career resources Archives

How do you direct your own career path when one is not defined?

October 11, 2019 By Binta Dixon

One of the interesting career-based findings from the SOCM 2019, was that only 25% of community roles are approved by HR. This is a crucial number because it means that three-quarters of CM’s do not have clearly defined roles or paths to promotion to go along with them.

When we look at the profile of emerging leaders, we see a wide range of functional backgrounds, skills, and industries. Community leaders are ready to move to a new stage. Are you one of them?

To utilize the SOCM while negotiating a title change, you can reference the section on communities with advanced strategies. Outlining how your role fits into a detailed community strategy, including ROI projections, provides a tool for execs to understand the importance of management to the success of the community.

So you get the new title, but what about compensation and influence?

Even in companies that are supportive of community, CM’s are frustrated with a lack of resources.

Obtaining resources requires organizational influence. Finding opportunities for training and collaboration is helpful in establishing new connections. Using your current network to gain access to new executives and stakeholders is one tactic to get in the door. These interactions help increase the visibility of the community and foster relationships that can propel your career forward.

If you are being asked to help design your new role, this is an excellent opportunity to build a strong foundation of tasks and responsibilities that give you access to other department leads, creates opportunities for collaboration, and facilitates training for executives.

Maybe you are exploring other options and want to design a list of what to look for in a company. Consider things like the organizational governance structure, titles, and roles within community, responsibilities of community staff, and current organizational strategy.

Does the company support a community mindset? Are you willing to help create one?

Knowing what kind of role is right for you, and then defining the duties that support it is empowering and necessary in a market that is diversifying and growing rapidly.

Members of TheCR Network are discussion role transitions, career paths, and compensation every day. Join these vital discussions to contribute your perspective on industry standards and trends.

Although we’ve published several career development resources in the past, such as the Community Careers and Compensation Report 2015, TheCR is also working to develop more careers and compensation information and we would love your feedback. If you have questions around your career path, trends in community careers or anything career-related, drop them in the Community Careers and Development group.

Director of Community Job Description

September 17, 2019 By Jim Storer

Directors of Community lead community programs and typically lead teams that include community specialists, managers, and strategists. They often have operational backgrounds and are paired with community experts with their focus on securing internal support, integrating across the organization, managing a team, and communicating strategic progress.

Directors of Community focus on the health of a community program. They are responsible for operations – planning and delivering on the community roadmap. Their priorities tend to be governance, internal advocacy, training, and measurement.

A large part of the Director of Community role is as an internal champion – ensuring that executives and other stakeholders understand the value of the community, are getting the information they need, and that the community is aligned with their priorities. While directors still participate occasionally in tactical responsibilities and a community background is valuable, their main focus is on operational strategy.

Director of Community Key Responsibilities

ENGAGEMENT & PEOPLE

Respond to escalations, from the community or the organization
Engage champions and stakeholders

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Analyze the need and set direction for programs, events, and other activities

STRATEGIC

Develop and update the community strategy
Build the community roadmap

BUSINESS

Hire, mentor, manage, and develop staff
Communicate priorities for community programs and other communication
Secure budget and resources
Ensure executive sponsorship and champion the community internally
Engage and manage consultants and contractors
Act as liaison between internal and external stakeholders

TECHNICAL

Oversee community tool portfolio to ensure effectiveness
Develop and present community data to various stakeholders

These skills are a small example of the responsibilities and requirements of a successful director of community. As always, we encourage you to think about the unique requirements of your roles and use our Community Skills Framework™ as inspiration for creating the right director of community job description for your organization.

Variables to consider when drafting your community manager job description include:

Size of community: Larger communities require bigger teams making management, mentoring, and leadership traits more important
Size of organization: Large organizations require experience working in complex environments – and the patience to go slowly
Organizational context: Familiarity with the organization’s business model and culture can enhance the trust of stakeholders considerably

Profile of a Real Director of Community

SIMON HELTON Director of Membership and Community, International Society for Technology in Education

Simon’s Top Three Community Challenges

Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Measuringvalueand demonstrating the ROI of the community.
Determining engagement strategy/ goals.

Simon’s Strengths:

Empathy and Member Support (Engagement)
Facilitating Connections (Engagement)
Measurement, Benchmarking, and Reporting (Strategic)

Why were you interested in your current role?

I’ve always been a community nerd. When I was 16 and got my first car, I joined a car forum for maintenance information. Traveling in college? Join a backpacking forum. Get into competitive gaming? Join a gaming forum. The list goes on. So when I was working as a teacher but saw ISTE was hiring a community manager for their educator communities, this seemed like such a natural fit.

I got to do for a living what I had been passionate about as a participant for years and with people who shared a profession with me. I know community teams are perpetually understaffed (and usually a team of one), but I also enjoy that you get to do a bit of everything. You need some technical skills and some soft skills to succeed. If you’re all one or the other, it’s going to be a struggle. I also like getting to really know our members and what they like, what they struggle with, and what they need from us. It isn’t always easy to be their advocate on staff, but it’s necessary.

What advice do you have for someone seeking a role like yours?

As I mentioned above, it’s a huge benefit for a community manager to have technical skills and soft skills. Community managers need to be able to mediate a disagreement, connect people…and analyze a boatload of data to understand how their community is performing. If you know CSS or can help with technical maintenance of your community, that’s even better. There’s no one right path to being in community, but the people who are best at it are well-rounded.

Profiles of Emerging Community Leaders

August 19, 2019 By Jim Storer

Community roles have long been misunderstood as positions “merely” requiring social skills and the ability to interact. In fact, they neither represent just one role nor are they simple. Great community leadership is mostly hidden work focused on enabling others to interact constructively in service of creating agile and collaborative cultures. This approach is far from easy to learn and community roles are more complex than most knowledge jobs because they require a deep understanding of people and power as well as the ability to make decisions in constantly shifting situations.

Community leadership employs influence and enablement to inspire and ensure people are rewarded for new behaviors. To do well, community leadership requires metacognition – the ability to understand one’s own thinking, how it differs from others, and how to bridge that divide. Community positions often require many adjunct specialties like strategy or content or are infused with expertise in one specific domain.

Community leaders typically come from a range of functional backgrounds, with the most common being marketing, communications, and customer support. The rest come from a variety of functional areas including product, strategy, communications, legal, sales, HR, consulting, operations, and even finance. This reinforces the fact that community building is a method of approaching any work versus the goal of work – and the best organizational communities are built to achieve a business objective. In fact, this is how many people come into a community leadership role – they identify a community approach as a better way to do the functional work that they have historically done.

Given the complexity of community leadership, it is no surprise than that the community professionals we surveyed had an average of 17.6 years of work experience and 6.3 years of community experience. The vast majority of community professionals have a college degree and a significant number also have a master’s degree. That earned them, on average, $107,807 in total compensation with a base salary of $98,569. Within the data, however, is a wide range of salaries, suggesting that job roles and salaries vary quite a bit. This is likely due to industry and geographic differences, but also suggests a lack of standardization and rationalization, which we see anecdotally. Because community leadership is an emerging field, those being hired often know more about the role, its demands, and its objectives than the hiring and Hr managers. This dynamic makes it a challenging field for both the people hiring and the people being hired.

Download the State of Community Management 2019 to read case studies, access more data and read the full report.

Note: This post contains content originally published in the State of Community Management 2019 report. Download your free copy here.

Community Manager Job Description

August 17, 2019 By Jim Storer

OVERVIEW OF A COMMUNITY MANAGER
Community managers often oversee more processes than people and are the generalists of the community field. Although some community managers manage moderators or specialists, many work with other teams as the voice of the community. A community manager can be an entry-level role in some companies but on average they are mid-level professionals with over a decade in the workforce and over six years in community.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Community managers are the face and voice of the community. To make the community successful, they work with members to help them find value while ensuring organizational sponsors also receive value. Community managers balance tactical engagement and programming activities with more strategic responsibilities like planning and reporting. In small organizations, they are likely responsible for everything related to the community, while at larger organizations they may have direct reports, work on a larger team, or have the support of outsourced resources.

A Community Manager Job Description may include key responsibilities in these skill families:

ENGAGEMENT & PEOPLE
– Develop and execute member engagement processes
– Research and recommend community tools
– Ongoing monitoring of activity and listening
– Promote and reward valuable behaviors
– Facilitate connections among members
– Manage advocacy/champion programs

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
– Develop and manage an editorial calendar
– Create content (blog posts, videos, newsletters, etc)
– Curate, manage, and share content
– Plan and facilitate community programming and events

STRATEGIC & BUSINESS
– Measure and report community performance
– Advocate for the community and coordinate internally q Manage staff or outsourced resources

TECHNICAL
– Research and recommend community tools
– Manage and administer community platforms and tools

These skills are a small example of the responsibilities and requirements of a successful community manager. As always, we encourage you to think about the unique requirements of your roles, and use our Community Skills Framework™ as inspiration for creating the right community manager job description for your organization.

Variables to consider when drafting your community manager job description include:

Use case: Different use cases require different experiences and familiarity

Audience profile: Familiarity and comfort with the target audience will increase trust

Community size: Larger communities require more staff and automation than smaller communities, which allow for deeper relationships

Community maturity: Community management in new communities requires more strategic skills than in older communities where activities are more routine

Profile of a Real Community Manager

CATHERINE HACKNEY Community Manager,
Confident Communities Consulting

Catherine’s Strengths:

Empathy and Member Support (Engagement)
Training Development & Delivery (Business)
Tool Evaluation & Recommendation (Technical)

Why were you interested in your current role?

I am actually self-employed. I requested an official “community manager” role at the association I previously worked at but it was not an option at that time. I also happened to have another association come my way who needed part time community help, so I decided to create an LLC and leave the association I was working for. Since then I have been working at home full time for several organizations doing online community consulting and management. I knew I wanted to be a full time community manager shortly after I was given the role of community admin at an association over 5 years ago.

As soon as I saw the value members were getting from being able to openly discuss career challenges and day to day issues in a safe, private environment, I knew this was a powerful tool.

What advice do you have for someone seeking a role like yours?

Join as many online communities as you can! Especially those in the industry you are interested in focusing on and for other community managers. Don’t be shy – post, ask questions, respond to others, flex your own online community member muscles so that you can always keep the member perspective and experience top of mind. This will also get your name out there so you can start to build a network relevant to your interests and goals.

Practice asking for help from your network – there is a wealth of knowledge out there, use it to your advantage.

As long as you are willing to help others in return, you will have no trouble receiving the help you need.

Community Specialist Job Description

August 5, 2019 By Jim Storer

Community Specialists are the experts and emerging experts on a community team. Unlike community manager roles, where generalists are prized, Community Specialists often have a focus in one of three disciplines: engagement, content, or technical initiatives.

Community Specialist Responsibilities

Community Specialists focus on tactical initiatives and projects to support the community team in their area of expertise. On the job, Community Specialists tend to be “in the weeds” doing anything from providing training and support to members, curating and editing community content, or working with analytics, design, content management systems or other technical assets. For those interested in a community career who lack the general skill set required, joining a team as a Community Specialist is a great way to start with a specific focus, letting you expand your roles and responsibilities from there if interested.

ENGAGEMENT & PEOPLE

Ongoing monitoring of activity and listening
Ongoing moderation, response, and escalation of community activity
Manage member database and recommend programming
Facilitate connections among members

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Develop and manage member outreach
Create and curate content
Curate, manage, and share content of interest to members
Edit team content

 TECHNICAL

Manage and administer community platforms and tools q Provide technical community support to team and members
Research and identify technical solutions for community improvements

These skills are a small example of the responsibilities and requirements of a successful community specialist. As always, we encourage you to think about the unique requirements of your roles, and use our Community Skills Framework™ as inspiration for creating the right community specialist job description for your organization.

Variables to consider when drafting your community specialist job description include:

Use case: Different use cases require different experiences and familiarity
Audience profile: Familiarity and comfort with the target audience will increase trust
Community size: Larger communities require more staff and automation than smaller communities, which allow for deeper relationships
Community maturity: Community management in new communities requires more strategic skills than in older communities where activities are more routine

Toni Shoola – Associate, Pretrial Justice Institute

Toni’s Strengths:

Program Management (Business)
Measuring, Benchmarking, & Reporting (Strategic)
Graphics & Design (Content)

Why were you interested in your current role?

Collaboration is what makes things happen. I was drawn to this role for the ability to facilitate collaboration, encourage growth and engagement and to make a difference.

What advice do you have for someone seeking a role like yours?

Be patient, it takes time to grow and engage community. Be willing to experiment, try something if it works, great! If not, tweak it, or try something new.

Nick Wallander on How Improv Training Helps Community Management

March 11, 2019 By Jim Storer

Welcome to the latest episode in our community management podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.”

Podcast: Conversations with Community Managers – Nick Wallander

Join TheCR’s Jim Storer and Shannon Abram as they chat with community managers from a variety of industries about their community journey. They ask the community questions you want to know the answers to, including:

What’s your best advice for someone just starting out in Community Management?
What are your best practices for increasing community engagement?
How improv training can improve your community management skills!

Episode #54 features Nick Wallander, Social Media Consultant at Humana.

Join us as we chat with Nick about his journey to community at Humana, how his improv training helps him identify and interact with different community audiences, and more!

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

What are the skills of a community manager?

September 24, 2018 By Jim Storer

The online community management space has come a long way, but the Community Manager role still has the widest variation in responsibilities, compensation and reporting level.

Community Managers in the Organization

Community managers in our research work predominantly for corporations vs. agencies or as independents — suggesting that organizations see the value in investing in community management for the long haul. Community managers often work with communities scattered around the globe, giving them the opportunity to work remotely — a benefit that accrues to both internal and external community managers.

skills of a community manager

Community managers typically report to someone at the director level, with only about a third reporting to a vice president or higher. Despite the manager title, most community managers don’t manage anyone. Only about a third have direct reports, either employees or volunteers.

Community Manager Skills and Training Needs

Community managers’ top five most valued skills get to the heart of the tactical day-to-day monitoring and management of communities. Their most desired areas for training suggest an interest in digging deeper to drive engagement and understand what specific elements lead to community success. These training needs also suggest an opportunity for community professionals to develop into community specialists such as Community Architects, Community Analysts, and Community Strategists.

Highest Valued Skills of a Community Manager

Community Strategy Development
Community Advocacy And Promotion
 Listening And Analyzing
Writing
Measurement, Benchmarking, And Reporting

Biggest Community Manager Training Needs

Gamification And Behavior Change
Data Collection And Analysis
Community Advocacy And Promotion
Ux And Design
Community Strategy And Development

Community Manager Performance Evaluation

While community metrics are part of the evaluation of a community manager’s performance, the voice of the community is rarely part of the process. Just 5% of community managers say a review from the community is part of their performance evaluation — versus 91% who say they receive a manager assessment and 72% who submit a self-assessment.

Explore the Community Skills Framework:

The Hidden Work of Community Teams

June 25, 2018 By Rachel Happe

Community management work is evolving along with roles – and evolving rapidly. As all communications become networked, community engagement and management is a discipline that everyone needs to cultivate to be successful.

I’ve long said that community management is the future of all management – and community leadership is the future of all leadership.

That’s happening and people are turning to community professionals for support; help with strategy, coaching, training, and more. All of those requests are straining the already stretched resources of community teams and making them de facto Centers of Excellence without formal acknowledgment of that role. Even more critically they do not have the resources or skill sets they need to provide that support effectively while still shouldering much of the responsibility for day-to-day engagement. 47% of community teams are consulting on project work, 43% are responding to training requests, and 32% are accommodating coaching needs while only 8% of community teams report that they are Centers of Excellence.

Add to that, 52% of community programs include engagement as a professional development goal for employees outside of the community team and 43% of programs include community management responsibilities for employees outside of the community team. That requires a lot of coordination and reporting, never mind training and coaching. And yet, the average community team still only includes 4.4 full-time staff members.

This shift from primarily focusing on building engagement and community value to helping others build and facilitate communities is a tough transition. The skills required to do one are not necessarily the skills required to do the other. As teams do more indirect support they need better business, strategy, and technical skills – all of which are secondary skill sets when the primary responsibility is direct engagement and value creation.

Do you provide indirect support for others as they develop their community management skills? If so, is it acknowledged and resourced by your stakeholders? If not, do you report its frequency and time requirements to stakeholders so they can more accurately see the breadth of work you are doing?

Want more insights? Download The State of Community Management 2018 report now!

Community Management Skills That Matter: Business

June 20, 2018 By Jim Storer

Community Management Business Skills: Integrating community into the organization

Not surprisingly, the value of community management business skills grows as community managers more effectively integrate their communities with their overall organization. Directors of Community are typically tasked with leading such efforts, and typically work with more mature or strategic communities — and that is reflected in their business skill value rankings.

While every role places value on community advocacy and promotion, Directors of Community value those skills in conjunction with hiring, program management, and budget management. As a result, Directors of Community placed the highest value scores on 9 of 10 skills in this skill family. The tenth: training development and delivery, makes perfect sense for a strategist who works across a number of communities.

TRAINING OPPORTUNITY

Training needs change as community professionals move up the ladder. While managers placed a high priority on community advocacy and promotion, strategists and directors were far more interested in training on developing effective business models. Managers also wanted more training on budget management, while strategists and directors expressed interest in training on selling and evangelizing for their community programs.

CLIMBING THE LADDER

Community management business skills had the largest variance between what managers and directors valued. Thinking about a strategist role? Learning how to develop and implement training is valuable for rolling out consistent strategy, operations, and tactics across multiple communities. If becoming a Director of Community is your goal, understanding budgets, and building business models are vital. And Directors of Community can’t do it alone — so being skilled at finding and managing the right talent is critical.

Want to level up more of your community management skills? Click a skill set to learn more:

Using a Playbook to Support Community Manager Success

April 27, 2018 By Jim Storer

If you’ve played team sports for any period of time, youmight be familiar with using a playbook – and with good reason. No matter how strong your individual skills, knowing what you and your fellow team members can and should be doing in a given situation gives you a leg up on your competition. Knowing your plans ahead of time means you can focus on executing them – as a team!

The playbook in a community context isn’t that different. A well-thought-out community playbook gives the members of your community team a sense of their options in various scenarios. How do you manage standard problems? How do you hold a consistent tone with your community? How do you handle a crisis situation? These are all critical questions, and you want the answers to be the same for every member of the team.

In this case study, shared by Claudia Teixeira, Community Specialist at the World Bank Group you will learn how developing a training and a comprehensive community primer directly impacted the development of a strong cadre of community professionals at the World Bank Group.

Community Case Studies - Using a Playbook

You can view or download the Using a Community Playbook:

Download the Using a Playbook Case Study Download