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The Community Roundtable

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

Community Role Profile: Community Manager

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Photo of Man Holding a Book

OVERVIEW OF ROLE
​ 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 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.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY

​ A community manager’s special gift is empathy – a knack for understanding members and their motivations, their needs and goals, then connecting them with other members, content, and programs that help them achieve their goals.

Community Manager Role

To learn more about the Community Manager Role, and view Community Specialist Job Descriptions download our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

Community Management Skills That Matter: Business

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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:

community manager skills

Community Skills Engagement

Community Management Skills That Matter: Technical

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Technical Community Management Skills: Designing and building effective communities

Technical skills are unique in that they are most easily outsourced and often score lower than their true importance because not everyone on a team needs each specific skill. But as noted in our Community Careers and Compensation Report Key Findings,
developing a technical specialty is a great way to increase your value within a community team — and add to your paycheck.  Not everyone needs technical skills in data analysis, API  development or UX and design, but team members that have them provide great value. Community teams and those who lead them do need to understand where their technical strengths lie and what individual skills can do to strengthen the community if they are to reap the maximum benefits from them.

TRAINING OPPORTUNITY

Data. Data. Data. ROI and engagement statistics are critical, and your community’s existence is heavily based on demonstrating behavior change and measuring community value, so it’s not surprising that the ability to collect and analyze data is seen as both a valued skill and a training need at all levels. Because community teams often need just a limited number of “experts” in other technical skills, community professionals may want to pursue the opportunities that most excite them, while keeping in mind community needs and desires.

CLIMBING THE LADDER

Technical skills are unusual in that strategists and directors value the skills themselves less than their ability to manage the people who have strong technical skills on their team. At all levels, being tech savvy will help you move up the ladder — and investing in specific knowledge can help you develop into a community technologist role, a horizontal career path that has great value, particularly as a consultant. Software and application programming, for example, was the lowest scoring skill of all we surveyed — but being able to code software and APIs can be a hugely valuable to certain organizations or the vendors who serve them.

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

community manager skills community manager skills Community Skills Engagement

Friday Community Jobs Round-Up – 03/03/17

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job boardEach Friday we compile a comprehensive list of the latest jobs across community management. Be sure to check back in each week to see the latest listings.

Know of a great community opening that we’ve missed? Let us know and we’ll add it to the list!

  1. Community Manager – Blackbaud – Charleston, SC/Austin, TX
  2. Social Media Community Manager – Julep – Seattle, WA
  3. Social Media and Digital Marketing Manager – Coaching Psychology, Ltd. – Boston, MA
  4. Social Media Manager – Cannaverse Solutions – Oakland, CA
  5. Social Media Manager – Carbonated.tv – San Ramon, CA
  6. Customer Success Online Community Manager – SnapLogic – San Mateo, CA
  7. Manager of Partnerships, Community Advocacy and Engagement Services – Kansas City School District – Kansas City, MO
  8. Social Community Manager – Clarins – New York, NY
  9. Content Marketer/Community Manager – Superior Fireworks – Orange Park, FL
  10. Community Manager – AlphaProTemps, Inc. – Neenah, WI
  11. Social Media Strategist – 24 Seven – San Francisco, CA
  12. Senior Content Strategist, North America Marketing – Oracle – Redwood Shores, CA/San Diego, CA/New York, NY or Reston, VA
  13. Vice President, Employee Communications – Nuveen  – New York, NY
  14. Internal Communications Specialist – WellCare – Tampa, FL
  15. Internal Communications Advisor – Hanger, Inc. – Austin, TX
  16. Senior Manager, Medical Communications – Genzyme – Cambridge, MA
  17. Mgr Internal Communications – Novant Health – Charlotte, NC
  18. Internal Communications Manager – Leidos – McLean, VA
  19. Communications Manager – The TJX Companies, Inc. – Marlborough, MA
  20. Director, Global Communications – 505 Games – Calabasas, CA
  21. Internal Communications Leader – Hearth & Home Technologies – Lakeville, MN
  22. Internal Communications Specialist – O’Reilly Auto Parts – Springfield, MO
  23. Internal Communications Manager for Americas Markets – EY – United States
  24. Internal Communications Director, Global Supply Chain – Schneider Electric – Nashville, TN
  25. Senior Communications Partner – USAA – San Antonio, TX
  26. Knowledge Management Officer – The World Bank – Washington, DC
  27. Knowledge Management Consultant – Farmers Insurance Group – Phoenix, AZ
  28. Knowledge Management Content Manager/Trainer – Booz Allen Hamilton – Fort Belvoir, VA
  29. Wellness Program Administrator – Akamai – Cambridge, MA
  30. Community Consultant, Salesforce Success Community – Salesforce – San Francisco, CA
  31. Functional Coordinator, Document Management System – University of Maryland University College – Largo, MD
  32. Portal Manager (Jive) – MobileIron – Mountain View, CA
  33. Communications Manager, IC – Intuit – Mountain View, CA
  34. Jira Business Analyst – Marketo – San Mateo, CA
  35. Community Consultant, Salesforce Success Community – Salesforce – San Francisco, CA

Best practices for getting a community management job

  • How Do I Find a Community Manager Job? – Community management is a profession of relationships – use your network to discover your next role. Most community jobs are not currently found through traditional job listings.
  • 50 Skills of Community Management – The Community Skills Framework represents the five skill families and top 50 skills that are required to build a successful community program.
  • How To Win That Community Manager Job – As organizations begin to increasingly recognize and reward the value of good community management the market for jobs has begun to heat up. While at any given moment there are literally dozens of interesting community jobs open around the country (and truly, the world) the competition for these roles is getting stiffer. How can you set yourself apart?