The Community Roundtable

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

Community Role Profile: Community Specialist Role

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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 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.

New Research: The Emerging Career Path for Community Professionals

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By Rachel Happe, Principal and Co-Founder, The Community Roundtable.

Community Management Skills Framework

It’s a great time to be a community manager. Companies big and small are starting to recognize that is a critical skill to help transform their organizations for a digitally connected world.

Our mission at The Community Roundtable is to advance the business of community and research has always played an integral part of that – helping people understand the dynamics and management approaches that build successful communities. We’ve made great strides at the macro level with our State of Community Management report and our Community Maturity Model framework – so much so that we can now benchmark the maturity of an organization’s community management approach.

It is time to take the same research approach to the role of the individual community professional and we are excited to announce the publication of our first Community Manager Salary Survey, made possible with support from Jive Software.

This research is becoming increasingly urgent due to a variety of trends we see:

  • Lack of recognition of how critical the community management discipline is to digital transformation and the future of work. We believe community management is the future of management and a critical component to enabling the future of work.
  • Community professionals are increasingly frustrated because of poorly defined roles and lack of advancement opportunities.
  • There is very little data about community management roles, making it challenging for hiring managers to define well constructed job opportunities.

So what did we find?

  • While there is still a lot of variability in skills and compensation levels in community management roles, there are distinct roles starting to emerge – specialist, manager, strategist and director. 36% of community professionals have been promoted within their role; an encouraging sign that organizations value the role and want to enable a career path.
  • At the executive level – community management is strategic – responsible for strategy, governance, program management and ensuring communities meet business objectives.
  • Performance measurements for community managers are still evolving – there is no one dominant measure being used to evaluate the performance of community professionals.
  • Organizations are still largely not supporting formal professional development resources for community managers like membership in professional development networks, training and coaching.

Along with this research, we also published the Community Management Skills Framework, designed to:

  • Provide a common framework for understanding the skills required for community management.
  • Give community managers a tool to evaluate and develop their own skills.
  • Support hiring managers and HR teams as they define formal community management roles within their organization.
  • Look at and compare the skills of community teams so gaps can be addressed and existing skills can be leveraged.

The full report contains specific data for internal (employee-facing) and external (customer and market-facing) community professionals – including average salaries, percent who get bonuses, profiles of skills and responsibilities by role, performance criteria and professional development resources.

Download the Report Now >>

We would love to hear from you about what surprised you, what you think is missing and how you will use this data to further your own development.