Community Manager Skills
I’ve written about the community manager’s mindset before.
I recently came across this great summary of the main skills a community manager needs to have on Mashable:
A Community Manager’s Mindset
Those willing to participate in any company’s social media presence executing and improving on its social media strategy need to have, for the most part, a community manager’s mindset.
What are some of the characteristics of a community manager?
Expert Ryan Lytle highlights the following, summarized here:
1. Strong Communication Skills: social butterfly online and offline, strong people skills.
2. Good Judgement: sometimes answering a question in social media is detrimental to a brand’s image.
3. Empathy: see our brand from the customer/fan’s perspective! Don’t sell them anything!
4. Dedication: we all need to be dedicated to our careers, it goes without saying. However, a community manager needs to be always ready to reply, post, help the community anytime, anywhere.
5. Organizational Skills: with a presence that spreads across different online communities and offline events, it is important to keep track of communications, faces, trends.
6. Adaptability: with so many roles, communities, technologies to engage in, a community manager needs to stay abreast of the latest trends in social media AND quickly change roles from a designer to a communications/marketing person, to tech support – constantly! Especially when most of our day jobs ARE NOT that of a community manager.
7. Level-Headed Attitude: anything we say as community managers can be perceived as our company’s brand’s own opinions and used against the company and individuals. Watch what you communicate, when you communicate, how you respond to offensive or provocative comments as well as praises.
8. Analytics Skills: there are tons of tools out there to measure social media (ROI – o the hated acronym) or reach of campaigns, interactions, etc. Use them wisely. Know how and what to read in the numbers.
9. Ability to Enable the Community: the ability to start and participate in conversations that solve the community’s problems, point them in the right direction, connect them to expert advice is KEY.
10. Passion for the Brand: use your products and services, have positive attitude about its mistakes, accomplishments, etc. Be a brand ambassador!
A lot of these skills (if not all) seem to apply really well to educators in various sectors of the industry.
Even if you’re not a community manager in your job title, do you find yourself performing skills related to this role in your professional network?
