What is community management?

Originally answered Sep 29, 2017

Community management is leading a community of practice so that it achieves its objectives, it remains active, its members benefit from participating in it, and its members adhere to its published code of conduct.

Community managers do the following:

1. Carefully choose the community’s topic and define its objectives.
2. Publicize the community and increase its membership.
3. Tell members how they should participate.
4. Demonstrate, document, and train on the use of the community.
5. Define, maintain, and execute the community plan.
6. Help members share, innovate, reuse, collaborate, and learn in the community.
7. Define measurements for the community.
8. Report regularly on the community’s performance against goals.
9. Communicate regularly to the community and to potential members.
10. Schedule and host community events.
11. Ensure fresh content is being shared in the community, multiple voices are being heard, lively discussions are recurring, and questions receive timely replies; and directly provide useful content.
12. Actively participate in the community, model the desired behaviors, regularly post and reply in the online discussions, and monitor behavior to ensure the published code of conduct is followed.
13. Network with other community managers, both inside and outside of the organization to stay current in the field of community management.
14. Solicit, find, and publicize community success stories.
15. Achieve desired results through the activities of the community.

See also Articles and Presentations About Communities of Practice and Community Management