If you’re wondering what is a community manager, it’s the person who welcomes members, moderates conversations and turns member feedback into action for a brand’s online community. Here is what that looks like day to day.
This guide sits within the wider field of online community management, where the role is one piece of a larger system.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Typical experience asked for | One to three years of relevant experience |
| Experience for senior roles (director or VP of community) | Five to eight years of management experience |
| Typical education | Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, communications, journalism or a related field |
| Projected job growth, advertising, promotions and marketing managers, 2021 to 2031 | 10 percent |
| Scaling gap named as a challenge | A community of thirty members versus one of 3,000 |
These figures come from Built In’s community manager guide and Common Room’s community manager post. They can change, so check the sources before you rely on them.
What does a community manager do each day?
A community manager provides hands-on moderation inside the community. Common Room calls them the first line of defense: they field questions, welcome new members and facilitate conversations.
Built In describes the job from the brand’s side. In its words, a community manager cultivates healthy online relationships with a company’s customer base by monitoring social platforms, blogs, forums and other digital spaces.
Common Room’s examples of daily tasks, written in its March 2023 post, give a good picture of an ordinary day:
- Staying on top of questions, conversations and sentiment.
- Welcoming new members.
- Conducting member research and interviews.
- Amplifying user-generated content.
- Capturing and circulating product feedback.
- Identifying and nurturing champions.
- Promoting events, new feature launches and newly released content.
- Ensuring all members follow the community’s code of conduct.
Some of that work reaches beyond the community itself. Common Room lists sharing insights about community-qualified leads and at-risk accounts with the appropriate teams as part of the same daily routine.
Built In adds two tasks from the customer-facing side. As of its December 2022 update, these include social listening to monitor changes in customer sentiment, and responding to individual reviews or messages to resolve questions or complaints.
The goals behind the daily work
Day-to-day tasks make more sense once you know what they serve. Common Room says the role looks different from one organization to the next, but community managers usually share a handful of objectives.
- Growing the community: more members, members from a specific demographic, or more active members.
- Boosting engagement: especially member-to-member engagement, which Common Room calls where the community magic happens.
- Producing content: mining conversations for popular topics, working with subject matter experts, then distributing the piece across community channels.
- Cultivating a vibe: a consistent member experience shaped by tone, channel structure and the code of conduct.
- Driving business results: the reason the community exists after delivering value to members.
If you are still deciding where members will gather and why, start with how to build an online community, because those early choices shape every goal above.
Team size changes who owns what. Common Room notes that in the early stages a community team is often small, while on larger teams the business-results goal may fall more to a community ops manager. It describes the split into two roles, community operations manager and community manager, as the community grows.
How a community manager differs from a social media manager
The two jobs overlap, which is why people mix them up. Metricool says the primary focus of a community manager is on building and nurturing relationships with the brand’s community.
A social media manager has a more strategic brief. Metricool lists developing and executing content strategies for the brand’s social platforms, and managing the official accounts and posting as the brand’s voice.
In practice the two work together. Metricool says community managers provide valuable insights into the audience’s wants and needs, which then inform content planning and strategy.
What makes the job hard
Common Room describes a growing community as ever-evolving and fast-paced, so challenges are inevitable. Its list of challenges reads like a typical week:
- Scaling: what works for a community with thirty members won’t work for one with 3,000, so processes, tools and team structure must evolve.
- Balancing moderation with growth: notifications can pop up faster than you can answer them, which makes bigger-picture work hard to reach.
- Negative or toxic behavior: trolls and spammers can harm the community’s vibe if they are not dealt with quickly.
- Measuring impact and ROI: community tools and social sites are not known for stellar analytics.
Metricool treats the safety side as a core duty: monitoring activity and addressing inappropriate or disruptive behavior is described as a critical responsibility of the community manager.
Measurement deserves its own attention. Our guide to online community metrics explains how to decide what to track, so reports show what is working and what isn’t.
Skills, experience and career path
Built In says community manager roles typically require one to three years of relevant experience. It adds that community managers typically complete a bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, communications, journalism or a related field.
On soft skills, Built In names strong empathy, conflict resolution and active listening. Courses and certifications are described as not necessary, but they can boost skill set and increase job opportunities.
The role often sits inside marketing. Built In says the community manager may report to a director of marketing, though it could also sit in a product, growth or communications team.
For career growth, Built In says senior roles such as director or VP of community require anywhere from five to eight years of management experience. On demand, it notes that job growth for advertising, promotions and marketing managers is expected to rise by 10 percent between 2021 and 2031. That figure covers marketing managers broadly, not community managers specifically.
Frequently asked questions
What is a community manager in simple terms?
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A community manager looks after the people in a brand’s online community. They answer questions, welcome newcomers, keep conversations safe and pass useful feedback to other teams.
Is a community manager the same as a social media manager?
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No, though the work overlaps. Metricool puts the community manager’s focus on relationships, while the social media manager focuses on content strategy and posting as the brand’s voice.
Do you need a degree to become a community manager?
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Built In says managers typically complete a bachelor’s degree in a field such as marketing or communications. It also expects one to three years of relevant experience, so hands-on practice running or moderating a community counts for a lot.
Who does a community manager report to?
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Often a director of marketing, according to Built In. It can differ by company, and the role may sit in product, growth or communications instead.
Does one person do everything as a community grows?
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Not usually. Common Room says early teams wear many hats, but as the community grows team members lean into specialization, such as splitting community manager and community operations manager roles.
