellow Canadians, Americans, Brazilians, Argentinians, and people from all over Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia that I haven't been to yet. They are motivated, they want to see Bloom succeed, and most of all they are just as eager as we are to see all the dApps get built and lots more to get integrated!
What advice do you have for other Community Managers?
Be patient, be kind, but be firm. You are there to help, you are there to fulfill a need that your team and the community has, but that doesn't mean you cater to every whim. Stick to the rules and do your best to have fun while doing it!
About Bloom
Bloom is a blockchain solution for identity security and cross-border credit scoring, restoring ownership and control of identity information and financial data back to consumers. By decentralizing the way that information is shared between untrusted parties, the system reduces the risk of identity theft and minimizes costs associated with customer on-boarding, compliance and fraud prevention.
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