A Community Manager role may be something you think of when it comes to startups rather than mature outsourcing businesses. However, you might be surprised at the size of the community in a company like Verita HR. From tech professionals sharing CVs, to outsourced employees providing sales support for customers, there is a diverse community behind most companies, including Verita HR. Especially ones with fifteen years of experience in the market. We look at what a Community Manager does in today’s story. And we consider how important this role might be for other organizations.
The Essence of the Community Manager Role
The role of community manager is strongly linked to the rise of social media and influencer marketing. Whilst not quite the same as a Social Media manager, the role of a community manager is more diverse.
Community managers are “responsible for fostering and maintaining a sense of community among members of a particular group or organization.” The role holder is the main source of communication between a company and its community. From moderating online forums, responding to customer queries and complaints to organizing events, the community manager’s role is key to a longstanding community.
One of the veterans amongst community managers is Jeremiah Owyang. In 2008 he posted several stories about the challenges that community managers face. Many of these challenges are still relevant today.
Jeremiah highlighted the difficulties of operating in an overconnected world. He highlighted the cases of ‘troublemaker community members’ whom he sees as one of the biggest challenges. Some of these include community members who have been removed from the community and want payback.
What are the Benefits of having a Community Manager to lead your community?
One of the biggest arguments for hiring a community manager is how people today identify with brands. How your brand is perceived by your closest stakeholders can go a long way in creating your brand proposition. And maintaining it. A good community manager can help keep members of the community engaged. This is done through networking events, newsletters, social media posts, brand partnerships, and more.
Do you want your community to feel a sense of belonging? Do you want your customers to give you repeat business? Perhaps you want to create more referrals from your existing community? These are all areas where appointing a community manager can help.
Ideally your community manager will be an extrovert. Someone who loves the stage and wants to be agile in everything they do. They are often the face of your organization. Both internal and external community members will desire contact with this individual, and this individual needs to be given the tools to facilitate the communications needed to uphold the community.
At Verita HR one of the ways that the organization engages with its community is through online surveys. The most recent of which was on the topic of work from home and return to the office.
What Does a Community Manager do?
At Verita HR the community is larger than at first glance. There are hundreds of thousands of users engaged with the brand on Facebook, a channel that was developed early on at Verita HR due to the strength of the initial marketing team at the company. LinkedIn is also a strong community where Verita HR has created groups such as ‘Banking – Europe’ or ‘Recruitment in information Technology IT – Poland’. Both groups have several thousand members and are active.
Outside of social media there is also the candidate database that the team at Verita HR has developed over the years. This number is currently over 18,000 and growing daily. The database was started afresh when GDPR created new rules for companies to adhere to when dealing with personal data. There is more.
The Community Manager is expected to contribute towards the branding, communication and marketing strategy of the business. The individual in the role will work closely with the marketing, sales, and editorial teams to leverage content and communications in a way that gives value to all participants in the company’s ecosystem.
Key Duties of a Community Manager:
- Design community engagement programs that advance key performance metrics
- Moderate community conversations
- Lead the execution of community engagement activities (e.g., educational sessions, virtual Q&As, in-person events)
- Report on the performance of community engagement activities by partnering with marketing
- Aggregate community members into different streams / sequences and adapt communications appropriately
- Work with creators to improve communications
- Use data and insights to guide strategy and implementation of community engagement approaches
- Partner with internal and external stakeholders to lead the development of communications
- Develop a program to deliver content
- Make data-informed decisions to drive individual performance and manage competing priorities
- Identify opportunities to improve creator products and the creator experience and influence action
- Work on LinkedIn, X, Discord, Telegram, YouTube, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush, and any other tools necessary to drive engagement.
If you want to work with a company that has people at the centre of its organization, then contact us today! Alternatively, maybe your organization needs to take the next step and hire a community manager. At Verita HR your human resources strategy is important to us. Let’s see how we can improve it together.
Verita HR offers services including RPO | Permanent Recruitment | Outsourcing | Media Services
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