What is a Community Manager and how do I become one?

What is a Community Manager? What are his duties? These are certainly the questions that generate the most debate in this era of social networks. Companies of all sizes already have professional Community Managers in charge of managing their brand on the Internet.

The Community Manager is the professional responsible for building and managing the online community and managing the brand's identity and image, creating and maintaining stable and lasting relationships with their customers, their fans on the Internet.

Who can be Community Manager?

Contrary to what many may think, the community manager is a very complex job that brings together multiple skills and abilities. You can acquire them on your own or speed up the process by following a training program.

But the truth is that it is very likely that even if your profile corresponds to this position, you must prepare thoroughly if you want to become a real community manager.

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Surely a good entry profile to become a professional community manager, they are people who already like social networks and who have a good dose of empathy, creativity and ingenuity and who are very good at building relationships on the Internet.

All this you must complete with knowledge such as:

• Strategy design
• Community manager
• Evaluation and management of processes and projects
• Crisis management
• Attention to customers
• Tools 2.0
• Copy writing
• Web analytics and many more

Experience, a diploma for the Community Manager

To become a good community manager, you will not only need the key skills and competencies of this profile, but you will also need to have experience.

The best way to gain experience in this profession and one of your best assets will be to work on your personal brand.

So don't hesitate, if you want to be a community manager. The best way to show that you are a virtual community manager is to create a profile and develop your personal brand.

When you go to an interview, they will ask you for credentials and if you demonstrate your good practices with your personal profile, you are more than halfway there and proof of your talent.

Additionally, many companies also need that extra bonus that a professional with a good network of social media influencers can provide.

How much does a Community Manager cost?

The Community Manager has made its way among the most prominent professions as more and more users request and consume information in this way.

We can set up different types of Community Managers depending on their responsibility and abilities. For me, a Community manager is a manager, a strategist in the use of social networks.

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Normally, a professional who is dedicated to the management of social networks can earn a salary between 18 and 000 euros gross per year depending on his rank and the size of the company in which he is.

However, keep in mind that this amount may vary depending on geographic areas or countries. What exactly does he do?

Duties of a Community Manager

As we said in the previous paragraph, the Community manager is a real job. Sometimes we confuse a Twitter or Facebook manager with a Community manager, it's not the same thing.

A community is a manager who will manage the voice of the company on the internet and determine the public image of the brand, it is the 2nd identity of the company. This is not trivial and therefore requires training skills and technical knowledge:

• Strategy and planning
• Content editing: blogs
• Lean change management
• Community management tools
• Design tools for Community Manager
• Content curation and cool hunting
• Storytelling and Transmedia Narrative
• Community Booster
• Monitoring and active listening
• Measure and report
• In-depth knowledge of the characteristics of social networks
• Main social networks: Facebook, Twitter
• B2B social networks: Linkedin
• Social networks in pictures: Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, Snapchat
• Neurocopyrighting and on-page SEO
• Search marketing: SEO and SEM
• Inbound Marketing and Social CRM
• Social Ads (Facebook, Twitter, Outbrain)
• Social Media Hacking

The qualities of a social media manager

A large capacity empathy and communication is essential in the social media expert. Since his main function is to manage an online community involving users, if he does not have good online communication skills, he will have little to do.

Additionally, writing is essential, both for publishing copy for RRSS and creating articles on business blogs.

The second key characteristic of this professional is empathy. Social networks must be driven by an empathetic profile, who knows how to put themselves in the shoes of others, and who is always involved in finding the best solution to the needs and problems of their fans.

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Moderation is another feature where companies will be defined when you want to hire a Community Manager. An irascible and impulsive profile can do a lot of damage to the brand in the face of user criticism.

Conflict should never escalate. The Community Manager is one more employee of the company who must pursue the solution of customer problems.

Le total dedication to the project is also appreciated. The Community Manager must be prepared to handle any type of threat, regardless of the time of day. Here is perhaps the most difficult part of the job: a Community Manager must never completely disconnect from their work.

And finally, the social media expert must have a real passion for the brand and its products. There's no way you can involve others and convince them of the quality of your brand if you don't believe what you say.

The main functions of the Community Manager

The main function that this professional develops is the creation of attractive and quality content. In general, the Community manager is not limited to creating and writing content only for social networks, he is also generally in charge of managing the company's blog.

In addition, the social media expert must decide on the best time to post content. To do this, it has tools that tell you at what time of the day or week the content will be more accepted.

It also has tools for scheduling the publication of content. Not only will the content be programmed in prime time, although of course it focuses on these slots, the publications will also be made in the rest of the time slots, because otherwise we will not be able to reach our entire target audience.

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The Community manager must also surveiller all publications and news from his company's sector. It is therefore the eyes of the company on the Internet. This practice is not only used to identify opportunities and threats over time, it also helps to detect the most relevant content from the competition and the sector.

Users don't like self-promotion, it's the content that gives them value. In this sense, the Community manager must offer content oriented towards this mentality, even if he must promote publications from other companies.

Another function of the Community Manager is to monitor and control its own publications, by analyzing their acceptance by users. In short, you have to measure the number of votes (likes, favorites, +1, etc.), the number of comments and the times the content is shared.

It is vital that the Community Manager know your target audience, his fans and potential fans. That way, you can come up with the strategy and figure out which actions you'll have the most success with that audience.

Another essential role of the Community Manager is to build lasting and stable relationships with fans. He must be able to put himself in the shoes of the users and realize that they are not on social networks to buy his products, but to benefit from them.

In the end, the key to the success of a Community manager is to become the user's friend and gradually end up transforming him into a client.

What training to be a social media manager?

The function of a good Community manager is strategic in any organization. To perform its function well, as we have said, it must bring together a series of skills and abilities.

More and more professional community managers are sought, although it is true that at the beginning it was enough to have empathy and to know the tone to use in each network, each time it is a more figure professional with a very multidisciplinary profile.

It is true that you can choose to train on your own or you can speed up this process by training with a proven quality course.

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If you are going to develop a company's strategy and want to help build 2.0 organizations then you need to work on the strategic approach and probably do some training.

If you are more focused on its tactical possibilities in the field of marketing and communication, maybe a postgraduate degree in Community manager will be enough for you.

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