A community manager is a link between a company (or a brand) and their audience (or customers). They organize, monitor and build a brand’s online presence while communicating with and responding to customers.
Community managers are responsible for brand building and relations through careful planning and producing engaging content across all social media platforms to keep the audience aware and informed.
They also develop strategies to build the online community through marketing to reach a wider audience and communicate and engage with them.
They are the voice of the brand.
Table of Contents
What Do Community Managers Do?
Community managers have extensive roles and general duties to ensure brand continuity.
These roles involve strategic content creation, implementation of adequate knowledge about the digital world into brand building, staying up-to-date with trends that would contribute to growth, monitoring and participating in online discussions, building the right relationships between a brand and its customers, and making the online community aware and informed.
How can you become a community manager?
Becoming a community manager requires creativity, open-mindedness, consistency, and adequate knowledge of the business. It would also necessitate acquiring and grooming various skill sets.
Many people have developed an interest in helping brands grow and tell their stories and believe they have what it takes to help them build an online community too. Several of these people need to be more knowledgeable regarding how to go about it.
Don’t worry if you’re sitting at this table and are still trying to figure out where to start or the requirements to become a community manager, don’t worry. I won’t break it.
Instead, I would provide you with five steps to becoming a community manager.
5 Steps to Becoming a Community Manager
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Build yourself
This involves getting qualifications in fields relevant to community management that would contribute to you being a great community manager. While at it, ensure to do it not just for the certification (even though that’s important) but to gain adequate knowledge.
Thankfully, organizations, community managers, and learning apps (like Coursera, udemy, Allison, and the like) are offering free and paid courses with certification to help those interested in and willing to build a career in community management.
Building yourself also requires you to up your creativity game and acquire ample knowledge about the digital world since that is the domain of community management.
In all your getting, get sufficient, useful, and comprehensive knowledge.
Read Also: Step-by-Step Guide on How to Become a Professional Brand Manager in Nigeria
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Develop various skills
Becoming a community manager continues beyond getting qualifications and certifications. You need to perfect your interpersonal skills to communicate respectfully and efficiently to members of your team, written skills to put down strategies and plans, and communication and listening skills to relate with the customers appropriately.
Another set of skills to develop is time management skills. Being a community manager implies that you would function in different areas; you would need to allocate your time properly, stay caught up on tasks and able to deliver when due.
Also, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are very important requirements for becoming a community manager and being passionate, proactive, organized, flexible, creative, and analytical.
These all work hand in hand in helping you effectively do your job as a community manager.
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Gain experience
Although you should be given a chance to showcase all you’ve learned with no prior experience, not all employers in Nigeria are that generous. Thus, it would help if you worked on building your brand and community as evidence of your capabilities.
In addition, be on the lookout for internship opportunities, whether paid or not. Be open to volunteering as well. All that matters is that you’re learning and growing.
By doing these, you would be gathering enough experience to build your resume and help you function properly when allowed to do so.
Read also: Path to becoming a business development manager in Nigeria
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Apply for jobs
What comes after gaining experience is to apply for jobs relevant to the field.
That is when you are sure you are ready to put yourself out there. Network and pitch yourself to potential clients as well.
Identify available positions in organizations you are qualified for, and send them your resume highlighting that particular position.
Remember that you should only apply for jobs that you have an understanding of and that you are capable of.
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Be open to learning new things
More than all the knowledge obtained and experiences gathered is required, as we all learn daily.
The world is evolving; there are new trends. Keep yourself up-to-date on these trends and allow yourself to learn new things.
Also, be open to using tools that make community management easy. For example, content planning or scheduling apps, like buffer, canva, Hootsuite, Trello, etc.
These tools were only developed in a few days. Someone was open to trying them out and seeing how they could be of use; that’s why they’re major tools used today.
Don’t remain dormant. Explore to get better.
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Conclusion
As indicated above, becoming a community manager is a lot of work. They always make use of their developed skills, knowledge, and experiences gained.
They always have their audience in mind while creating content targeting the right people. Likewise, they are patient as they test the authenticity of their content and when communicating with community members.
Community managers pay attention to details too. In addition, it is important to maintain a consistent tone and to be known for what you stand for.
Are you passionate enough to go through these processes to become a community manager? Do you have or can you develop the skills needed?
There you have it.
I hope you found the steps useful and enlightening.
About Author
- I am a student of Obafemi Awolowo University. A Gen-Z and advocate for the Soft Life. I spend most of my leisure time as a freelancer, creatively curating content and telling relatable stories. I am also passionate about quality lifestyle.
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