How to be a community manager | What you need to know to be successful

A community manager is in charge of generating the content of interest to the virtual community of a company so that its followers are aware of the products and/or services it offers, relevant information, promotions, among others. But, How do you become a community manager? One of the tasks that helps the most in this regard is the correct interaction with followers through digital channels.

The way to promote yourself online is through digital marketing that is managed by social media companies, one of its branches being community management. Therefore, today it is almost impossible to find a business that does not have an Internet presence.

In this article, you will disclose everything a community manager needs to know to be successful. Start targeting and good luck!

Community manager: what it is and what it does?

A community manager (CM) is the professional responsible for building, managing and administering the online community, through strategies that lead him to create stable and lasting relationships. The community manager in recent times has become one of the most important figures in digital media, since, in addition to being in charge of the success of a brand, he is the main spokesperson to which all users turn.

The internet is a world that updates quickly, so investing in these professionals can represent a broad vision of the results that are expected for the future. Brand management on the internet requires a set of skills and techniques, however, the best way to gain experience in this profession and one of your best assets will be to work on your personal brand.

The CM has become way more important since more and more users consume and demand information through online channels. Its main function is to manage a digital community and it has to do so with an empathic profile, always involved in finding the best solution to needs.

Community manager definition

Businesses need trained staff to manage their social media and websites. Within the concept of community manager, we find that a CM does more than managing the social networks of a company; He is a digital strategist.

This professional is in charge of creating relationships around the value that your business offers, sharing important information; and not only selling but also adding a profit to this group for free.

The community manager is a digital marketing professional responsible for managing and developing the brand at a digital level to detect potential clients. Once detected, to be able to establish stable connections and high conversion processes.

These relationships should contribute to the ultimate achievement of the brand’s digital marketing goals: sell more. Still not sure how to be a community manager?
Let’s start by knowing the tasks you perform.

What should a community manager do?

Self-study is key to professional performance. What is the goal of a community manager? It is communication both within the company and outside of it, that is, with your target audience and with current clients.

To everyone’s surprise, a community manager is not only aware of social networks, but also usually manages the corporate blog of the company and among this, must be given the task of creating attractive and quality content.

1. Attention to the corporate landscape

A community manager is the one who allows the company to have an image in digital media, such as social networks. To know how to be a community manager, you must start by studying the contents of your competition, since this will be your starting point to impact your audience.

How can you do it? You can do it by Providing a value when providing information through dynamic and innovative content.

2. Communicate relevant information

The community manager must transmit to the different departments of the company the information necessary to create strategies and carry out an action plan that integrates marketing efforts, design, sales, and other teams. It should be noted that your reports will serve to identify whether the products and/or services are meeting the needs and expectations of customers.

3. Respond to the online community

Being the voice of the brand on the Internet, the community manager is the one who assumes the responsibility of communicating and being aware of any situation that arises or requirements that a user requests. On the other hand, he is also in charge of attracting visitors through various digital tactics, for example, the dissemination of content.

So if you wonder how to be a community manager, the answer is simple: create a community, form a wide group of people who know, consume and recommend your brand. In addition, you must be able to put yourself in the shoes of others, allowing you to be the voice of the consumer in the company.

4. Monitor and analyze the results

This function implies that on a daily basis, outside the community itself, it is investigated what is being said about the brand or its products and from there, analyzing the results that are generated according to the different content and promotional actions published. in the networks.

Based on these metrics, reports should be generated and actions and ideas suggested to the Social Media Manager, in order to try to achieve the planned objectives.

5. Drafting of original texts

You must be an expert in telling stories, copies have to be well adapted to the type of audience you have in your networks since you must make publications oriented to your type of business. To achieve quality texts, the community manager must team up with the marketing and sales areas to know both the buyer person and the commercial objectives. You must create an annual conversational plan, which response to the needs of the company and the audience.

What should a Community Manager not do?

A good community manager must know what to really do. His work reflects the personality of a brand to the public and is also responsible for its reputation on the web. Building an online reputation can take a lot of effort, as it is a process that is fed every day with the right actions.

Their tasks must be guided by marketing strategies, which must be aligned with the type of network. If the tools are not handled correctly, a social media crisis can be triggered. Therefore, let’s see first, what are the actions that a community manager should not execute.

Not knowing the opinion of users about the brand:

Part of the functions includes knowing the users in-depth, do not forget to worry about their interests, and implement actions aimed at knowing their tastes, preferences, and expectations placed on the brand.

Act only as an issuer of information:

The communicative objective of the community manager is to integrate all members of the community and know how to create positive links towards the brand.

Lack of coordination between the different departments of the company:
The company has to stay together, adopt the same communication strategy and transmit the same message.

Ignore questions from users on social networks:

Keep in mind that it is a two-way communication channel, which users approach to interact with the company. It shows that there is someone behind the social profiles, it reveals the most human side of the company.

Address a brand reputation crisis:

The CM will be the first to identify it and try to resolve it, but if its size increases, they will need to contact the Social Media Manager.

What does it take to be a Community Manager?

Network managers are professionals with a passion for social media who have a mission to help build, grow and manage communities for a company or brand. If there is something that characterizes the community manager of today, it is that he knows the objectives of the brand and acts accordingly to achieve them.

As we mentioned before, brands are increasingly considering including a CM in their strategies. Therefore, it is important that you show that you have some skills that allow you to be the one chosen by the brands. If you don’t know how to be a community manager, here we list their skills.

1. Social skills of the community manager.
   Creativity: it is very important that the community manager is creative and knows how to propose novel and notorious actions without requiring financial investment.

Humility: is the spokesperson for the brand or company on social networks. He should not express his personal opinion or manage social networks as if they were his personal profiles. He must know how to value and respond to all opinions with cordiality.

Assertiveness: he will have to accept favorable opinions, as well as criticism with assertiveness, neither being indifferent nor aggressive.

Empathy: this is one of the characteristics of a community manager. This professional has to know how to put himself in the shoes of consumers. How to be a community manager? Understand your followers.

Patience: respond or solve complaints or criticisms, and if it is not in your hands, refer customers to other ways to solve it.

2. Management skills of the community manager.
   Organized: you must know how to prioritize and manage your time, since you are going to perform several tasks at the same time.
   Resolutive: combining speed with resolution to give the best response to users is one of the essential skills of the community manager.
   Self-taught: know the news that are published in the main blogs or digital marketing sites, be aware of what social media experts share or publish in blogs, forums, social networks.
   Technological: his work does not know schedules and that is why his profession ends up being his great passion and hobby.
   Teamwork: the digital marketing team is made up of different professional profiles. That is why they must work as a team under the same direction to achieve the best results.
   Leader: lead, manage, achieve the greatest possible interaction of users and grow the online community.
   Moderator: encourage conversation, maintain cordiality among all users but also moderate possible crises.
   Common sense: you can face unforeseen situations, and you will have to know what the best response is at all times, using common sense.
3. Technical skills of the community manager.
   Good spelling and writing: you must know how to express yourself correctly and with excellent writing skills.
   Know about the marketing, advertising and communication issues of the company: this training in a community manager is essential. You will need to know the different marketing, communication and / or advertising actions of the entity to carry out your social media strategy.
   Know how to use social networks, from a tactical and strategic point of view: social networks are constantly updated. They frequently incorporate news that the community manager must know and know how to integrate for their professional performance.
   Experience in online communication: you may have experience in other projects or in managing the personal brand of the community manager himself in social networks.

Guide to be a community manager

The role of a community manager also revolves around the use of creative thinking that allows them to carry out successful strategies and timely solutions that generate emotions to keep the digital community engaged with the brand. As a consequence, if you are still wondering how to be a successful freelance community manager or not, we have created the perfect guide for you.

1. Investigate Soak up all the possible information about your brand, such as: Presence of the brand on the Internet: Search in search engines and social networks
   Positive and negative brand comments on the Internet: you can use monitoring tools to easily identify them.
   Competition: see how it is positioned and what is its added value.
   Target audience: investigates how the target audience interacts in social media such as social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, among others); multimedia platforms such as YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare; Blogs; Live Streaming like Tumblr; Web pages.
   Identify the channels that your users use frequently.
   Select influential figures, to be brand ambassadors.
2. Create
   One of the tasks of the community manager is the creation of an online communication plan with the objectives, strategies and tactics according to the brand. This is where you must be creative par excellence and know what type of content and resources to publish on each social network. Because of this, it is important that you know what content marketing is and what it is for in order to take full advantage of the functions that each social network has at its disposal.
3. Plan
   The success of a community manager lies in their ability to formulate strategies and find the most appropriate ways to achieve them. It is common for brands to constantly measure the ability of these professionals to plan campaigns and propose alternatives that contribute to their effective fulfillment.

To have optimal management in social networks, it is advisable to plan the actions that will be carried out on a calendar and schedule them with applications. Among the tools that a community manager uses to post updates on different days and times are:

Tweetdeck
Hootsuite
Postcron

4. Dynamism
   It is the CM’s job to increase the online community and encourage participation between users and the brand. This is possible if the following actions are performed:

Frequent conversations with followers.
Offer interesting information about the brand.
Generate quality content.
Create games and contests.
Share content related to your brand that may be useful to followers.

5. Channel
   Always listen to your customers. Channel your customers’ problems to the appropriate department and follow up between the user and the departments until they are satisfied with the brand’s products or services.

In the same way, prepare a weekly feedback report so that the marketing team can directly attack the needs of the consumer. What social networks do community managers use?

Asana
Slack
Canva
Evernote
MailChimp

6. Sell
   Social networks are spaces to get closer, tell stories, delight the community and make the brand visible. All that audience that follows you on social media should be directed to your website. Once there, through landing pages and calls to action we obtain their contact details and they become leads to maintain communication with them at your own pace.
7. Monitor
   Community administrators can also analyze and evaluate the results of published content. To perform this task you must understand the data analysis tools to adjust and improve the strategy of the following content grid. In some cases, community managers must submit a report to assess their performance on social media and demonstrate which behaviors are most important.

At this point, it is essential to extract the most relevant numbers for the brand within a certain period of time, such as the number of new fans, the number of comments or the number of interactions with the publication. You can support your metrics in the KPIS results your marketing team generates.

In Conclusion

Becoming a community manager is not something in which you have to invest a couple of hours a day from Monday to Friday. If you want to stand out and do your job well, you have to invest a lot of time, because social networks never rest. Don’t stop growing and evolving.

Finally, remember that a community manager acts as the voice and eyes of a company on the Internet, so you must not only learn to generate relevant content that favors the relationship of the company with its consumers but also work on the quality of the interaction with them.

After all, one of the greatest responsibilities of these professionals is to create trust in clients through the image they project and the treatment they receive. Therefore, we believe that before you start, you must be very sure that this is what you like. If that is the case, there is nothing left but to move forward.