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1. Strong communication skills
It’s no surprise that the person who is acting as a representative of the brand should have strong people skills. The community manager, in many ways, is the face of a brand, and this person must be able to effectively communicate the message to the members, whether it be a short form or long form.
They need to be outgoing, friendly, and relatable. They should be comfortable interacting with people offline as well as online; a natural networker.
2. Good judgement
In many industries, one role of a community manager is that of a curator. This person must be able to parse through all the content coming out of an organisation and determine what to share, how to share, and when to share.
For residential communities, deciding how to engage with your members is especially important in times of difficult news. On days where we have really upsetting news to report on, we’re very careful about the kind of stories we share, and what information we put out there.
Community managers must also determine the best ways to handle feedback from the members and decide how to respond in an appropriate fashion. When people ask questions, how do you answer? Not answering questions is answering those questions.
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3. Empathy
To engage a community in a discussion about a brand, a community manager must know the type of people who make up the members. You are dealing with a bunch of different personalities. If you’re not empathetic, you’re never going to be able to put yourself in those people’s shoes, which means you won’t be able to communicate a message to them.
Being able to demonstrate empathy is important, because a community manager must be able to effectively converse with the members. This person should see the brand from the perspective of a fan or consumer and use this point of view to guide your engagements with the community.
4. Dedication
Unlike with other positions, there is no end to the workday for community managers. When news breaks, whether you are on the giving or receiving end, a community manager must be available to respond to the members. When you’re a community manager, you’re on duty 24/7. Good or bad, something huge can happen at any time, and when it does, social media is the first place it hits. You are technically the face of the brand, so you must deal with it.
Community managers must look at their positions as a lifestyle rather than a job. if you want to check in at 8 am and out at 5 pm, you’re in the wrong field. When you’ve dealt with nothing but mean-spirited comments, hundreds of emails, demanding members, and a grueling schedule of tasks — all in a 14-hour workday — you need something other than a paycheque to keep you going.
5. Organisational skills
For many community managers, the job consists of managing multiple events, tracking feedback, and then sharing this information with your employer. This work can be onerous, but remaining organised can help professionals stay on top of their responsibilities. Community managers must be able to multitask, and that means staying organised – it’s a very fast-paced job and there are a lot of things thrown at you at once, and you need to stay on top of it.
Use multiple spreadsheets updated daily with data across a range of metrics for a variety of people and terms. One wrong entry can throw off goals across the whole team, affecting other teams and projects. Whether you are planning an event, managing vendors, reviewing a contract, or creating a board pack, success or failure is in the detail.
6. Adaptability
Flexibility in the workplace is key for a successful community manager. The work this professional does will often extend beyond creating conversations with a brand’s members. For many, this means carrying the responsibilities of multiple jobs.
Adaptability is important because the community manager wears a lot of hats. On any given day, they must be a marketer, a PR person, an administrator, and then a communications guy who must react to a ‘story’.
7. Level-headed attitude
There are going to be situations, often on a daily basis, when a member of the community attacks the brand. As the community manager, it is vital that your response alleviates the situation, and doesn’t intensify it.
The problem is that you’ve got the keys to the brand’s voice. Anything you say on behalf of the brand can and will be held against you and can be inferred as the brand’s perspective. You must have a cool head and remember that the member is usually attacking the brand, not you.
8. Background in analytics
In each industry, the way a community manager handles analytics may differ, but it’s vital that this professional is educated about how communities are responding to engagement and can determine what efforts are working or not working. You can measure the metrics of engagement. If you can’t measure it, you aren’t doing it right. Build tracking links, look at your website traffic, measure your reach and impressions. Have a goal and reach it.
Use analytics to figure out what the community is not telling you anecdotally. The community isn’t always going to tell you what they want. They’ll tell you one thing but then want another. You need to look at things to see if they’re working, because people aren’t always going to tell you.
9. Ability to enable the community
One of the most important responsibilities of a community manager’s job is not to continue to push the brand’s message but to empower the members and give them a voice. If we’re just talking about ourselves, eventually people will turn away. The only reason we are successful is because of our members. We want to try to reward them as much as possible.
Roughly 70% of all comments made by members are in response to other comments. We want to turn those comments into a conversation. You should want to give the members a voice on equal footing.
10. Passion for the brand
In many ways, the community manager is the eyes and ears of an estate. But this professional is also responsible for being the voice of the company, and the members want to interact with someone who loves the brand as much as they do. If a community manager is just going through the motions, he or she is not going to be successful and the company will ultimately suffer.
Passion is important. At the end of the day, you are the representative of that brand. You must eat, sleep and breathe the brand.
