As I look at social media participation from a personal and professional angle, it's clear an enormous amount of time is spent maintaining and growing relationships online. It's this time, focus and energy commitment that's causing the explosion of the community manager as a full-time position within both agencies and corporations.

When agencies recommend social strategies to clients, it must be defined clearly from the outset who will be doing most of the social media legwork given this is typically no small task.

It's helpful to first define the role of community manager a bit further:

A community manager advocates for customers. At the same time, he or she advocates for his own company, products and services. I see the community manager role as similar to the way an account exec supports both his clients, and his internal agency creative teams, during any given project.

Secondly a community manager needs savvy online communications skills, and the ability to enter into conversations and shape/manage conversations while using social media best practices.

A community manager should also specialize in information gathering and feedback: He or she is on the front lines, continually interacting with consumers. The question is, what is done with this valuable primary data? It should be synthesized and conveyed back through an organization to ensure ongoing process and product improvements are implemented, and the customer's opinion actually counts.

At agencies and corporations alike, this function of community manager (now a rapidly growing Facebook group) falls well within the skills of an online PR pro or communications specialist.

The key is to set clear guidelines between both agency and organization at the outset of a relationship, so all parties are clear on who does what as social media becomes an increasingly important part of savvy firms' marketing mixes.

Thanks to Jeremia Owyang and Brian Solis for background and thought leadership on this topic.