The Role of a Community Manager
Q1: I’m relatively new to the title of Community Manager. What sources would you all suggest to dive deeper into the role?
Q2: I am in the process of pulling together a job description for a Community Manager. Does anyone have any great community manager job descriptions they are willing to share?
Q3: How do you describe your community manager duties?
A: The following articles may be helpful:
- How to Be a Great Community Manager
- Community Managers: What’s Needed?
- Answers to three community management questions
- 10 Tips for Leading Communities
- What makes a great community?
- 5 questions to answer before starting a new community
- What are you supposed to do in a community?
- COLLABORATION Use Cases: What do you want to do?
- 90–9–1 Rule of Thumb: Fact or Fiction?
- Does size matter in communities?
- Articles and Presentations about Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs)
- Insights on Online Community Building
- Articles and Presentations About Communities of Practice and Community Management
Q4: What’s the biggest challenge you face as a community manager?
I manage the SIKM Leaders Community, a community of practice for knowledge management. My biggest challenge is to get a wide range of insights, questions, and answers to be posted in the community, This involves getting people to overcome their reluctance to ask questions in public and provide answers to others. I also have to resist the temptation to quickly answer questions myself but instead, wait until others have had a chance to respond. And making sure that some members don’t unintentionally intimidate other members or drown out other voices. We had a discussion about how to make sure that women in the community have a chance to be heard equally, and it was quite revealing.
Q5. What’s the best part of the job?
The three most satisfying parts of being a community manager are seeing members help each other in the online discussions, hosting thought leaders in our field as presenters on our monthly calls, and getting to see many of our members in person once a year at our annual dinner. We held our 11th annual dinner on November 6, 2019 in Washington, DC, and 40 people attended. Many of them expressed their appreciation for the chance to get together.
Q6. How is community management evolving?
It has become a recognized profession, with numerous communities, conferences, and resources now available for community managers. It used to be that community management didn’t have a standard name, and those practicing it had to do it in addition to other job duties. That has changed, and now there are frequent job postings seeking full-time community managers.
