Who is a Community Manager?

What do they do?

The shoreline at Takwa Bay in Lagos, Nigeria

A community manager connects members to the value they came to the community for. They do this while helping the community owners meet their goals. They do more than “manage” a community, they ensure the success and growth of the community.

You could say a Community Manager is a Social Media Manager, a Developer Advocate, a Marketer, a Support staff or any other title, you could also say they are not. The titles only speak to the channels, audience, industry and tools this manager uses.

Once it is a group of people gathered around a shared interest, then you have a community and whoever manages it is a Community Manager.

To manage a community, community managers need to be able to:

• manage the people in the community (People Management),

• design, build, execute and manage activities that help the community members (Program Management),

• design, build, market and manage the products that the community needs (Product Management), and

• create and manage the projects that result from the above (Project Management).

The word design here means researching and ideating.

So four (4) skills, in general, are needed to be successful as a community manager:

1. People Management

2. Program Management

3. Product Management

4. Project Management

Some organisations split this Community Manager role into smaller more focused bits, across other job descriptions, but a ‘full stack’ community handles all of this.