By Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable.
Through our research, The Community Roundtable has helped organizations of all sizes scope and frame the challenges and opportunities of online communities.
It is time for us to do the same for community managers.
While the discipline of community management is becoming better understood, the specific roles within that discipline are still often poorly defined, measured and rewarded. We know from our work that there is a huge range in experience, responsibilities and compensation among community managers – it is not a one size fits all discipline.
In order to professionalize community management (i.e. be taken seriously by HR and hiring managers), we need research that is as multifaceted as the various community manager roles are – and reports on responsibilities and compensation by experience level, size of company, functional goals of the community, geography and more.
There has been some research on community manger roles, most notably SocialFresh’s 2013 Community Manager Report and our own State of Community Management 2013 research but it has been focused on one type of community, in the case of the SocialFresh research or on general trends, in the case of our 2013 research. There was also excellent research done by Bill Johnston while at ForumOne but that was last completed in 2009.
It’s time to take a comprehensive look at community manager roles so that we can:
- Justify investment in community management staff
- Document the responsibilities of community mangers, by seniority and context (functional use case, company size, geography, experience)
- Create a skill framework that can be used to hire, assess, demonstrate or grow skill sets
- Understand what community managers are worth financially, by context, and how compensation is structured
If you work with, are the business owner or directly facilitate any type of online community, please consider taking part in our Community Manager Salary Survey 2014.
The survey will take you about 15 minutes to complete.
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