What is a community manager? Community - what is it? What is the job of a community manager? See what “Community” is in other dictionaries

16.03.2024

Community

Online community- a group of people with similar interests who communicate with each other primarily via the Internet. The Internet provides the broadest technical opportunities for communication. In addition, it is relatively easy to find people with similar interests and worldviews on the Internet. In addition, it is psychologically easier to start communicating online than in a personal meeting. Such online communities are gradually beginning to play a significant role in the life of the entire society, especially in the context of the creation of electronic democracy. Examples of online communities are Wikipedia, LiveJournal community, Proza.ru community, web forums, chat rooms, online games, etc.

What is an online community?

Community is a collection of connections between people who have something in common. (general goals, interests, views, activities, hobbies, place of residence, gender, nationality, problems, circumstances...). The basis of community is communication between people.

The Internet provides endless opportunities to create communities. Firstly, it is easier to find people with similar views on the Internet, and secondly, meeting and communicating on the Internet is much easier, because a person feels more comfortable and relaxed.

These factors determined the emergence and development of a large number of Internet communities. In addition, the technologies with which communities are created (web forums, blogs and blogging platforms, wikis, chats, mailing lists, Skypecasts...) are easy to install and use, and today anyone can organize their own community.

How does the online community work?

Just like a regular community, an online community is created with a purpose (even if that purpose is to have a good time). A community of people passionate about a common goal is a powerful means to achieve it, especially in modern society and business, where human talent is the main value.

However, instability is inherent in humans. His passion may wane. Or he may be interested in another goal. And here the basis of any community - the personal relationships of its participants - plays a huge role. People usually come to a community for answers to their questions, for a specific purpose, and stay because of the relationships. In the online community, a person creates a virtual personality, which can be very different from his real personality, and which can be even more important for a person than the real one.

Community as a business technology

With the development of network communications, Internet communities are beginning to play a vital role for business and the economy as a whole. Online communities are the basis for the formation (or destruction) of company brands. The most important factor influencing a brand is the reviews of uninterested people whom a person trusts. This is the kind of feedback you can get in online communities.

Companies with a partner network also create online communities in which partners learn together to conduct business more effectively. The community organizer receives market feedback and new ideas for business development.

In large companies it is customary [ by whom?] create a community of employees to build a cohesive team. One of the names of this technology is ERM (Employee Relationship Management), developed by Siebel. When personal relationships develop between employees, communications within the company become much more effective. The best place to organize employee communication is the Internet or the company’s internal network.

And finally, communities of professionals are market regulators in various industries. In such communities, specialists are trained and developed, alliances are created, new solutions for industry development are found, and company and product brands are formed.

Community as a technology of power

The Internet is changing the political structure of society. By providing the general public with almost any information about political figures, the Internet significantly undermines the authority of the existing government. This is evidenced by the steady decline in people's activity in political elections.

At the same time, trust in the authorities of the leaders of online communities with whom a person can personally communicate is increasing. The community itself is a political force that is more difficult to control through traditional authority.

As a rule, Internet communities pursue global goals that are not limited by the state and contribute to the blurring of boundaries between nation states.

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Community” is in other dictionaries:

community- community...

community- community... Dictionary of Foreign Words edited by I. Mostitsky

Community radio is a type of radio broadcasting that meets the information needs of a specific territory and transmits messages in which the local audience is most interested. Community radio is a phenomenon... ... Wikipedia

Community manager is a new, actively developing profession in the field of PR. A community manager is responsible for the creation, development, management and communication with the community of a brand, phenomenon, product or art object. Contents 1 History of the profession ... Wikipedia

In the Canadian province of Ontario, there are several different types of major municipalities: counties, boroughs, and parishes are the top level of a two-tier system; in addition, there are united municipalities and separate... ... Wikipedia

The style of this article is non-encyclopedic or violates the norms of the Russian language. The article should be corrected according to the stylistic rules of Wikipedia... Wikipedia

Radio broadcasting for student audiences. The main advantage of student radio is that it does not need to worry about ratings; the audience always supports it. This is almost the only type of radio that is still in operation... ... Wikipedia

COMMUNICATIONS, MARKETING- the process of effective exchange of information, knowledge about a product or service with target audiences to solve the organization’s marketing problems. In the professional literature, this category is often referred to as the one corresponding to the custom... ... Marketing. Large explanatory dictionary

Developers Valve Corporation (all parts) ... Wikipedia

Standalone blog (Standalone) a blog published by an individual, a group of individuals or an organization, the engine of which is under the control of its owner, and not under the control of third parties (Internet services that provide the space and functionality of their engine ... Wikipedia

Books

Community, Alexey Viktorovich Ivanov, A brilliant IT specialist invents the semantic Internet method Web 3:0, and the semantic portal gives birth to an IT company with the commercial potential of Facebook. But in... Category: Journalism Series: New Alexey Ivanov Publisher:

It is no secret that ordinary human communication today has moved to a new environment, namely the virtual one. On the Internet there are many thematic forums, communities within social networks and blogs, where everyone expresses their thoughts and shares them with others. After all, what could be easier than coming up with a simple name, clicking the mouse and creating a new topic for discussion on the Internet? But few people think about what happens to the community afterwards. After all, some of them are losing their audience, while others, on the contrary, are expanding and becoming popular among users. Most likely, in the latter version, community management is well thought out.

Community concept

To understand the concept of “community”, you first need to understand what meanings this foreign word has. In the modern explanatory dictionary of the Russian language of the 21st century, “community” is “an association of a group of people with common interests, goals, and ideas.”

You can find another meaning in the same dictionary. So, a community is an online community (unification of users on one forum, blog or social network). Typically, such people communicate with each other on the Internet, using nicknames rather than the names given to them at birth. It is the last value that 100% reflects a concept close to this topic.

Is community manager a profession of the 21st century?

Community manager is a relatively new profession, so few people know about it in Russia and other CIS countries. The situation with a specific and little-known profession now is very reminiscent of the situation in the 2000s. At that time, little was known about the work of programmers. Now you can find hundreds of books about them, which describe the specifics of the work and some interesting facts. Unfortunately, for now, community managers will have to be studied through feature articles like this one.

Although many citizens of the Russian Federation learned about community managers only 5-10 years ago, such specialists officially existed back in the 90s. At that time it was a group of moderators in online games. They were authorized to remove obscene posts, ban players and monitor the response of gamers. This method of relationship between game developers and gamers turned out to be quite successful, so in the future many began to follow this tradition of “surveilling” the actions of the Internet audience.

Definition of a community manager and requirements for a specialist

A community manager (or community-manager) is a specialist who administers, supports community rules, and also provides assistance to its participants. As a rule, such a person is an intermediate link between the developer (community creator) and the end consumer (user, community member).

The following requirements apply to such a specialist:

have an education in journalism (as you know, community college has not yet been invented);
know the specifics of the community;
know the language of the community (communicate with participants in a language they understand);
be online 24/7;
know the basics of marketing and advertising strategies;
have experience in copywriting (if the community requires writing articles, posts, news, etc.);
constantly improve the community;
have knowledge in many areas, including community topics;
partially have the skills of a psychologist;
It is advisable to be sociable and balanced.

Working as a community manager outside the community

In addition to the responsibilities in the community itself, there are several other functions that a community manager performs. The specialist’s job also includes:

in attracting new participants;
commenting on events, posts and any mentions of the community or community products;
holding offline events;
creating platforms for communication.

It seems like community managers are supposed to do just about everything that has to do with the community, and that's true. No one will limit the imagination of such specialists if it benefits the community. Therefore, stupid and sometimes even the most ridiculous ideas can be warmly received by developers or the users themselves.

Among other things, community managers can organize various promotions with reposts, prize draws, creative competitions to entertain participants, create memes and viral videos to attract new users, as well as conduct surveys and compile ratings. Roughly speaking, such a specialist must be able to retain regular participants in the community and at the same time attract new ones.

How do you know if a community manager is doing the job?

Each employee's performance can be assessed differently. For example, for accountants it is reports, for copywriters it is high-quality written, selling text. For a community manager this is:

statistics of reached community members and unique visitors;
the number of new comments, likes, reposts of materials within the community or reviews about the community on the Internet;
the amount of unique content that users like.

When these three main factors are taken into account and implemented perfectly, it means that the community has hired a truly qualified specialist.

The future of the profession

This profession is quite young, so its true potential still remains undiscovered. Although the trend of promoting products through online communities is now rapidly gaining momentum. It’s easier for developers to keep consumers close and have feedback with them. Therefore, in the next couple of years, community managers should become more popular than ever.

Even now, more and more product advertising is taking place through popular social networks like VKontakte, Twitter and even Instagram. But each such account, group or page must be monitored, if not around the clock, then at least from 8 to 10 hours a day. This is where community managers come in handy.

The Internet space itself has been and will remain popular. Therefore, if you are betting on your future profession, it is advisable to first pay attention to the field of marketing, advertising and PR. There will definitely be a vacancy for a community manager in this section.

Not long ago, a classmate approached me with a request to help find a community manager for her company (community manager - a specialist involved in community management). As it turned out later, they needed a social media advertising specialist, not a community manager. Having sifted through dozens of job search sites, looked through hundreds of resumes and vacancies, I saw a traditional picture for the IT sector: there are many vacancies, high salaries, the number of resumes is meager, and the knowledge and skills of applicants often do not correspond to the necessary functional responsibilities. In other words, many employers and specialists do not understand what tasks a community manager should perform.

Based on expert opinions, primarily from Western companies, I invite readers to figure out who a community manager is, how it differs from SMM, and why such a specialist is needed by a company that promotes its brand on social networks.

A little history, or How community managers appeared

There is an opinion that the founders of this profession were PR specialists of large companies specializing in the creation of online games. They were the first to receive instructions to create and manage communities of players on social media, to be, in essence, informants for the developer among the players. This made it possible to quickly respond to the wishes of players, correct errors, attract new members of the gaming community and formulate a scenario for the further development of the game.

It should be noted that the profession of community manager is quite new. At one time, forum moderators performed similar functions. However, the moderator is predominantly a non-public person. He has the right to delete user messages and even (!) ban discussion participants. Well, and most importantly, the moderator is not faced with the task of attracting readers (adherents of a particular brand, product, service, etc.).

Someone has to run the community...

If we define the term " community manager", then I would formulate it as follows: this is an employee of the company who is responsible for creating, administering and supporting a community of supporters of a brand, phenomenon, event, product or service.

To better understand what kind of specialist this is, I propose to consider the necessary skills and functional responsibilities of such an employee.

What should a community manager be able to do?

Fundamentally understand the industry and the specifics of the company's work. Have appropriate education.
Be a good communicator and have your own social base.
Use a service, product or play a game created by a company for a fairly long period of time.
Have your own objective opinion about the quality, properties, characteristics of the product.
Be sufficiently erudite.
Put the brand first, your own ego second. That is, if a specialist has inflated self-esteem and unhealthy ambitions, then it may happen that his persona becomes more popular than your brand.
Be constantly available (24/7 principle).
Be able to develop a general strategy for conducting marketing and PR campaigns.
Be a good psychologist.
Fluent command of the language(s). Copywriting skills will definitely come in handy.

Let's take a look at this great infographic from GetSatisfaction:

And now briefly about What are the main tasks of a community manager? ?

Creation of platforms for communication.
Attracting new community members.
Content generation and management.
Creation, structuring and systematization of discussion threads.
Commenting on events, presentations, promotions, new company products.
Conducting offline events.
Organization of competent trolling.

What else can community managers do? No one will limit them in their flights of fancy - this could be maintaining regular columns, organizing promotions, competitions designed for regular subscribers, creating their own memes and viral videos, conducting surveys and compiling ratings. In a word, you need to do everything to retain the core of regular readers and attract new ones.

These lists are not final; I invite readers to add to them in their comments.

The effectiveness of a community manager , taking into account its functions, can be assessed according to the following criteria:

Number of unique comments or reviews.
Number of reposts of materials and links to materials.
Number of "likes".
Dynamics of growth and outflow of community members.
Number of conversions.

Important! A community manager is a kind of brand advocate in the eyes of consumers and a consumer advocate in the eyes of the company. Therefore, he must convey the wishes and feedback of users to the company’s management and promptly inform them about the implementation/improvement of the product.

Important! The community manager must maintain a balance between lobbying and open advertising.

Advertising on the Internet is not only search engine optimization of a website and contextual advertising, it is also a competent campaign on social networks.

Allow me to introduce Olga Vladimirova– community manager of the Krasnoyarsk branch of the Flamp startup (http://flamp.ru/panilepa). I believe that building a community of responsive customers is the highest level of excellence. And as another example, let me recommend Yulia Romanova, which is developing the community of the Best Way company (bestway.com.ua), specializing in the development of computer games. This profession is very developed in Europe and America. Large companies have gone further and have already created a community of enterprise employees. For example, a well-known brand of sweet soda through community managers maintains contact not only with its consumers in every region of the country, but also actively develops an internal corporate social network. Sergio Sanchez is the community manager for the Spanish division. These are all living people who took on the management of the brand community.

Community manager and SMM specialist: what is the difference?

Let's summarize. We identified basic skills, functional responsibilities, and even identified qualitative and quantitative criteria for assessing the work of a community manager. Surely professionals working in the field of advertising on social networks will ask the question: what is the difference between a community manager and a social marketing manager?

In short, an SMM specialist is engaged not only in creating and developing communities on social networks. His domain is much wider. He monitors and analyzes the market situation, works with opinion leaders, implements special projects, etc. Also, an SMM specialist must not only master social networks, but also have a wealth of knowledge in the field of marketing, in particular Internet marketing, be able to apply advertising and PR technologies. Community managers work only in the community of their brand. And most importantly, to conduct an advertising campaign on social networks, SMM specialists are allowed to attract employees of companies specializing in such services. But a community manager is an evangelist of your brand. By and large, your brand will be promoted well if these specialists work in pairs.

Every day, reviews from other consumers and influencers become more and more important in the process of choosing a product or service provider. I believe that in the near future, community managers will become mandatory employees of almost all companies that are developing their brand. I assume that the names of community managers will become even more famous (or at least equal) than the names of company owners/directors.

Uniting Russian-speaking specialists in working with communities, he identified 10 points that experienced community managers use in their work.

Hello, conspirators. There is a lot of talk about community management or community management, but few people know how to systematically do it.
Let's start with practice. We’ll talk about what community management is and how it differs from it later. Theory will always succeed.

Many people create communities of interest. Professional is the part in which we all (both I and you, the reader) are involved.

I have identified 10 main points that all experienced community managers use in their work.

1. Close

Gated communities act like a club. Open - like a playground. A club is better suited for gathering a community, but it is more difficult to manage, the virality of the content is lower, and there is no indexing at all.

In addition, a closed group, even with the concept of “we approve everyone,” weeds out those who run past, spammers and dead souls. There is nothing worse than dead souls: a community of 100 people with 10 active ones is 10 times better than a community of 1000 people with the same 10 activists.

2. Get started

For a long time (the first six months), the main content provider should be the founder of the community. The rest will catch up over time.

3. Greet

Every participant should be welcomed. Better - not right away.

A topic in which community members talk about their experiences would also be useful. Make a sign and list people there, breaking down their bios by core competencies. Then you can search for them and, again, make mentions in relevant posts/comments.

8. Create

Every three months the community should have a big collaborative project. This is what I called above the “applied” agenda. General meeting, series of articles, conference, website, concert, association...

No product - no community.

9. Give in

At some point, there will be more content in the community from other members, and maybe a new hyper-activist will appear. There is no need to dampen his activity; give up the laurels of the “content leader” and immerse yourself in other tasks.

10. Unite

The community must have a dense internal graph (network of connections).

Arrange joint meetings, watch the strengthening of connections and help people get to know each other.

You can't do without these ten mechanics. Each of them has its own characteristics, depending on the type of community, tasks, character of the leader, and even the technical properties of the site.

In the following notes I will talk about each point in more detail.

If you have something to add, feel free to do so in the comments, I will comment on every opinion.

Hannah Waldrum

Instagram community manager

The essence of the profession

The profession of community manager appeared several years ago, and now it is in demand both in the UK, where I work, and in the USA. A community manager is a person who plays many roles at once. You need to manage accounts on different social networks, maintain a blog, and understand brand management. Community managers are needed not only by social networks, but also by the media to interact with readers - before I started working on Instagram, I was a community manager for The Guardian readers and even wrote a book with my employees, Connected: The power of modern community. My job at Instagram is very similar to what I did at The Guardian. My main responsibilities are maintaining the company's main account, writing the blog, collecting user feedback, and organizing Instameets.

Events for popular users are very important because the user community is the most important thing for any social network. Most of the innovations were initiated by the community, that is, this is partly the merit of the people who use Instagram most actively. You need to know what people who love Instagram are interested in, what excites them, how they live. At meetings, I always try to find out what photos people take most often, and watch how the most popular users exchange ideas, tips, and get inspired for something new - this way we can improve our service. We consider popular users to be our “ambassadors”, we value and love them.

About 60% of Instagram users do not live in the US, so it is quite difficult to maintain direct contact with everyone, but we try. For example, Instameet recently took place in Lisbon with the top 25 Instagram users in Europe. Usually meetings take place in an informal atmosphere: in Lisbon we walked, took photos, showed them to each other, consulted, etc. On February 6, we held an Instameet in Sochi with the best Instagram users in Russia. The community manager must turn online connections into real communication: our popular users have never met, so it's fun to get everyone together and chat. Sochi is a great chance to take wonderful photos of the city, mountains, and also from the Olympics.

Help your users. Everyone has a different level of knowledge about modern technologies and communication skills in social networks. If you want your community members to be more active, organize trainings and meetings, which will help attract more people to interact with your service

From the book by Hannah Waldrum, Mark Thomas and Ed Walker
Connected: the power of modern community

Where to study

Many community managers previously worked in PR or marketing, some wrote a blog - everyone comes to the profession from different fields. I graduated from Cardiff University in journalism and I think this education is perfect for being a community manager: at the university I learned how to write, communicate with different people, tell stories. But the most important skill is probably the ability to unite people. It is also important to understand how the media works and how the online and real world interact. In addition, you need to be able to analyze: you must understand what kind of people use this or that social network, what they like, what interests them, what they worry about. That is, you need to deeply immerse yourself in communication with people in order to understand them; For some it is difficult, but for me it is a dream job.

Cardiff University

Flaws
and difficulties

I enjoy absolutely everything I do at work, but many of my colleagues find it difficult to have a job that requires you to be on call 24/7 and responsible for the entire community. A lot depends on the company you work for - if you are not interested in the audience, then it can be difficult.

The most difficult thing is probably helping people overcome distances and translation difficulties when communicating. We have offices in different countries because the main office in the USA cannot handle everything and contact the whole world. Instagram has a lot of users, the most difficult thing is to maintain contacts, despite distances and different languages.