First-Ever Industry Award Recognizes Social Media Community Managers

ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwire - Jan 23, 2012) - Vitrue (www.vitrue.com), the leading social marketing platform, today announced the debut and call for submissions for the "Vitrue Community Manager of the Year Award," the industry's first award designed to recognize the best social media community managers. The "Vitrue Community Manager of the Year Award" will be given annually on "Community Manager Appreciation Day," beginning with the announcement of the inaugural 2012 winner on January 23, 2013. "Community Manager Appreciation Day" was created by Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang, who serves as one of the judges for the award.

WOMMA is partnering with Vitrue for the "Vitrue Community Manager of the Year Award" and will be featuring the finalists during the WOMMA Summit this November.

Eligible participants can begin submitting nominations now through October 1, 2012 at http://www.vitrue.com/community-manager-of-the-year. To view the official video visit: http://youtu.be/d_qx6CHLY5w.

"This award is yet another indication of the importance the industry now places on social across businesses of all sizes. We are looking to recognize and celebrate the incredible work being done by the fastest growing, most in-demand position in all of social network marketing, the community manager," said Erika J. Brookes, vice president of marketing, Vitrue. "Our spotlight on community managers will last all year, culminating in the awarding of the inaugural Vitrue Community Manager of the Year Award on January 23, 2013."

With the goal of highlighting community managers' hard work throughout the year, the award website and Facebook Page will serve as the submission destination page as well as an educational and thought-leadership resource, featuring regular content contributed by industry experts and award participants.

Timeline: Submissions will be accepted Jan. 23-Oct. 1, 2012. Three finalists will be chosen on October 7, 2012 and the winner named on Jan. 23, 2013.

Eligible Participants: Community managers can nominate themselves or be nominated by someone else by going to http://www.vitrue.com/community-manager-of-the-year. For the purposes of this award, a community manager is defined as someone who spends at least 50 percent of their average workday managing, creating content for, moderating, posting, and/or analyzing social streams for brands, companies, or organizations.

Methodology: Qualified entrants will download a Q&A to be filled out and returned by October 1, 2012. Questions will consist of strategy, best practices, theories, opinions, real-world scenarios, professional information and social marketing philosophy questions. All qualified entrants will immediately receive the Vitrue Social Marketing Strategy Kit 2012.

Judging/Selection: The nominations will be judged by responses to a Q&A. The finalists will be judged 50 percent by fan and follower support via a Vitrue Tabs voting module, and 50 percent by a distinguished panel of judges, including: Vitrue Founder/CEO Reggie Bradford; The Altimeter Group's and "Community Manager Appreciation Day" Founder Jeremiah Owyang; Famed "Social Explorer" CEO Jason Falls; Stephanie Agresta, Weber Shandwick, EVP, Managing Director of Social Media; and a WOMMA representative to be named later.

Prizes/Awards: The three finalists will be awarded a trip to Las Vegas for November's "Vitrue School for the Socially Gifted." This award includes hotel, airfare and all event meals and activities. Finalists will hear from social marketing's most renowned industry experts as well as many of the world's largest, most recognizable brands on thought leadership insights, strategies and best practices. Each finalist will also be recognized at the event with their own video feature. The "Vitrue Community Manager of the Year Award" winner will receive, in addition to notoriety within the industry, their choice of the latest version of an iPad or iPhone, a three-month trial to the Vitrue SRM 3.0 platform and a community manager survival kit filled with additional awards and surprises.

About WOMMA: WOMMA, http://womma.org, is the leading trade association in the marketing and advertising industries that focuses on word of mouth, consumer-generated and social media platforms -- or marketing techniques that include buzz, viral, community, and influencer marketing, as well as brand blogging. The organization is committed to developing and maintaining appropriate ethical standards for marketers and advertisers engaging in such marketing practices, identifying meaningful measurement standards for such marketing practices, and defining "best practices" for the industry.

Founded in 2004, WOMMA members include marketers and brands that use word of mouth marketing to reinforce their core customers and to reach out to new consumers, agencies that deliver word of mouth services and technologies, researchers that track the word of mouth experience and offline and online practitioners.

ABOUT VITRUE: Vitrue (www.vitrue.com) is the leading social marketing platform, offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to help brands and agencies harness the marketing potential of social and manage their expanding and sophisticated social communities on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and emerging platforms. Anchored by its industry-leading Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform, Vitrue is currently managing its clients' more than one billion social relationships in 47 countries across 4,500 Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts. Vitrue's stable of clients include more than 500 global brands and agencies.