The Role of the Community Manager
Nowadays, the role of the Community Manager has evolved into something more than simply updating posts and commenting on Twitter and Facebook. Rather acting as an ambassador of the brand, the Community Manager has become a key player inside companies wishing to be seen and heard on the Web. Among the most common tasks and activities inside Community Management, we find:
- Content creation: Write blog posts, articles, newsletters, communications materials, and material for social media channels.
- Key skills you should have: Impeccable writing skills – experience with writing helps since you’ll be creating a lot of content for your company. Don’t forget to double-check your grammar and spelling before you post!
- Social media marketing: Creating, managing and growing the company’s presence through blogs, and social networks.
- >Key skills you should have: Social media experience – Experience with social media tools is helpful, ideally someone who can manage Twitter profiles and Facebook pages.
- Events & event planning: Attending industry events in your city (often outside of 9-5 hours) and planning events for your community.
- Key skills you should have: Outgoing personality – you will be required to attend and organize networking events and be comfortable introducing yourself to strangers, as well as providing live feed to your audience via Twitter. Meetup and Eventbrite are great tools to get started!
- Customer relations: Often responsible for customer support – answering questions however they come in (E-mail, Social Networks) and managing any online feedback forums.
- Key skills you should have: Ability to multitask – It’s especially important for a Community Manager since they manage many different areas of the business with different departments.
- Marketing strategy: The Community Manager takes part in the strategic marketing/communications plans to provide direction for the company’s public-facing communications.
- Key skills you should have: Marketing skills or Corporate Communications experience. Make sure you’re comfortable making strategic decisions.
- E-Reputation management: It involves measuring what is said about the company online, carrying out a “Sentiment” analysis from customer’s feedback, and addressing contents which may be damaging to the company’s brand image.
- Key skills you should have: Experience with notification services and Social Media Management platforms with filter options. Check out Google Alerts.
- Producing Analytics: Using Google Analytics and other measurement tools to provide reports on metrics, and continually find ways to improve on those metrics.
- Key skills you should have: Analytical mind – Interpret the data and use it to improve results.
- Email Marketing: Increasingly, Community Managers are asked to handle mass Email communication through Newsletters.
- Key skills you should have: Basic knowledge of mass Emailing solutions like Mailchimp, as well as some HTML & CSS skills.
All of these tasks will be covered in depth during the course. We will also learn about all the tools a Community Manager needs, how to set them up for an enhanced productivity, and the way to combine them to establish a smooth communication with our target audience. All of this and more in our course, so get ready and see you soon!