The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

Three Reasons Community Managers are (Still) Crucial to Online Communities

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We logged into LinkedIn today, to post our planned Community Manager Appreciation Day 2024 posts, and immediately were sidetracked with more news of amazing community professionals being laid off.

It’s heartbreaking to see so many talented community managers without a community. If you’re reading this there is a really good chance you already know that a community without professional community management is not going to thrive.

In addition to our annual spotlight on amazing community professionals we know, we also want to use today’s Community Manager Appreciation Day celebration to highlight why community managers are so crucial to the success of a online community.

Three Reasons Community Managers are (Still) Crucial to Online Communities

Three Reasons Community Managers are (Still) Crucial to Online Communities

Community Managers Cultivating a Positive and Productive Environment

Community managers play a foundational role in establishing and upholding a positive and productive environment in all kinds of online communities. In both brand/marketing communities and employee (intranet) communities this involves setting clear guidelines, fostering respectful interactions, and mitigating disruptive behavior.

By maintaining a healthy atmosphere, community managers encourage constructive contributions, knowledge sharing, and positive engagement – key ingredients for a thriving online community. You wouldn’t purchase accounting software, and then expect it to take care of itself. When organizations assume their online community can “just run itself” or delegate pieces to different department without the training, skills, or time to manage it they are setting themselves up for failure.

Community Managers Bridge the Gap Between Members and Organizations

Again, this is true for the bridge between employees and their organizations (internal/intranet communities) and brands and their fans/users/followers. Community managers are the crucial link between two very different parties, facilitating two-way communication, collecting member feedback, and translating it into actionable insights for the organization.

This bridge fosters trust and loyalty among members, allowing them to feel heard and valued. Additionally, it provides organizations with valuable data to improve their products, services, and overall strategy. Successful communities empower their members and that work falls to community managers.

Community Managers Create a Sense of Belonging and Shared Identity

Just like every company has a unique tone for their brand, each online community also has a personality. Without active and thoughtful community management is a voiceless void. By fostering a sense of community, community managers help members feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. This motivates them to contribute, stay engaged, and even act as brand advocates, further strengthening the online community.

These are just three very high-level reasons that community managers are crucial to online communities. Every year, our State of Community Management research reconfirms the fact that communities with strategic community management have an outsized impact on their organization.

You can view our annual Community Manager Appreciation Day post here.

5 Critical Hiring Characteristics for Community Management Roles

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Critical Hiring Characteristics

Looking at community job descriptions, it’s clear there are some characteristics that are prized by hiring managers.

While empathy, communication skills, and collaboration have always been a component of a community professional’s responsibilities, the growing recognition of the need for negotiation and strategic skills is newer. As community roles become more common, and as they continue to diversify into more specific areas (like community operations, technical community management, etc.) there will continue to be a core set of characteristics that are critical for successful community management.

We’ve found these five characteristics to be key when evaluating community talent. This is obviously not a complete list – thinking about your unique needs as a community program and an organization will always be important when thinking about the right fit for your community team.

5 Critical Hiring Characteristics for Community Management Roles

1 – Empathy.​  Many community management job descriptions share a key requirement: empathy. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another is quickly becoming a critical part of effective community management. Emotional intelligence is a key attribute.

2- Strong communication and negotiating skills. Community professionals interact with a wide range of people and have to gracefully navigate differences of opinion and perspective. That requires sophisticated communication and negotiation skills – no wonder these skills are becoming more common on job descriptions.

 3 – Ability to collaborate across the business. Community professionals are being asked to partner with teams across organizations. This requires leading discussions and training on community topics, as well as implementing projects that generate shared value. The ability to listen, translate concepts across different groups, and collaborate is essential.

4 – Strategic planning. In an environment where you rarely can tell people what to do, staying aligned around a strategic vision is key to a successful community program. This strategic vision informs planning, governance, and tactical programming in ways all community professionals need to understand.

5 – Ability to thrive remotely. We admit, this one is new and we aren’t seeing it on too many job descriptions yet, but just wait. As the world becomes more comfortable with employees working remotely the ability to thrive both working remotely, and also connecting people who are working remotely will become a sought-after skill.

If you want a primer on 50 common community management skills our 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. You can use the Community Skills Framework™ as you craft your community job descriptions to ensure you are using industry-standard terms and including the skills critical to your particular community needs.
Learn more about the Community Skills Framework™ here.

If you want to browse community management job descriptions and get more advice on smart hiring for online community management roles you can download our community job index here.

What is a community manager?

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Community Manager is by far the most often cited and discussed role in the community space for a couple of reasons. First, in the past online communities were used primarily for tactical reasons, which often did not warrant more senior roles. Secondly, communities were often run by ‘lone wolf’ community professionals who did not directly manage a team, but were responsible for everything from strategy to moderation. Community manager seems to have been the best catchall title to give to someone without direct reports, but who had a breadth of responsibility.

The community space has come a long way, but the Community Manager role has a wide variation in responsibilities, compensation and reporting levels. Community managers are often expected to do a bit of everything, and while the role is evolving it still requires generalists who handle a diverse set of responsibilities.

Community Managers in the Organization

Our research has shown that community managers work predominantly for corporations vs. agencies or as independents — suggesting that organizations are seeing 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.

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. Our research shows that only about a third have direct reports, either employees or volunteers.

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.

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.

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Interested in more about the community manager role?

Download the Community Careers and Compensation report for free.