Community Manager: Roles, Responsibilities, and Important Skills

Community managers play a vital role in building and nurturing online communities for brands, organizations, and products. As the bridge between a company and its customers, they foster engagement, facilitate discussions, and create a positive environment for members. From moderating forums and social media, to organizing events and managing user-generated content, community managers wear many hats. 

Explore the key roles and responsibilities, essential skills, and steps to launch a career in this dynamic field with the guide below. Whether you’re already a community manager or looking to become one, discover the ins and outs of community management here. 

What is a Community Manager?

A community manager is a marketing professional responsible for building, growing, and managing online communities around a brand, product, or service. Overall, the community manager plays a crucial role in connecting a brand with its audience, creating a sense of belonging, and using community insights to drive business value.

Community Manager vs. Social Media Manager

While the roles of a community manager and a social media manager are related, they have distinct responsibilities and focus areas. 

Here’s a closer look at the key differences:

Community manager: Relationship building and engagement

The primary focus of a community manager is on building and nurturing relationships with the brand’s community. 

Community manager key responsibilities include:

• Fostering engagement within the community by responding to comments, answering questions, and moderating discussions. 
• Providing support and addressing customer inquiries in a timely manner. 
• Collaborating with influencers and organizing offline events to bring the community together. 
• Serving as a brand ambassador through personal social media accounts, interacting with the community under their own persona. 

Community managers work to create a strong sense of community and loyalty among the brand’s followers.

Social media manager: Strategic content and brand voice

In contrast, the social media manager has a more strategic role, focusing on the brand’s overall social media presence and performance. 

Social media manager key responsibilities include:

• Developing and executing content strategies for the brand’s social media platforms. 
• Managing the brand’s official social media accounts, posting as the brand’s voice on the brand’s official account. 
• Measuring and analyzing the performance of social media campaigns using metrics like engagement rate, follower growth, and ROI. 
• Identifying opportunities for improvement and optimization based on data insights. 

Social media managers are responsible for ensuring the brand’s social media presence is aligned with its overall marketing and communication objectives.

Community management and social media management in harmony

While the roles have distinct focus areas, community managers and social media managers often work closely together to create effective social media strategies. Community managers provide valuable insights into the audience’s wants and needs. Which social media managers inform content planning and strategy. 

By working in tandem, the two roles can build a cohesive and engaging social media presence that fosters strong relationships with the target audience.

Duties of a Community Managers: Responsibilities & Roles

As brands increasingly rely on digital channels to connect with their audience, the role of the community manager has become essential. These professionals wear many hats, serving as the voice, ears, and driving force behind a brand’s online presence.

Some of the typical roles and responsibilities of community managers include: 

Monitoring and Analyzing Brand Presence

A community manager is tasked with closely monitoring a brand’s performance across various social media platforms. This involves tracking conversations, sentiment, and trends to gain valuable insights into the community. They then report these findings to relevant teams, providing data-driven recommendations to improve marketing strategies and community initiatives.

Aligning Community Efforts with Business Objectives

Community managers work closely with cross-functional teams, including marketing, customer service, and product development. Their role is to ensure that all community-focused efforts are aligned with the brand’s overall business objectives and messaging. They monitor and report on customer feedback and online reviews, organize community-building events, and ensure brand consistency across all touchpoints.

Serving as the Brand’s Voice and Ears

As the primary point of contact for the online community, community managers are responsible for responding to comments, questions, and concerns in a timely and empathetic manner. They serve as the brand’s voice, fostering authentic connections with customers.

Identifying and Leveraging Influencers

Community managers are skilled at identifying and building relationships with key influencers, brand advocates, and opinion leaders. They leverage these connections to amplify the brand’s messaging and drive deeper engagement within the community.

Fostering Engagement and Loyalty

By creating and curating engaging content, community managers stimulate discussions and interactions within the community. They work to empower and enable community members to become brand advocates, fostering a sense of loyalty and belonging.

Maintaining a Positive Community Environment

Monitoring community activity and addressing any inappropriate or disruptive behavior is a critical responsibility of the community manager. They ensure a positive, productive, and safe environment for all community members.

Important Community Manager Skills

Community management is a role with many different roles and responsibilities. As such, they need diverse skills. Some important skills community managers need to have are: 

• Communication: Community managers need to understand and drive conversations, communicate organizational objectives to the audience, and engage members in a way that makes them feel heard. Strong interpersonal skills are key for building relationships and uncovering insights from community members.
• Customer Service: Community managers often serve as the primary point of contact between a brand and its customers or community members. As such, strong customer service abilities are essential for building trust, resolving issues, and fostering positive relationships.
• Organizational and Project Management Skills: Community managers juggle many moving parts – discussions, data collection activities, social media channels, etc. Staying on top of it all requires solid organizational and project management abilities.
• Creative Skills: Crafting engaging, original content that adds value to the community is a critical skill. Community managers are often responsible for creating and uploading content across various platforms. High-quality, creative content can generate strong engagement.
• Domain and Business Knowledge: Knowing the brand, product, industry and competitors inside out allows community managers to drive conversations. Understand business goals, negotiating skills, and collecting insights to benefit the company are also valuable.

How to Become a Community Manager

To become a community manager for a brand, you typically need a bachelor’s degree in a related field like marketing, communications, or journalism, along with 1-3 years of relevant experience.

Many community managers start in entry-level marketing or social media roles before transitioning into a dedicated community manager position. Relevant certifications in areas like content marketing, social media, and analytics can also be beneficial. 

The role of a community manager is to cultivate a brand’s online presence, foster engagement, and build lasting relationships with customers and fans . By developing the right mix of skills and experience, you can become an effective community manager who drives results for the brand.

Metricool for Community Managers

Metricool is the all-in-one social media management platform for social media managers and community managers alike. 

With Metricool, community managers get:  

• Centralized Social Media Management: Manage all your social media accounts – including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Threads, and more – from a single, unified dashboard. This makes it easy to stay on top of activity across multiple platforms.
• Content Scheduling and Optimization: Plan, schedule, and publish content in advance across social channels. Metricool provides features like a content calendar, optimal posting times, hashtag suggestions, and AI content generation to help maximize the reach and engagement of social posts.
• Centralized Inbox: View and respond to messages, comments, and mentions from all your connected social accounts in one place. This improves efficiency and ensures no interactions fall through the cracks.
• Analytics and Reporting: Get analytics and customizable reports to track the performance of social content and campaigns. Analyze metrics like reach, engagement, clicks, and conversions to continuously optimize strategy.
• Collaboration and Content Approval Workflow: Grant access and permissions to team members, allowing for collaboration on content creation and approval. Streamline workflow and ensure brand consistency across all social platforms.
• Competitor Analysis: Monitor and analyze the social media activity of brand competitors. Gain valuable insights to stay ahead of the curve and make more informed decisions about social strategy.

Gretchen Oestreicher , 12 July 2024