What does it mean to be a community manager?

If you look at the recent job board listings here at Blogging For A Living, you may notice that community manager, social media, social networking (whatever you like to call it) gigs are on the rise, while straight up blogging gigs seem to be at a stand still.

Personally, I think this is because clients are realizing (finally) that it’s not enough to simply post at their blogs and websites anymore, they also need to promote those posts and build a better community in order for their blog to succeed. Best of all, these clients are up for hiring bloggers to fill this need, which really just opens one more door for bloggers and online writers looking for work. Bloggers who are doing their job well, i.e. promoting, writing quality content, networking, and so on, can naturally transition into a community manager role.

However, if you’re iffy about what it means to be hired as a community manager read on…

The job title: I’ve seen community manager jobs titled community manager, social media expert, forum moderator, online promoter, social networker, and more. The title is less important than the tasks at hand.

The pay: Pay, in my experience is better for community managers than it is for straight up bloggers, and this makes sense because you’ll be juggling many more tasks. While blogging is much more than just posting, being a community manager will involve many more tasks above and beyond what you’ve been doing as a blogger. Depending on time involved you can make upwards of $600-$1000 as a part-time CM and much more as a FT CM. I’ve also seen super PT CM gigs that pay less, ($200-$300) but you’re only putting in minimal time; like two hours per week, and you’re not doing blogger tasks, all you’re doing is building community and followers.

The job description: Deb is actually sort of my go-to gal for CM help and ideas. She’s been involved in CM for a good long while and has a clear idea of what’s involved. According to Deb, (and I’ve added some) the tasks you may be involved in as a CM include the following…

• Building a community at your client’s blog or website.
• Communication with company team members and your community.
• Blogging or writing web content.
• Marketing.
• Reaching out to bloggers, publicists and more.
• Increase memberships, subscriptions, forum participation, and so on.
• Becoming an active presence in various social network arenas.
• Community moderation of blogs, forums, chats, and groups.
• Planning and promoting community events.
• Setting up product reviews when necessary – some blogs and sites run a lot of reviews, and even get readers involved. You may be asked to contact companies in order to gather products for said reviews.
• Following trends in your niche.
• Tracking stats – i.e where are people coming from and how can you use this info to your advantage.

To see a more elaborate description of the above tasks read: What is a Community Manager?

Because we’ve seen such a rise in CM gigs, I’ll be posting more topics related to this in the weeks to come. For now, you tell me; are you interested in CM gigs or are you more concerned with cut and dry blogging and web writing gigs?