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Complete Guide of Community Manager, Functions, Tools, and Salary of the CM |
Before you start, are you clear about what a community manager is? What should be the qualities that a good community manager should have? What are your main functions in a company? Do you know the essential skills that companies seek in this professional? If you need answers to these questions and want to know some keys, tools, and tips to be an excellent manager of Internet communities and succeed in this profession, read this complete guide of the Community Manager.
The comprehensive Guide of Community Manager
What is a community manager?
- “He is responsible for the online community that is created around a product or a company”
- “The community manager is, above all, the voice of the users in the company and the ears of the company in the social networks”
- “A professional with the ability to communicate coherently and organized in social networks”
Inar Guide Community Manager Definition
The professional with experience in tools necessary to make a good management of the social networks of a company and that encourages the communication and interaction of the company with its clients. The Internet Community Manager is also in charge of monitoring the online presence of brands and the person in charge of generating valuable content capable of improving the visibility of the company online.
What are the objectives of the Community Manager?
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The objectives of the Community Manager |
- Improve the visibility of a brand or company on the Internet;
- Improve the brand’s Online Reputation;
- Increase the followers in the social networks of the company;
- Improve the “engagement” between the brand and the community;
- Provide a more personalized Customer Service;
- Get more subscribers (leads);
- Identify content opportunities;
- Get create a relationship with Influencer;
- Maximize conversions, etc.
10 Skills or Characteristics That Companies Look for in a Comunity Manager
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Skills or Characteristics That Companies Look for in a Comunity Manager |
- Be organized – Frequently an essential skill and that the companies like a lot. In this profession, you have to manage many topics, so it is essential that you have to be organized at work to establish priorities and delivery dates for content.
- Have empathy – It is another very important feature since you have to have that empathy to get connect with users in a natural way. It is essential to establish connections and valuable conversations for the company.
- Act fast – In this profession, offering good customer service is very important, so the speed with which you manage to respond to the problems of users is a factor that companies value a lot.
- Have patience – Although it seems a little contradictory with the previous one, it is true, you have to know how to act quickly but always calmly and calmly, so as not to give a wrong answer to the problem, since it can turn into a crisis of reputation.
- Knowing how to write – It seems absurd, but it is true, nor do we all have this gift. It is not just writing without making mistakes, it is also having a passion for what you write, that is, creating content that engages readers. And I can guarantee you that it’s not easy at all ?
- Knowing how to communicate – Complements the previous skill and a person who knows how to communicate what they want in a clear and effective way, is much more likely to succeed. In this profession, you have to know how to receive criticism with good humor to be able to answer in the most correct way.
- Have improvisation – I think it is a feature that more and more companies are looking for in this type of professionals. They always look for managers who have a good dose of improvisation and who manage to go from plan A to plan B in a short time.
- Having creativity – In this profession, being a creative professional is highly valued by brands, since it depends on you to get cool and different ideas to traditional content. You know the users are tired of the traditional contents, they look for different things.
- Open minded person – If you want to create different things and have a good dose of creativity, you need to be very attentive to the latest trends and always open-minded, to be able to observe content opportunities where others do not observe.
- Be strategic – It is another important skill in community management since companies look for professionals who can create strategies that adapt their content to different social networks.
10 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Deciding to Be a Community Manager
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Ask Yourself Before Deciding to Be a Community Manager |
- Being a community manager really passionate for me?
- Am I ready to be a community manager?
- Am I wanting to improve my professional profile community manager regularly?
- Do I know the tools necessary to manage social networks?
- Do I have the ability to listen and give solutions as short as possible?
- Can I identify the needs of a brand or company and its target audience?
- Can I generate discussions and opinions in my social profiles?
- Working in an environment where I have to manage complaints, claims or demands, is something I like?
- Do I like teamwork and follow strategies?
- Am I willing to have online constant exposure and to be the most visible figure of a brand?
What Are the Functions of the Community Manager and What Does It Do?
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the Functions of the Community Manager and What Does It Do |
In this profession, as I have told you before, you have to be prepared to perform a series of functions. I tell you those that I consider the most important because of my experience, but you can perform these functions and many others, keep this in mind.
1# Schedule and disseminate content on social networks
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
2# Monitor social reputation and perform an active listening process
3# Create and share content
4# Converse with the community
5# Monitor the contents
6# Make an editorial calendar
7# Work and improve the visibility of the brand of the company
8# Establish relationships with influencers in the sector
9# Get more quality followers
10# Conduct online networking
11# Measure and report with results
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Insights
- Metricool
- Numbers of followers (new and total)
- Number of publications
- Publications with (reach, engagement, comments, shares,…. etc)
- What are the most visited contents
- Which have a higher retention rate
- Which social network has the best quality followers
- Which contents work best by the social network, etc.
10 Essential Qualities to Be Good Community Managers
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Essential Qualities to Be Good Community Managers |
1# Good communicator
2# Qualified professional
3# Humble person
4# Be creative
5# Have the ability to listen
6# Have common sense
7# Be charismatic
8# Reaction capacity
9# Main follower of the brand
10# Analytical capacity
8 Habits That You Should Not Stop Doing to Succeed in Social Networks
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Habits That You Should Not Stop Doing to Succeed in Social Networks |
Now I give you a series of habits that you should do if you want to succeed or not in social networks whether you are a CM or not.
1# Adopt a strategy
2# Define your goals in Social Networks
3# Create a blog
4# Do not forget to create communication
5# Always keep in mind the SEO
6# Uses usually visual elements
7# Provide quality content to succeed in social networks
- Write articles with valuable content for your audience;
- Avoid grammatical errors and misspellings;
- Create articles with more than 1000 interesting words;
- Create scannable and original content;
- Make continuous publications and not from month to month,
- Account real and personal experiences usually like and are always different, etc.
8# Control the best tools for social networks
9 Tips to Be Responsible for Successful Internet Communities
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Tips to Be Responsible for Successful Internet Communities |
1# Have patience and passion for writing
After completing the community manager course, and see what happened a year, most have not followed this profession or left his blog aside, this is my first advice, and one of the most important.
It seems exaggerated but I guarantee that it is not, if you do not have patience (everything takes time to arrive) and passion for what you write, in the end, you will get tired and leave this possible employment opportunity aside.
If you want to succeed it is essential that you keep in mind that you have to dedicate a lot of time to writing and that you like to make comments on blogs and social networks.
2# Form continuously as a Community Manager
For me, it is another fundamental step to build an adequate professional profile. Training will help you to have clearer ideas, to better organize your work and to create work habits.
My advice is to do some course, community manager course or online community manager course, although from my experience I recommend a face-to-face course since you know people at first hand who tell you their experiences and motivate you on a daily basis. Then create a good Curriculum and type in it all the courses you have done and what you learned in them.
In addition, you interact with other people like you and make new friendships with whom you can share goals, objectives and help each other.
What do you have to study to be a community manager?
- Well before launching to do a CM course I recommend you open your networks and try things like:
- Create profiles in different social networks (understand each social network)
- Post tweets and on other networks (to see how it works)
- Analyze profiles that are well positioned (it helps us see how they do it)
- Understand a little what each social network is for
- Understand your basic vocabulary
Well, because many people do not think about social networks, and it’s very complicated to get caught up in things and often saturated with so much information because for them everything is new. And that makes learning very difficult.
If you already have basic knowledge, it will be easier and you can launch yourself to take a course.
3# Create your own blog
This is an essential step if you want to succeed in community management because if you are looking for a job as a community manager and do not have your own blog as proof of your good work, forget it. Why?
Well, as you know, today there is a competition in all labor sectors, and in this profession, there are more community managers. So, if you want to differentiate yourself from others, you have to create your own blog and this will open a thousand doors to make your space in this medium.
In addition, with your blog, you learn much faster because you put into practice everything you are learning. If you do it well, it will be your best letter of introduction to a company. So you no longer have excuses for not creating a blog.
There are several platforms nowadays where you can create your own blog. You can create with Blogger or WordPress.com but I certainly recommend that you start with your own domain and hosting and with the WordPress.org platform since you will learn much more and you will do a much more professional job.
4# Learn the keys of the best
When you take some of the community manager courses or master community manager you will learn a lot from your teachers because they will be great professionals in this sector. As well as when you start to relate with other professionals either in social networks or in other blogs you will also assimilate much knowledge.
My advice is that you try to extract the best from each of them, learn it and if you can try to improve it. You will see how you will be surprised and how much you will learn without realizing it.
5# Master the main social networks and news aggregators
It is very important that you master some of the most important social networks, as well as the most influential news aggregators because they are channels that will help you spread your content and publicize your personal brand. If you know how to use them correctly, you will increase visits to your website in a very effective and natural way.
But define objectives because it will be impossible to be and control all social networks that exist today. My advice is to define very clear objectives for the 6 or 7 main social networks, always in accordance with your needs, and try to create a community of loyal and quality followers, that follow your brand and everything you do.
I leave here the social networks that I consider most important today.
5.1 Facebook
It is the social network with the largest number of users today. It is essential that you master it professionally, as it is an excellent marketing tool and all companies want to be successful in it, as well as the maximum engagement with its users.
5.2 Twitter
It is another one of the social networks that you must master when you decide for this profession. It is a very powerful public multidirectional communication channel. It allows companies to be in real time contact with followers and customers through their messaging service with a maximum of 140 characters per message.
With it, you will be able to inform and share valuable content, manage the company’s community, meet new trends, make customer service much more personalized, etc. That is why it is essential that you control this platform 100%.
5.3 Youtube
It is another platform that you have to master and I think it will become more important every time. Currently, it is the second social network with more followers behind Facebook, with more than 1,000 million users. It is also the second most used search engine, after Google.
With these numbers, I think that it is very clear to you how important it is for companies that know how to manage a Youtube channel very well, as well as creating quality content so that the company’s followers can interact with it.
5.4 Linkedin
It is the largest professional social network on the planet. Another social network that you have to master if or yes since it can offer you an infinite number of job opportunities.
In addition, it is the most powerful tool that headhunters use today to search for skilled workers around the world.
My advice is that you already have your LinkedIn profile to connect and get to companies and professionals naturally.
5.5 Google +
Although many people say that it is a social network that has its days numbered, or is already dead, it is still the social network of Google and that is … For me, it is an excellent platform to carry out networking in a natural way due to the circles, where I have other professionals with the same interests as me, or improve the positioning of my blog, etc.
I advise you to control this platform since it will allow you a greater visibility, better SEO positioning or greater authority in Google.
5.6 Instagram
This is the fashion social network and you should be. The way I see it can be very good to humanize your personal brand as well as a company since in it you can upload and share photos of your vacations or experiences and small videos counting, for example, the day to day of your company or some time funny.
I think it could be a powerful tool to make your brand known in a quicker and easier way.
5.7 Pinterest
Pinterest is an excellent tool to store images and infographics of articles that I find on the Internet that interest me and at that moment I can not read. I keep them by themes on my boards and when I have time I go and read the contents without having to be looking.
For many companies, depending on their activity, products or objectives can be a very important showcase with which to gain visibility, interaction and possibly increase the sales of their products or services. So it’s you who have to decide if you’re interested in controlling this social network or not.
6# Master essential tools for the Community Manager
This is a very important advice since many times these professionals come to companies and do not know how to use some of the fundamental tools to manage or monitor the company’s social profiles.
We already know that there are thousands of tools nowadays and that it is impossible to control all of them, but do not deceive yourself, because if you want to succeed in this activity you must master at least a series of them that are elementary.
6.1 Klout
This tool analyzes the influence or popularity in social networks of a person or brand. Assign each user a score that reflects their degree of social influence and is one of the factors or criteria that are analyzed to hire a Community Manager. Keep this point very present.
6.2 Hootsuite
A classic for community managers and is the most used social network management tool in the world. With it you can schedule publications (date and time that you decide), insert links where the URLs of the published messages can be shortened; create a list of influential people you want to follow; etc.
6.3 Buffer
Another of the classic and is a tool with which you can program the publications of your articles on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ for the hours you want. It is ideal for when you do not have time to publish content.
6.4 Metricool
It is a good social listening tool, which allows knowing all the activity that takes place in different social networks, to program our publications or to know statistics.
6.5 Feedly
It is a fundamental tool for me since it allows me to manage the feeds of my favorite blogs. With it, you can do a good cure of contents and organize them by themes or categories and review them later. I think it’s a very useful tool for a Community Manager.
6.6 Twitter Analytics
Get to know our community and profile of Twitter. Twitter statistics tool essential for a CM.
6.7 Facebook Insights
Another essential tool for a CM, in this case, to know everything about our community on Facebook.
6.8 Google Analytics
It is the web analytics tool that you have to know how to use it if you want to be a good community manager since with it you can perform very deep analysis of a website.
This tool allows you to know the traffic of visits of your web page or blog, the visitors in real time, the duration of the visits, to know the conversions, to know which the most viewed pages, etc. It is essential that you master it.
6.9 MailChimp
It is an excellent platform to let followers know your newsletter. With it, you can create and manage your subscriber lists, send personalized emails with news of your products or track and perform an analysis of emails sent, etc.
6.10 Bitly
It is one of the basic tools for a Community Manager. I think it is the best tool to shorten links and monitor their social impact on visits.
6.11 ManageFlitter
It is one of the most powerful tools to manage accounts since it allows us to easily filter the users that follow us, stop following us or stop following those users with little activity or who are inactive on Twitter.
7# Create and adopt strategies
If you want to achieve great results in this profession and know what a community manager is, you have to define your objectives from the beginning and create and adopt a series of strategies to achieve those same objectives. Here I leave some that I consider important:
- Define simple and achievable goals;
- Create valuable content that interests your audience;
- Use new formats for content (infographics, videos, tutorials, etc.)
- It seeks to improve the engagement and participation of your followers;
- Make decision making based on the continuous analysis;
- Create a content creation calendar;
- Make quality networking, do not see other community managers as competition, but as collaborators;
- Fixed KPIs, to help you know which objectives are being met and which are not; etc.
8# Participate in conferences and events
Now it may seem very distant and difficult to achieve, but you will see that as soon as you start to take your strongest steps in this sector, proposals will appear for you to participate as a speaker in any of them.
You have to know what a community manager is and make yourself known to the world and nothing better than to start attending events or conferences, where you can participate or write about what you learn in them.
Also in these events, you usually find many other professionals that connect daily in your social networks and it will be very important that you lose the shame. With this, you generate networking and you start to gain visibility.
9# Avoid making serious mistakes
The truth is that it is difficult to avoid making mistakes because whenever we start in a new profession and do not know what is a community manager, or something we do not know, the most normal thing is that mistakes are made.
How is the day to day of a community manager?
Well before I mentioned many of the functions of a CM, so here I will review the day to day of a community manager according to my own experience, which can always vary according to the company or sector.
- When you open the computer, the first thing is to check the notifications and mentions in each social network
- Schedule or revise the content programmed in each social platform
- Look at the private Daily Massages for each social network and answer
- When we have the networks reviewed, we go to the emails, review, and answer
- Then perform good content curation (blogs, aggregators, Feedly)
- Analyze the publications of your competition (which publications are working for them)
- Create images for different social networks
- Create and send newsletters
- Write content (if that is in your CM contract, it depends if you are a freelancer or you work for a company)
- Perform and analyze the performance of social ads campaigns (if that is in your CM contract)
- Schedule content for the next day on social networks
How much does a Community Manager charge?
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How much does a Community Manager charge |
How much is paid or what is the salary of a community manager is one of the questions I hear most. It depends on many things like your experience as CM, the hours you dedicate to a client, the type of work you do, etc.
Now I specify you according to your work option:
1. Salary of a paid Community Manager
The salary of a Community Manager, analyzing different job offers in different portals, the average salary is € 1,250 per month for a full-time contract of 8 hours.
2. Salary of a freelance Community Manager
Here it is more complicated to tell you a fixed value because it depends a lot on the Community Manager, his experience, his visibility, results achieved, hours dedicated to a client, type of functions he performs, etc.
Analyzing different websites of people who are dedicated to the CM and asking colleagues in the sector, the average salary of a community manager is between € 50 and € 300 per social network.
When a CM asks how to define a Community Manager rate, I always tell him/her that you have several options:
- Price per hour worked (goes from 10 -50 € / H according to your experience and level as CM)
- Price for each social network (I think the simplest formula to calculate a price)
- Price by objectives ( establish with the client some objectives (number of followers, number of publications, number of leads, engagement, visibility, etc.) that you will meet and when you achieve you will pay the established amount).
- Pack of networks (create packs with different services that you will develop for a closing price)
- Fixed price + extras (If you decide to specialize in an objective with that client, you put a closing price, but then if you need other tasks (record videos, write posts, etc.) you can charge them as extras, this is my favorite option ?
9 Errors to Avoid by a Community Manager
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Errors to Avoid by a Community Manager |
1# Write with spelling errors
It is one of the most common mistakes in community managers, so before publishing any content or sending an answer, you should always review what is written.
2# Do not check the information
Another serious error is publishing something without checking that the information is real or correct.
3# Want to get attention without more
It is important to be up to date with what is happening in the world, in case there is an opportunity to create content. But always do it with your head, do not try to take advantage in any way of any important news to attract attention, because it can generate an opposite effect.
4# Unaware of the basic tools
As I said before, it is essential to know at least some of the basic tools, because if you can not make serious mistakes when trying to publish content.
5# Do not take care of the tone
When you have to answer or publish some content you have to control very well how you do it because if you pass your tone, you can generate conflicts with the users. Do not forget that you are the voice of the company in social networks. The same should be careful when using funny images, as well as the gifs so fashionable because it can feel bad or go out of tune.
6# Confused accounts
It seems like a joke, but it is not and you can be assured that it is one of the most common mistakes when a community manager has to manage several accounts at once. So be very careful because it generates a bad image of the brand.
7# Do not take negative comments to heart
Sometimes due to day-to-day wear or another situation, when we receive a negative comment about a content, we may have the tendency to respond in the same way. Try to always keep a cool head and answer professionally.
8# Use excessive hashtags
We already know that the use of hashtags is beneficial for the disclosure of our content. Now do not overuse them as they cause the opposite effect. Use between 2 and 3 per publication.
9# Answer as if you were a robot
One of the problems of the companies that they give you pre-defined answers for certain questions and in the end, your answers are always the same. That creates a very bad impression for your community since it looks like a robot that is answering.