How would you describe your job? Community management is a growing field, gaining more traction every year. Even though more organizations and companies are adopting community, each one is still working through how community management works and fits into organizational needs.
Likewise, it’s often difficult to decide what department community falls to. What is similar across the board, no matter the description or department, is that community managers are seldom bored -- it’s a dynamic job where they wear several hats and manage many tasks at once.
So how does that balance work? According to The Community Roundtable’s 2015 Community Careers and Compensation Report, a community manager benefits from using about 50 different skills, covering everything from technical skills to engagement skills. That’s a lot to take in - if your organization needs a community manager, how will you find a Jack-of-all-trades candidate?
While The Community Roundtable’s 50 skills framework can appear intimidating, let’s go through the skill breakdown and categorization. Your potential candidates are probably already pretty adept at most of them.
Each of the 50 skills in the framework can be put in five buckets:
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Engagement skills
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Strategic skills
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Business skills
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Content skills
- Technical skills
When you look at those buckets, does it look slightly less intimidating? Let’s break down each bucket and see exactly what each entails.
Engagement skills
This first bucket is probably the most obvious -- a community manager’s job is to make sure members/customers engage and receive value from your community. What are the exact skills? To engage, a good community manager needs to be an excellent listener. But it doesn’t stop there. They need to be able to turn those needs into actions and visible change. Besides listening, they must spur discussion, moderate, recruit/retain new members and advocate for members.
Strategic skills
These skills take community managers from the ground level to a bird’s eye view. What is your community’s roadmap and vision for the year (or next few years)? Strategy also involves consulting and explaining engagement techniques to the higher-ups, like a supervisor or the organization’s executives.
Business skills
Connecting the community to your organization’s overall business goals and success is critical for demonstrating value. That’s why having a little business acumen and the ability to speak on that level is important. Do the candidates know how to calculate and explain your community’s ROI? While not a very difficult task, but will go far with executives who demand to know. There’s also the nitty gritty of business management that is helpful, such as budgeting or hiring if the community team is growing.
Content skills
Solid writing skills are important for almost any job. Community management is no exception, since most of the communication is written. That’s why community managers need to be able to write and edit anything from discussion posts to announcements and emails. If people don’t understand, what’s the point? And keep in mind: if your community is open to the public, basic knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) is important for growth.
Technical skills
Even though community managers spend most of their time on computers, high-level technical skills aren’t pivotal. Being able to complete basic data collection and analysis of member behavior, like engagement rates, is important -- your community platform probably has a dashboard to help. Basic knowledge of user experience and design is also important. Not only will it make the site look better, but it will make it more accessible to all community users.
Of all the skills above, one important skill (or trait) not mentioned is empathy and the ability to interact with people constantly while maintaining composure. In the end, it doesn’t matter how well someone writes or what their technical abilities may be -- if they aren’t fascinated by people and what makes them tick, community management may not be the job for them.