job descriptions Archives

Community Role Profile: Community Specialist Role

June 7, 2021 By Jim Storer

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

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.

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.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY

Community Specialists drive the projects and initiatives that support community operations – maintain the systems and programs needed for the community to thrive. This results is a close relationship with the community and team members and provides a unique perspective on the challenges of members. Community Specialists can act as a bridge between members and the greater community team.

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

Community Role Profile: Community Strategist

May 17, 2021 By Jim Storer

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

The community strategist role is an expert role dedicated to what the title implies – community strategy. Typically, strategists are individuals with community management experience who have particularly strong strategic skills; analysis, community architecture, business models, and the ability to understand the interdependencies between different parts of a community ecosystem.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Community strategists are most likely to work in professional service firms or as part of a centralized community program office that provides internal community consulting to business units and other groups within large organizations. They are more likely to be individual contributors, and they act as subject matter experts within their ecosystem supporting and auditing a portfolio of communities.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY

Strategists have a special knack for understanding community performance and the levers that impact it. Successful strategists work with community managers to ensure their strategies and approaches will yield successful shared value and keep the communities productive.

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

Writing Effective Community Management Job Descriptions

April 19, 2021 By Jim Storer

Community roles – and their priorities – change not only by level of seniority and decision-making, but also by other factors; the use case, audience, community size, and community maturity.

Managing a new support community for a B2B company is very different than managing a mature, internal employee social network of 80,000 people who are all actively collaborating in hundreds of sub-communities during the day. Consider and emphasize these aspects in job descriptions, as they will determine who is the right fit.

The Anatomy of Community Roles

Community roles are differentiated by their focus on enabling and connecting others by architecting environments that make collaborative behaviors easy and rewarding. Most of community work is done under the waterline – the iceberg effect of community management – and typically does not prioritize the community professional as the primary leader, influencer, or support agent.

Community roles – and job titles – do often get confused with communication and support roles that are primarily tasked with responding directly to individuals and while that can be a part of a community role it is not the dominant priority. This can be evaluated by understanding the hiring managers’ objectives – and the level of engagement for which they are looking. If the role is predominantly about visibility and exposure of content, then it is likely not a true community building position.

Learn more and browse 30+ community management job descriptions in our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

Community Role Profile: Community Manager

April 16, 2021 By Jim Storer

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.

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.

Announcing our new eBook: Defining Community Management Roles

February 25, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Click here to download the free eBook.

The Community Roundtable is proud to announce the latest product in our Community Manager Salary Survey platform, a new eBook entitled “Defining Community Management Roles”. The eBook, sponsored by Jive, uses our research to target one of the pain points we most often hear from community professionals – the lack of clear role definitions in community management. This is a problem for human resources professionals and hiring managers – because standards for what defines a community manager role, versus a community strategist or director of community can be difficult to ascertain, and as a result, providing proper compensation, support and professional development opportunities is difficult.

Of course, the problem is a more personal one for community professionals, who seek career paths but are often stymied by the unclear lines between roles, or get overwhelmed and burn out because their job is far more demanding than their defined role (and compensation) reflect. The problem is not a surprise – community management is evolving, and as such roles change – but if we fail to shape it, we stymie its growth as a profession.

The Community Manager Salary Survey and this eBook are among the beginning steps to bring clarity to community management roles. The eBook distills our CMSS research into a practical guide to understand and hire for three community management roles: Community Manager, Community Strategist and Director of Community. We give you more context about each role, the relevant high level data related to each role, a profile of someone who exemplifies the role and a baseline job description for each role.

Download the free eBook now.

We also profile three wonderful members of TheCR Network – Eileen Foran, Maria Ogneva and Christian Rubio, as examples of what these roles mean in practice.

We are preparing for the second year of the CMSS now, and we appreciate the initial feedback we got when we announced the results of our 2014 survey last fall. But we’d love to hear more and open a discussion. What are your biggest challenges, either as a community professional or a manager in charge of community professionals? What didn’t the first year of the CMSS address, and what did it address effectively?

We look forward to hearing from you – and we hope you’ll take a look at the new eBook – and the full Community Manager Salary Survey 2014, if you haven’t had a chance.