Not too long ago my friend Frédéric Harper announced that he had accepted a position as evangelist for Microsoft. It’s an incredible opportunity. From what I understand, he’s basically going to be out there representing the brand mainly to programmers and developers at events and online. His announcement got me thinking though: What is the difference between an evangelist and a community manager? I’ve worked with many community managers and I’ve interacted with some evangelists so are there any differences between the two or if it was more a matter of semantics? Both the community manager use social tools such as blogs, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to promote the brands, products and services they represent.
The evangelist
A couple famous evangelist include Guy Kawasaki during his Apple days and Avinash Kaushik currently at Google. The role of the evangelist is to act independently and become a key influencer. He or she can be part of the community the brand is interested in even before working for the brand. For example, Avinash Kaushik blogged about analytics before Google approached him and Fred has been an active member of Montreal’s tech community since forever. The goal isn’t to promote the product or service directly, but to encourage the use through education. For example, Avainash Kaushik promotes the “proper” use of web analytics to achieve real business goals, he doesn’t “sell” Google Analytics directly. Although I guess they could contribute to corporate blogs and social network accounts, the focus is always on the person and his or her knowledge as a way to encourage people to use the brand. A few things I’ve noticed was:
- The evangelist is there to put the community before the brand. In other words, the goal isn’t to promote the product, but to encourage proper use by the community through education and training.
- The evangelist is an educator. He or she is passionate about an brand or industry and educates others about that. The brand is associated to that passion.
- The evangelist is not a marketer or a PR person. They are passionate about the issue, but they might work for a marketing or PR department.
- Above all, they put a human face on a company. They don’t operate the corporate Twitter accounts with the brand’s logo as an avatar. They keep their own public profiles.
In other words, the evangelist has a strong knowledge base and is there to educated the community. They could potentially affect product development as well and their focus could potentially be more on customer acquisition. Their personal brand is the appeal and the corporate brand attaches itself to that.
The community manager
While the community manager also uses social tools to promote a brand, it seems as though it’s the brand that passes before the person. According to a 2007 post by Jeremiah Owyang, there are 4 elements to the community manager’s job. The community manager is:
- A community advocate. The primary role is to represent the customer and to engage with the customer by responding to requests and needs or simply to converse in private or public.
- A brand evangelist. The goal here is to promote events, products and upgrades. Because of they are members of the brand’s community, they are more trusted than an add would be.
- A savvy communicator. The community manager must be comfortable with the tools and jargon used by the brand’s community. They are also responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community.
- Responsible for gathering community input. This is a highly strategic role where the he or she is in charge of gathering the community’s needs to guide product and service development.
In other words the community manager is there to make sure the brand is part of a community and is a communication vessel between that community and the brand. Their focus could then potentially be more on customer retention. Their personal brand is less tied to the corporate brand.
Although both roles do hold similarities like using social tools and being part of the brand, product or service’s community to promote it, there are some relatively fundamental differences: The evangelist is there to promote good use and the brand encourages favours that, whereas the community manager is there to represent the brand within the community.
Then again it could simply be a matter of semantics. What’s your take?
(Photo credit: laffy4k)
