Did you type “What is a community manager?” on your keyboard? 😜 Want to know everything about the job? Read our article: definition, job, studies, salary, job description. You will discover everything quickly.
What is a community manager?
Definition:
The community manager (also called social media manager) is the person in charge of developing a company’s brand image and e-reputation, building a community around the brand and expanding this network so that the company gains notoriety and popularity.
Companies hire community managers for three main reasons
- Customers Relationship management – to build customer loyalty.
- Visibility and brand awareness with potential customers,
- Recruitment and employer brand.
Which social networks does the community manager use?
The media platforms and social channels that you need to know and understand as a CM are the following. 👇
- LinkedIn,
- TikTok,
- Instagram,
- Twitter,
- Meta,
- Pinterest,
- WhatsApp,
- Slack,
- Snapchat,
- Newsletters,
- Blogging,
- Cold Email,
- SMS,
- YouTube.
What is the role of a Community Manager? Job description
The community manager role depends on the objectives, the social media channels and the company’s activity. A hair salon will not use the same social networks and will not have the same clientele as a caterer for example. Overall, the community manager may be required to :
Develop the notoriety of the company and its products on the networks and websites
- Build the brand image: find the persona, write the values, the message, and the tone.
- Find the most effective social networks and communication channels for a given target.
- Create editorial plans and communication plans to build a content strategy.
- Organize media management,
- Create posts on social networks on a regular basis,
- Feed newsletters,
- Find influencers to create partnerships,
- Write blog articles and work on the referencing of a website,
- Doing webinars, interviews, and videos.
Work on the employer’s brand
- Create a “content marketing” sheet on the values of the company or association.
- Publish social content talking about the benefits and targeting future employees,
- Create company pages on job boards and specialized recruitment sites,
- Animate social networks on “life in the company” for your target audience,
- Conducting interviews with employees,
- Create and feed the career section of a blog.
Animate and strengthen the community (build loyalty)
- Organize contests, surveys, and other interactive posts on social media platforms,
- Create interactions between members and boost the feeling of belonging to the group,
- Propose an ambassador system for subscribers who meet the specified criteria,
- To feed the networks by answering the messages of the subscribers on the publications,
- Respond to reviews and manage public relations,
- Take an interest in subscribers to better understand the core target (age, habits),
- Organize live events with members of the digital community.
Develop and test marketing strategies (monitoring)
- Test new multi-channel techniques and marketing tools,
- Search for new community management and analytics tools on the market to stay efficient,
- Keep an eye on the competition and their communication,
- Follow creative and influential personalities in the same sector of activity,
- Monitor the actions of competitors and find new ideas for posts.
Analyze results and propose strategic pivots
- Social media analytics – click rate, engagement rate, number of social media subscribers,
- Identify which campaign worked and why and adapt your social media marketing strategy,
- Create reports and always come up with new ideas,
- Track the audience and analyze their behavior to better understand them,
- Coordinate information between different web marketing departments.
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Social Media Manager studies
To become a social media manager, it is possible to study at a business school, in marketing, prospecting or communication. These studies range from a simple certificate to an MBA. It is rather the professional experience that will prevail over the training 😉 What the Community manager has achieved in other companies, the scope of his communication and the number of new subscribers gained in the communities he has animated. 📢
Find training in community management
Whether or not you have any knowledge of social marketing, the basics of being a community manager can be quickly learned. Depending on the quality of training and learning paths, you can find several options: in training centers, distance learning, or e-learning independently.
Depending on your needs, I have identified 4 community management training courses. 👇
Cegeos: Express training on social media management
- Training: distance or face-to-face.
- Duration: 2 days.
- Prerequisites: None.
- Graduation: No.
- Price: 1 440 €
🟢 The good thing is that it is ultra-fast training with no prerequisites.
🔴 The training is clearly not comprehensive enough and is expensive, the value for money is not optimal.
Meta Community Manager Online Courses
It’s an online course provided by Meta (Ex Facebook).
- Training: distance.
- Duration: Depending on the course. Pretty short.
- Prerequisites: None.
- Graduation: No. You can get Meta certification.
- Price: Depending on the course.
🟢 The good thing is that it is fast training with no prerequisites. Meta owns a lot of social media such as Instagram and WhatsApp, they know the product better because they are making it!
🔴 It doesn’t go deep enough in the training.
Udemy Online Community Management Course
Udemy is an online “shop” to buy different classes and join groups of students. It’s great to see different aspects of community management depending on what you want to learn.
- Training: distance.
- Duration: A few hours maximum per class.
- Prerequisites: None.
- Graduation: No.
- Price: Starting from $20 for one class.
Social Media Manager Degree / Community Manager Certification
Is it really necessary a diploma in community management and how to get it? As you can see, there are diploma courses and others not.
Everything will depend on your professional background and the community manager position/companies you are targeting. If you already have a marketing skill set, you probably won’t need a new degree, but simply internships or short courses. If you’re just starting out, going to business school will boost your professional career. Among the degrees you can find :
- Certification Community management.
- Certification Expert community manager.
- MBA Marketing Manager.
- MBA Expert Marketing.
- MBA in digital communication.
All these training can help you to reach the job. Even if, working on your personal branding on the networks will allow you to convince the recruiters that you really have the fiber for the job! 😉
The skills to be a Community Manager
To be a good community manager you will need “soft” skills and “hard” skills, also called“soft skills” and “hard skills”. Some of them are often or all the time used.
Soft skills for Social Media Management
- Organizational skills,
- A good sense of timing.
- Aptitude for digital.
- Rigor, especially in spelling and syntax.
- Creativity,
- Curiosity,
- Insight and adaptability.
Hard skills for Social Media Management
- Master all communication media and their codes.
- Have knowledge of SEO referencing,
- Understand and know how to use copywriting techniques,
- Know how to launch paid campaigns (Adwords, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram Ads..).
- Master video editing (YouTube),
- Know how to create a social media strategy on tik Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook…
- Know how to analyze the results of communication campaigns.
- Be bilingual in English.
What is the highest salary for a Social Media Manager?
The salary of a community manager (employee) varies between $35 000 and $90 000 per year in the US. The variation will depend on the region, the type of company and the professional experience of the candidate. It is also a job that is very much in demand as a freelancer, as it very often takes less than 35 hours per week. To find job offers, think about job boards like Indeed or Welcome to the jungle.
Community Management Companies
There are lots of companies to manage your community management or to join as a new recruit. Among the most known you have :
- WSI – Digital Marketing Agency.
- Buddy Buddy.
- 33 Degrees Agency.
- Optimize 360 SEO Agency.
- OWD – instagram agency.
- Neads – TikTok agency.
Everything will depend on your needs: the more you take an agency specialized in a social networks, the more it will be an expert in the field. On the other hand, it will not be able to offer you a 360° vision on each media. Here is a presentation of the 3 biggest communication agencies:
WSI – Digital Marketing Agency
The agency was founded in 1995 and has experienced the evolution of social media and advertising on the web, and has managed to recycle and reinvent itself over time, with hundreds of successful projects to its credit.
Buddy Buddy – Community managers
The agency of young people. Founded in 2015, it already has over 100 projects in its portfolio and continues to expand. From Adwords to TikTok, the agency offers 360° services. Rates start at 1000€ per project, from conception to completion.
Optimize 360 – SEO Agency
Sometimes, we look for “community managers” and we don’t think of a “communication agency”, but the two are of course linked. Natural referencing will make you gain in visibility and notoriety and is part of the most used marketing techniques. Do you have a website or a blog to promote? Do not hesitate to go and see what they can do!
Freelance as Community Manager
The profession of freelance community manager is growing more and more. Starting out as an auto-entrepreneur can be difficult in a market already filled with agencies and other freelance CMs. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t attainable.
Becoming a freelance community manager has some advantages:
-
🟢 You are free to choose the place on which to exercise your activity: at home, in co-working, or on a beach. All you need is a good internet connection, a powerful computer, and the right social media tools.
-
🟢 You can choose your missions according to your skills and preferences. You can specialize in a sector of activity or in certain tasks. Choose fashion on TikTok or build media strategies for b2b.
-
🟢 You are free of your schedule and organization, usually, you work alone and do not depend on anyone.
- 🟢 The freelance Community manager creates his own wealth, so he can increase his salary and quality of life much easier than as an employee.
However, that doesn’t mean everything is rosy in the freelance world:
-
🔴 It is necessary to have organized and motivated himself alone. You’re often very much on your own in this mode of operation and you have to be prepared for it.
- 🔴 The co-working spaces are paying, so you have to “pay to work” sometimes.
-
🔴 You can only rely on your own knowledge of social networking sites – if you don’t know how to do something, you have to train for it.
- 🔴 Pressure from clients can be very strong sometimes.
-
🔴 It can be hard to find your first freelance clients.
Luckily, we have a solution for that. 👇
Find your first clients
Freelance community manager rates
Are you looking for community management rates to make sure you’re not paying too much for a service, or conversely, that you’re charging enough as a community manager? The first thing to look at is the years of experience and the number of marketing projects completed. Then, you have to identify the types of projects.
- Flat rate bills – for example, 2 Instagram posts per week.
- Daily or hourly invoices.
- Project-based invoices – meaning that no matter how many hours, at the end of the project, you’ll pay a set amount at the beginning.
| Junior Freelance | Senior Freelance | Web agency | |
| Price per day | From $250 | between $500 and $2000 | starts at $800 |
| Price per project | From $700 | starts at $1 000 | starts at $3 000 |
| Flate rate bill | From $200 | From $700 | starts at $1 500 |
Of course, it’s hard to identify prices. It depends on what is on the bill – is it a complete social strategy or 1 post per week?
🟢 For freelancers, it’s better to bill by the hour, because the client always has a lot of changes to make and you can bill for them.
🟢 For companies, it’s better to get a fixed price contract (usually cheaper and cheaper), or invoices by projects, so you know in advance the total cost of the marketing mission.
Resume of the perfect Social Media Manager
I found this resume template on Pinterest. It’s available on CVMarket, but it’s not free. Otherwise, you have plenty of “CVMakers” with templates online. In this resume, what is really put forward are the professional experiences and the projects done.
This is exactly what will make the difference for you. Don’t forget to put your Resume on LinkedIn 😉
Let’s go over the points that will make your resume, the best resume to apply for as a community manager.
- Talk about your skills and experience in marketing strategy.
- A line about your studies is enough – unless you have done big projects during your training.
- Highlight the social networks you master.
- For a digital version, have a portfolio with the projects you’ve completed.
- Make sure the design is impeccable.
- Avoid long “about” statements. Be yourself.
- Talk about the software you master in relation to your business: Photoshop, Adobe, WordPress…
- Put clickable links to your professional accounts on the networks.
Conclusion: What is a Community Manager? Can anyone become a Community Manager (CM)?
To be a successful community manager is to know how to create the right communication strategy according to the needs of the company or the client.
Identifying which media to use and how to contact its targets – with the right tone, and the right message. You need to be able to master the different social networks and follow an established editorial line. 👇
Now you know everything about What is a Community Manager : def, job description, salary…
