When I talk to clients about social media, I usually get the question of what kind of human resource it requires to be successful. In particular, they ask if they need to hire someone to manage what boils down to a community-building endeavor. I always answer that it depends, but it requires some planning to determine the right mix of social media tactics based upon a company's overall business (more than just marketing) objectives. In addition, many feel the need to crawl before they run to build support at the highest levels of the company.
But, once a company is nearing the point where a community manager may be needed, this "scorecard" from Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang might be useful. It is a list of reasons why a startup should have a community manager, as well as reasons why it's not necessary, with a simple scoring system that can yield some data to use in internal discussions. While Jeremiah says this is for startups, I think it can provide value to a lot of companies.
What do you think of this scorecard? Is is missing any other considerations?
