Complete Guide of Community Manager, Functions, Tools, and Salary of the CM

what is a Community Manager? what are the functions of CM? how much it charges? the Perfect Profile of the Community Manager or the vital tools of the CM. Do you want to succeed in one of the fashion professions, Community Management? This Complete Guide of the Community Manager, functions, tools, and salary of the CM.

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.

Although in recent years much has been written about this profession, there are still people who are not very clear about their qualities or the functions they should perform. Many think that anyone who is in networks could already be a CM.

For companies and brands, nowadays, getting a good Community Manager is almost fundamental, in order to achieve a good interaction with its customers through social networks and thereby master this important communication strategy.

But I have noticed that many of them are not very clear about what characteristics that professional should have and what the functions should be, and in the end, they ask that CM perform a thousand functions within the company.

So I have decided to make this extensive guide with several important points about what this professional should have and know in order to offer an excellent service to the company or brand that hires him.

To begin this great guide, nothing better than defining the term and explaining what a Community Manager is.

According to some of the many definitions of professionals I have read about who is community manager:

Taking these definitions into account, it can be concluded that a Community Manager is a professional specialized in 2.0 tools, in charge of managing social networks and the communication of a brand on the Internet, that is, the voice of the company before its consumers and the voice of those before the company.

From my own point of view, a good definition of Community Manager can be:

After these definitions, I think it is important to mention what are the common objectives of the community manager, although they may depend on the objectives of the company with which he works.

Now that you know what a community manager is, you know some of their most common objectives and the skills that companies look for in this type of professionals, are you still interested in being a community manager?

If your answer is affirmative, you should answer a series of questions, so as not to get involved as a freelance community manager or in a free community manager course and then leave it halfway, because you realize that this profession is not what you are looking for.

If you can answer these questions without doubting your abilities, you are ready to take an online community manager course or to look for a job to be a community manager.

Well, now that you are completely determined to get a job “community manager”, I’ll explain a little what a community manager does and his functions in a company.

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.

One of the main functions of the Community Manager is the programming and dissemination of content on social networks. To do this, you will use tools that facilitate the task. Some of the best known are:

It is also important to share content from other brands, so before taking a project we should ask the company if it allows us to share content from others or not.

It is very important to know what is said about the brand in social networks, also listen to what users say, answer and resolve their doubts.

When listening to a user, it is fundamental that it is a proactive listening, that is, that the user perceives that you are listening to him and that you are trying to solve his problem. With this, you may be loyal to a potential client for your brand.

Apart from managing the social networks of the company is the creation of content for the blog and to share on social networks so it is one of the most common functions in this profession. Do not forget the community must add value to the user with the contents that it creates and shares.

This task is very important since it occupies most of the community management work time and is usually done at the same time as performing other functions.

To know your target better it is good to talk to them, tell them about the brand, the next releases so that they perceive you as closer and begin to tell what they think or need of the brand so that you can more easily achieve your goals.

Perhaps it is one of the most routine tasks in this profession, but monitoring the publications you make and measuring their impact is very important because it will allow you to generate subsequent activity reports and select the best content for each of the company’s social networks.

Planning is a fundamental task in any content marketing strategy and therefore creating a publication calendar is very important, to follow a strategy and share the contents according to the publication times with the greatest impact.

Today all brands or companies want it, and when they hire a community one of their intentions is to improve their brand image. For that reason, you should take advantage of social networks to work to make the brand of the company more relevant and known in its sector.

Another task of the CM is to identify who are the influencers of the sector and to create relationships with them in order to amplify the message of the brand in a natural way.

Another task that companies want a lot is to see how their community of followers grows in social profiles. But as you already know, to get a good engagement rate it is very important to get that community to grow with quality followers, rather than quantity. It is essential that they are quality followers who are interested in your content.

As usual, companies want to connect with the most influential people in a sector and to achieve nothing better than networking with other relevant professionals. With this, you will improve the brand image of the company and gain another visibility in the sector.

Another of the usual functions of the CM is to make monthly reports with the actions that have been carried out and their results.

For this, we can use tools such as:

In these reports, we can highlight points such as:

These are some of the daily functions in community management, but there are many other functions such as: managing an online crisis, paying attention to SEO, performing keyword analysis, analyzing the competition, creating ads (SEM), creating email marketing promotions, etc.

You already know the main daily functions of a community manager, what if I mention those qualities that for me are fundamental in a community manager.

It is essential to be a good writer and have good communication skills. If you manage to write and communicate in a simple, attractive, credible and straightforward manner, you will be able to attract the attention of the users more quickly and attract them to your content.

It is a very important quality and that still many people forget it, as well as companies, and hire a person with knowledge in social networks or computer for a community manager.

A mistake! This professional has to be trained and know the necessary tools to get a good job, as well as the professional environment.

Being humble and treating the users of the brand with respect, cordiality and sensitivity is halfway to conquer them. You should try to know how they feel, what their needs or problems are, to generate a natural empathy with them.

If you are a creative person, you have many possibilities to be a good community manager, since you will be able to create very cool and different valuable content, as well as answer the questions of the users always in a decisive and efficient way.

It is important to have a good capacity for listening because it will allow you to better know your community and take into account their suggestions and, thereby, generate more trust between both parties.

It is a very appreciated quality when you have to face unforeseen situations throughout your workday. It is advised to act with responsibility and common sense whenever you have to manage the social networks of a company.

If you have the ability to interact with users and get them hooked to the brand, your chances of success multiply. For that, you must get them to feel involved and heard at all times by the company.

You must be a person who acts correctly in a crisis situation. In these media, users want immediate answers and solve their problems, so you have to be a proactive person with a very quick reaction capacity.

I think that to succeed in a brand, you should get to know and know everything about it, you have to be the main fan of it. That is, to know the company well inside and out, to know everything about its target (motivations, needs, schedules of the greater audience, etc.) and also to analyze its competence very well (knowing what works for them and what does not work for them).

Know how to interpret data, monitor, evaluate and understand through tools 2.0 what your community needs (what you like, schedules, types of content, etc.), will make you an excellent community manager.

Never lose this analytical capacity, or when you think that everything is phenomenal, it will be fundamental to your success.

These are the qualities that for me are fundamental in a community manager. And for you, which ones would you add?

Now I would like to tell you a series of tips to be able to stand out in this profession, that is, get a job and work in community management, following some keys to differentiate yourself from other community managers, strategies that you can use to improve, fundamental tools to use in your day to day or mistakes to avoid to achieve these goals.

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.

This is a fundamental point since having a defined strategy will help you meet your goals in each of the social networks. Do not think that adopting a strategy is to arrive and publish content on these platforms without paying attention to the particularities of each of them.

With a strategy, you will be able to organize your publications in order to take advantage of the opportunities of each social network.

Having objectives that are always well defined and in the mind of a professional will help you achieve your goals naturally and in the medium term. There are many people who think that the objectives only have to exist at the beginning when they open their profiles since normally they only want to get a good number of followers, and when they reach a reasonable number they stop worrying about their networks.

It is a mistake, you must have goals and objectives that are always present in your strategy to improve what you achieve and contribute more quality to your social profiles.

It is very good that you share news and content from other profiles, but if you really want your profile to stand out in relation to many others you have to create your blog, where you write and share your own content.

That will make your followers see you as a professional in your area and share your content. All this will generate engagement and visibility in the different social networks.

Apart from getting your content to have a lot of engagement, you also have to always keep in mind that communication with your followers is essential to succeed in social networks.

That is why I advise you to always try to create communication with your audience, as it can open many other doors and benefits, as well as helping to create important relationships in social media. It is a key point and you can not neglect if you want to succeed in social networks.

There are many people in social networks who are not SEO experts, and you will not have to be either, but you should master the most basic and have it always present in your social networks. Well, you can position yourself more quickly in social media with the help of keywords and other aspects of Social SEO. You will be great to get highlighted in the various social networks.

The contents that have a photo, infographic or video usually get many more likes or retweets than the others, that is, the engagement triples in those publications.

That’s why I advise you to start using quality images in your publications because your success in social networks can depend in large part on it.

You can’t miss the quality of the content in the habits that you have to always keep in mind if you really want to succeed in social networks. Today there are thousands of publications on the Internet every day and it is impossible for people to see them all.

Therefore, if you want your content to stand out from others, you must adopt the quality of these and that your community knows that when you write something it will be of value to them.

If you want to succeed in social networks, you have to control the best tools and be attentive to the new ones that come out almost every day. It will be impossible to know all of them, so I recommend reading many articles on social networking tools and deciding on those that you see are usually the most recommended by other professionals.

When you have clear which will be those that can help you achieve your goals, focus on them and learn to use them as best as possible.

9 Tips to Be Responsible for Successful Internet Communities

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

Why do I tell you this?
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?

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

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.