Community Manager: The New, Hot Job For Those Who Love People.
July 7th, 2022
Last Updated on July 7th, 2022
This text was fully written by humans.
SUMMARY / KEY TAKEAWAYS
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Community Manager means “the liaison between a brand and its followers on social media.”
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The demand for Community Managers is constantly growing. Roles like this fit well into a broader career development framework for professionals, and they reflect the kind of career development strategies for working professionals who want variety. Within a few years, all reputable businesses incorporated teams of Community Managers into their operations. That growth is a good sign for a career development framework for professionals interested in social media, and it supports realistic career development strategies for working professionals entering the field.
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No wonder it is one of the most sought careers among young people today. For many, becoming a Community Manager is part of a career strategy for professionals in transition, and it can be finding your next career step after a more traditional first job.
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In this article, we introduce 10 traits of successful Community Managers.
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We also discuss perks and pitfalls of community management and give tips for how to start your career as a Community Manager. These tips are useful for anyone still figuring out how to find your career path, and they can be one of several steps to a successful career pivot into a more people-focused role.
Table of Contents
- Community Manager: Where Did This Profession Come About?
- What Are the Responsibilities of a Typical Community Manager?
- Traits of The Top Community Managers.
- How To Start?
- Perks of Working as a Community Manager.
- Pitfalls of Working as a Community Manager.
- Content Creator or a Community Manager? — The Career Dilemma of the Many.
Community Manager: Where Did This Profession Come About?
Community Manager: today, it’s an essential role in almost any business based on consumer products and services. This role requires a specific set of skills (more on that later in this article!). However, if you can meet the criteria, this choice can lead to a highly rewarding career. For some, this becomes a career strategy for professionals in transition from another industry entirely, and for others it is simply finding your next career step early on. For example, so, what does Community Manager even mean?
Officially, Community Manager means “the liaison between a brand and its followers on social media.” No wonder the trend of hiring a person specifically assigned to communicate with clients and followers was born in the early days of social media. It emerged in the 2000s, when Facebook, YouTube, and other leading social media platforms kicked off.
The startup culture naturally adopted community management as part of the game. According to The Community Roundtable, community management has since grown into a distinct profession with its own career ladder and skill set. That structure makes it easier to answer how to find your career path within the role itself, and it offers several steps to a successful career pivot without starting over completely. After all, every startup needs a proper hustler. In fact, community building is a natural way of building a brand and scaling the business — usually much cheaper than paid online ads. No wonder that within a few years, all reputable businesses incorporated teams of Community Managers into their operations.
What Are the Responsibilities of a Typical Community Manager?
First, there is nothing like a “typical” Community Manager. Interestingly, all Community Managers wear many hats and rotate tasks from day to day. As a result, every Community Manager needs to flexibly follow demand in their project and adapt daily.
Every position is different. A Community Manager at “company A” might have a very different day-to-day routine than someone working at “Company B.”
Just as the name states, a Community Manager will be appointed to any task that involves a community. That said, you might be asked to promote brand awareness, manage Public Relations campaigns, or create (social) media content. Other common tasks include moderating chat rooms and forums, communicating with users, organizing events, and maintaining a social media presence.
In most cases, your responsibilities as a Community Manager depend heavily on the community you’re hired to manage. Not all communities are active online. But since we are online here, we will be focusing on online communities.
The first type of online Community Manager would be a Social Media Manager. In this context, there are big companies that have taken great leaps in connecting with their audience.
An example would be Wendy’s Twitter which has embraced meme culture and poked fun at its competition for the entertainment of its Twitter community. It is a unique form of community management and possibly the easiest for young people familiar with social media.
Another Community Manager would be a Forum Moderator. Typically, online forums and groups on Facebook / LinkedIn / Slack / Discord / Telegram / Reddit and other online platforms develop active online communities around a niche topic like gaming or technology. In many respects, a Community Manager here would learn the topic well enough to join and facilitate the conversation.
Online forums inevitably have some bad apples — trolls only looking to cause mayhem. With a bad apple, the Community Manager decides what level of punishment to dish out. Over time, many forums can suspend a user for a while or ban them.
these are just examples. especially in the startup culture, a Community Manager typically needs to take all the community-related tasks on their chest.
Traits of The Top Community Managers.
How to start your career and build your professional development plan as a Community Manager? In many cases, Well, the good news is that there is currently such a high demand for Community Managers that you don’t need any form of higher education to start. studies or courses in Media or Media Design would be helpful but are not a requirement.
Having that said, you might think that working as a Community Manager is easy. Nothing could be further from the truth! Not surprisingly, it is a complex job that requires many levels of competence. Let’s review the top 10 skills and traits that Community Managers need to represent:
1. Communication Skills.
the most important skills necessary to succeed in becoming a pro Community Manager, are communication skills. This applies whether you’re representing a brand to a community or talking to a coworker about a looming deadline.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, public relations specialists — a role closely related to community management — earn a median annual wage of $74,750, with about 23,000 openings projected each year as people move on from or retire out of these communication-heavy roles.
As a Community Manager, you need to vocalize your thoughts promptly and succinctly, adjusting your tone to the circumstances.
The ability to type fast and learn subject-specific jargon is also most welcome. Given this, as a Community Manager, you need to understand what your audience is talking about. For instance, in crypto and NFT communities, “degen” describes a degenerate trader who blindly follows trends and influencers. Such a trader risks far too much.
Lawyers worldwide developed the whole informal jargon language called lawyerese. As you can see, it contains terms such as a “fishing expedition” (a non-specific search for incriminating information). Another example is a “Kangaroo court,” which ignores recognized standards of law and justice.
Corporate employees developed their jargon as well. On the other hand, it includes terms such as “land and expand” — selling a small solution with the goal of upselling later. Another example is a “cubicle farm,” a section of a workplace with many cubicle workstations.
If you have trouble understanding your audience’s jargon, Urban Dictionary can usually help.
emojis and memes are also popular online. By contrast, as a Community Manager, you need to know the most iconic memes and the most popular emojis in current use. Please check out our article “Emojis in the Workplace AD 2022: Hot or Not?” for more information about the principles of using emojis and emoticons at work.
Online communities are also good at creating their own local neologisms and language shortcuts. So, you need to stay on top of things, observe how your community members speak to each other, and keep on learning.
2. Empathy.
diplomacy, the ability to understand different points of view and solve conflicts, require empathy. As a Community Manager, you need to be able to naturally mimic other people’s tones, and develop a genuine interest in people coming from various cultures. In turn, if you are naturally empathic, please also check out our article “7 Amazing Careers For Empathic People.”
3. Extraversion.
Community management requires constant contact with people. Along the same lines, this implies that, as a Community Manager, you should be the type of person who gains rather than spends energy around others — namely, an extrovert.
So, are you an extrovert? At the same time, you can check that hypothesis, e.g., by taking a personality test based on the “Big Five”, or, the OCEAN model. If you turn out to be more of an introvert than an extrovert, plenty of other attractive careers are worth considering. Our article “Top 23 Careers For Introvert Persons.”
4. Multitasking / Time Management.
A good Community Manager needs to have an excellent sense of time management. As with most careers, some community management jobs are lenient about workload or deadlines. However, this is not typical, and you should not expect it unless an employer says otherwise.
In most cases, you can assume that for at least a part of your day, you will be pressed to multitask to fulfill all your duties. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, it is better to develop self-knowledge and functional self-management strategies way before you decide to embark on this journey. Multitasking and time management should be part of your personal development.
5. Business Intelligence.
Community Managers should have a natural understanding of online business to be able to develop a functional online community. As an example, they need to understand the importance of engagement. In practice, Passive follows required via airdrops or paid ads do not mean real users but rather, dead likes.
The Community Manager also has a larger impact on the business side of the project than one might think. For example, every person coming to the community is a potential client, an investor, or a strategic partner.
Community Managers need to stay informed on the project’s current and future business operations. This knowledge helps them streamline the community and make the best of upcoming opportunities.
6. Adaptability.
As mentioned before, a Community Manager needs to adapt daily. In fact, Sometimes, a troll will spoil your day. Sometimes a brand comes under fire, and you must think fast. More broadly, you will need to take over Public Relations, find out what happened, and decide how to respond.
And sometimes, the whole market sector breaks down and you need to think about whether you should stay in the same market niche or branch out to something else.
7. Creativity.
Being creative is also a great asset. For example, if you know how to edit videos, you can capture great moments from your project and deliver them directly to your customers via the Internet.
Since there is no real one specific thing a Community Manager does, you can be a jack of all trades and try multiple means of communication. Most project leaders — especially in the startup culture — will encourage and support such an open and creative attitude to work.
8. Geekiness.
Well, it is hard to become a pro if you know nothing about the market sector that your employer represents. This job will require learning and updating your knowledge about the latest developments in your field. As a result, Any good Community Manager is well informed!
Therefore, you need to find a discipline that you naturally enjoy and have a natural interest in. That said, if you spend your free time procrastination, watching, and reading online materials on a given topic, it is a good sign!
9. Understanding Culture and Sentiment.
Any good community Manager should also understand the basics of today’s culture and the general socio-economical situation.
If you never watch new movies, follow pop music, or know brands such as “Marvel” or “Billie Eilish”, and don’t follow current events, you’ll have a hard time engaging your audience in conversation.
10. Sense of Humor.
Lastly, a sense of humor is not obligatory, yet a helpful element of community management. In this context, your community members will enjoy a manager who is chatty, witty, and quick with a joke.
People search for banter and good emotions online. A community run by someone who doesn’t take life too seriously is a great way to relax and recharge after working hours.
Are you suitable to become a Community Manager? Naturally, if you think of embarking on this career path, you should ask yourself whether you are a type of a Linchpin. In other words, Someone who has a natural talent for building communities. Not sure if you are one? Check our Ontology of Value Test and find out!
Plus, if you want to deepen your community management skills, check out this page. It summarizes the top 50 skills for a pro Community Manager, including Content, Technical, Business, Engagement, and Strategic skills.
How To Start?
Community Manager is a classic example of a “lean career.” It is not a profession you enter simply by finishing a study program, getting a license, and applying for your first job.
You become a Community Manager by taking simple gigs and assisting more experienced Community Managers first and learning from them in the process.
There are a few ways in which you can start working as a Community Manager. Since this type of job is heavily dependent on personal recommendations, and the best way to start is obviously networking.
Namely, attending online and on-site events, asking around, following creators that you admire, getting involved in online discussion, and knocking at their door in person. Over time, you might be surprised by how many CEOs and serious content creators actually respond to personal messages!
you are also free to respond to open job offers on LinkedIn and other platforms. As of July 2022, LinkedIn displays over 100,000 Community Manager jobs in the US alone! However, the success rate is always lower than in the case of networking face-to-face.
Perks of Working as a Community Manager.
If this job is so hectic and requires so many skills, why are so many professionals drawn to it today?
Well, there are at least a few solid perks of working as a Community Manager! In many cases, To name just a few:
1. Personal Freedom.
A great majority of community manager jobs available are online positions for online communities. That likely means a remote job for you! Not surprisingly, as a Community Manager, you can live wherever you want. That means no office!
Furthermore, you can choose projects and people whom you are willing to work with. ultimately, if you don’t resonate with the leaders of the project, it is better for everyone if you just carry on. Given this, in that sense, you will never be dependent on a dysfunctional team or dysfunctional boss.
2. On the other hand, Interesting People on the Way.
If you love meeting new people, this job will be like never-ending Christmas for you! The Internet is like the Babel Tower, and as a Community Manager, you stand at the gateway, shaking everyone’s hands.
If you build your career relationally — a highly functional approach in today’s professional world — the network you gain can serve you for a professional lifetime.
you need to take care of your contacts. Make sure they don’t stay anonymous avatars on Telegram or Discord. Contact them via various channels, and extend those relations into daily life.
3. By contrast, Well-Informed and On Top of Their Field / Paid For Learning.
Dealing with a lot of people and staying close to project leaders puts you near the top of the pecking order for sharing valuable, potentially profitable information. This might mean that next to your salary, you will be able to get additional benefits associated with being in the know.
Furthermore, Community Management is one of the jobs in which you are literally paid for learning. You need to stay on top of your field, continually building your professional skills alongside your portfolio. In turn, if you were dreaming of having a job that pays you for studying, it might be the right one!
4. More importantly, Competitive Salaries (If You Self-Manage Well!).
Most online Community Managers work in “fluid” areas of the market — developing fields with no standard for how much you “should” be paid. This is why salaries are on a spectrum.
According to Glassdoor, the median salary for Community Managers in the US is $52,197 per year. On top of that, they earn an average of $21,588 in additional pay, including bonuses, commissions, tips, and profit-sharing.
But this is not the full picture. Many projects, especially those in new, speculative markets, pay their Community Managers mostly via commissions, shares, or tokens.
If you prefer a “traditional” salary as a Community Manager, lean toward established market sectors — large IT, biotechnology, or manufacturing companies with a long track record.
Furthermore, since many projects decide to remotely hire professionals working from developing countries, some Community Manager jobs offer low pay given the Western standards.
Today, however, many startups need a strong Community Manager so badly, and are so invested in building a brand, that they will pay a premium for quality.
This is also why, throughout your career, it is better to work for good brands and people with strong personal brands. Make sure they give you good recommendations, so you end up in the highest tier of established Community Managers working with high-ticket clients only.
5. At the same time, Good Start Into a Career in Entrepreneurship.
Every startup needs a skilled hustler, someone who inspires the audience, builds hype around the project, and helps it scale through brand awareness and engagement.
So, if you become a first-class Community Manager with lots of contacts, you will likely get invites to join startups as a co-founder.
you need to be picky and self-protective when it comes to embarking on such an adventure. But, if you have ever dreamt of building the next world-changing solution or platform, perhaps, working as a Community Manager is a good starting point.
5. As with most careers, Good Start Into a Career in Entrepreneurship.
Every startup needs a skilled hustler, someone who inspires the audience, builds hype around the project, and helps it scale through brand awareness and engagement.
So, if you become a first-class Community Manager with lots of contacts, you will likely get invites to join startups as a co-founder.
you need to be picky and self-protective when it comes to embarking on such an adventure. But, if you have ever dreamt of building the next world-changing solution or platform, perhaps, working as a Community Manager is a good starting point.
Pitfalls of Working as a Community Manager.
just as with any job in the world, Community Management is also associated with some pitfalls.
1. Sense of Void.
As a Community Manager, you propagate someone else’s ideas and solutions. Do you feel comfortable knowing that you are the vehicle to ship value produced by someone else? In practice, if you rarely ask whether you resonate with the project’s mission, you might experience a sense of void or even burnout.
2. For example, your Mental Health Is Jeopardized.
Community Management requires grinding every day, often without weekends or vacations for long periods of time. You also work with people operating in different time zones, which can deregulate your daily routine.
For these reasons, in the long term, your mental health is endangered. In fact, as a Community Manager, you need to constantly monitor yourself and react if you notice any signs of apathy or lowered mood.
3. Take Care of Your Personal Brand.
Many Community Managers are so busy filling their daily duties that they don’t find any time to promote themselves online. As a result, they neglect their own social media in favor of the project they represent, and never convey their own life and professional mission to the public.
Don’t make this mistake! You need at least fifteen minutes a day to present yourself online, so people know you exist and have something to say beyond your project. That said, you should work on your personal development in parallel. No matter how tired you are after the working day.
4. In this context, Take Care of Your Personal Network.
A career as a Community Manager is like an Odyssey — a journey through projects, communities, and concepts. Naturally, as mentioned before, you need to grow your network on the way like a snowball. Remember to collect and store all your pivotal or potentially useful contacts as well as collect recommendations along the way.
Furthermore, a Community Manager is, unfortunately, only as good as their previous employers like to communication. Therefore, carefully choose employers with a proper reputation and contacts, and those who are, generally, good with people.
5. Don’t Be a Loser.
Since starting a career in community management requires collecting recommendations, lots of people will try to use your precious time and your service to their advantage. Over time, you will learn that in many new, exciting projects, leaders try to feed on your enthusiasm and inexperience. You may be paid nothing unless you actively ask for it.
So, do ask to be paid as soon as you possibly can. In many cases, every project has SOMETHING to give away — if not cash, then shares, tokens, merchandise, or whatever else they produce. If they say they can pay you nothing at all, that’s untrue, and you should stay away.
Content Creator or a Community Manager? — The Career Dilemma of the Many.
Many young people consider the dilemma: shall become a Content Creator or a Community Manager? Not surprisingly, a Content Creator is like an artist. A Community Manager, by contrast, needs to be more of a craftsman, with the horsepower and discipline to show up every day. it is hard to become both at a time!
In our culture, Content Creators are worshipped, but is this the best path to professional success? We recently launched a LinkedIn poll and asked our audience which of the two tracks leads to more success in the long term. Interestingly, the voters pointed to Community Management as the activity with more potential for personal growth!
It sounds like there is hope for people who tirelessly work on projects behind the scenes. In fact, to thrive with your project, you will need to build both culture and community at a time. Given this, your culture is like gas in the room, and your community is the room.
When you want to monetize inhaling your gas, you first need to invite people into a room, close the door, and post someone at the door to collect the money. The Content Creator creates the culture and the Community Manager creates the community.
To build a functional project, you need to fill in both roles. On the other hand, you need a Content Creator to create the Intellectual Property for the project, and a Community Manager to spread the word. The Community Manager finds and inspires users or followers to come on board, get engaged, and invest their time.
And indeed, the Internet is already full of Content Creators of all kinds. It is Community Managers who are currently in demand.
Community Management is just one of many careers that you can start without a university degree. By contrast, Please find more information in our article “High Paying Jobs Without Degree: How To Start a Career Without Higher Education?“
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Ontology of Value (July 7th, 2022). Community Manager: The New, Hot Job For Those Who Love People. Retrieved from: https://ontologyofvalue.com/community-manager-the-new-hot-job-for-those-who-love-people/
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