The Community Skills Framework™ includes five skill families with ten skills in each family, prioritized based on what we learned from our extensive community management research.
How Does The Community Skills Framework Help you?
First, when your Aunt Betty asks you what community management is you can say, “It’s a mix of engagement, content, technical, business and strategy responsibilities.” This may or may not mean anything to her but it adds enough detail about your job without being verbose – and in plain language.
Second, and more importantly, it frames the conversation with your stakeholders about the scope of your role, its priorities, what is reasonable for one person to do and where your strengths and weaknesses are… incredibly helpful as you look to navigate your career and where you want to head next.
Community Skills Framework by The Community Roundtable is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
At The Community Roundtable, we use the Community Skills Framework to:
- Scope our research and report on what skills are priorities for different community roles (moderation, specialist, manager, strategist and director roles).
- Identify and report on those skills seen as consistent blind spots – areas where community professionals need the most training and resources.
- Prioritize programming in The Network, identify where training would be valuable and determine areas to dig deeper on with our research.
If you’re a community professional, we hope the framework sparks ideas and gives you a better understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses.
Click on a community management skill set to learn more:
CONTENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS
- Communication Planning
- Writing
- Graphics & Design
- Multimedia Production
- Narrative Development
- Editing
- Curation
- Program & Event Planning
- Taxonomy & Tagging Management
- SEO &/or Internal Search Optimization
TECHNICAL COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS
- Systems Administration & Configuration
- Data Collection & Analysis
- Tool Evaluation & Recommendation
- Technical Support
- Member Database Management
- Platform Architecture & Integration
- Technology Issue Resolution
- Software & Application Programming
- UX & Design
- Algorithm Design & Data Manipulation
BUSINESS COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS
- Program Management
- Business Model Development
- Budget & Financial Management
- Team Hiring & Management
- Contractor Hiring & Management
- Selling, Influencing & Evangelizing
- Community Advocacy & Promotion
- Training Development & Delivery
- Vendor Management
- Governance Management
ENGAGEMENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS
- Listening & Analyzing
- Response & Escalation
- Moderation & Conflict Facilitation
- Promoting Productive Behaviors
- Empathy & Member Support
- Facilitating Connections
- New Member Recruitment
- New Member Welcoming
- Member Advocacy
- Behavior Change & Gamification
STRATEGIC COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS
- Community Strategy Development
- Roadmap Development
- Policy & Guideline Development
- Needs & Competitive Analysis
- Measurement, Benchmarking & Reporting
- Trendspotting & Synthesizing
- Consulting
- Executive Coaching
- Content Strategy Development
- Evaluating Engagement Techniques
This short, on-demand course gives learners a comprehensive overview of the four frameworks and models that form the foundation of successful community programs.
Complete this free course in The Academy to receive your certification in Community Models and Frameworks. Learn more or start now.
