Flickr: x-ray delta oneMy title at NTEN is the Membership Director, but it's really a misnomer: I don't get to direct the members! (This could have been brought to my attention earlier, Holly.)

Instead, I have a much more rewarding and exciting job working WITH members. I do a lot of listening. I also ask questions, followed again by more listening. And I try to connect directly with as many members as possible to hear why they joined, what they're working on, and how we can help them. I even try to keep tabs on the topics, ideas, applications, and issues members are talking about.

Because I can only be in one place at one time, I take advantage of technology to help me listen, communicate, and connect. As part of Member Appreciation Month, I want to share a few of the tools I use every day.

flickr: haglundcA community manager’s job is built on a foundation of distractions. 

Navigating the social web can feel a bit like walking through a water park on a Saturday in July with a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old who somehow keep running into their friends, when you really want to be back home developing a dinner strategy for Sunday. And did you see that ice cream vendor over there? Did his cooler have a QR code on it?

Making sense of the never-ending flow of information, keeping ourselves focused – all while ensuring that no one at the water park of our organization has a sunburn at the end of the day – involves a constant state of learning, adaptability, and growth.

Thanks to Net2 Think Tank, folks all over the web this month are sharing their best practices for effectively monitoring online feedback. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned along the way:

Berkeley BreathedIf you know me, you know I love to talk. I find silence uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I often write on this blog about the power of social media for listening.

When I hear folks talk about pushing their message out through social media channels, I cringe. To me, social media isn't a channel, it's a cocktail party, where different kinds of conversations require that you LISTEN.

Of course, as any party host knows, when the party gets big enough, you have a problem: you simply can't listen to everyone. 2009 NTC keynoter Clay Shirky talks about this in Here Comes Everybody: