You’ve seen the job title on LinkedIn. You’ve read it on business cards. But, what does a community manager actually do? I mean, they just scroll endlessly through Facebook all day, right…? Wrong.
A community manager serves as the voice of multiple brands on social media—creating content, interacting with the audience and building awareness. According to the 2013 Community Manager Report, 61 percent of community managers are female, 20 percent work for an agency and 64 percent work more than 40 hours a week. As a community manager who fits into all three of those categories, I have some secrets to share. Let’s take a look.
Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
- We don’t just play on Twitter all day, I promise. We plan content calendars—usually quarterly—identifying what our brands are going to post and when. We write copy. We track hashtags. We favorite, retweet and reply. We address customer service inquiries. We look for content our brands can share. We look for users our brands can follow. We research what other brands are doing, and we stay on top of what’s happening in real time.
- When we’re staring down at our phone, we’re probably checking on a brand’s channel. Our own social media channels tend to take a backseat. As do our texts, phone calls and emails.
- Trends and enhancements happen all the time, and it’s our job to keep up. On average, a trending topic lasts less than 40 minutes, and both Facebook and Twitter show off their top 10 trends. That means in the span of 24 hours, thousands (yes, thousands) of topics could be trending. And we should know what most of them are.
- Our most important skill is our creativity. The copy, custom visuals, photos and videos that live on our brand’s social media channels are what drive engagement and grow the pages. And if we aren’t executing new, original, out-of-the-box ideas, the analytics will show it.
- Social media never sleeps. A typical day at the office may last from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but social media goes overtime, every time. According to Twitter, users are 181 percent more likely to be on the site during their commute home, and engagement for brands is 17 percent higher on the weekends. On a pinning streak? On Pinterest, activity peaks every Saturday between 2 to 4 a.m. and 8 to 11 p.m.
- Social media doesn’t take a holiday. New Year’s. Easter. Thanksgiving. Christmas. While millions of people are sitting in front of a mouth-watering holiday spread, most community managers are sitting in front of a computer… at least for a little while.
Any secrets I forgot to spill? Sound off in the comments below.
