A community manager is a key role in any social media team and is responsible for building the relationship between the brand and its audience. Learn everything you need to know about the role of a community manager.

RELATED: 12 Proven Community Engagement Tactics You Can Steal

Who is a Community Manager?

It has been discovered that 76% of internet users participate in an online community. Data cannot lie. People love being part of a community where everyone shares similar passions. (And that community could be yours too!). But managing communities is not child’s play. That’s where a community manager comes in.

Community managers are the middle person who is responsible for building strong relationships between a brand and its customers, both online and offline. They are the voice of the brand and moderate and grow the community by supporting, and engaging with customers. Eventually, their goal is to turn customers into loyal fans by offering them immense value, and an inclusive space to foster relationships.

What Does a Community Manager Do?

The role of a community manager is to act as the bridge between a brand and the community it is aiming to create (i.e. a group of core consumers or audience with the same interests).

They should be the brand’s ambassadors, engaging with potential customers and building relationships with existing ones. They are also focused on gauging sentiment around the brand, using social listening tools in order to monitor feedback and engagement.

Key Responsibilities of a Community Manager

While there could be a bit of variance in the roles and responsibilities of a community manager depending on the industry—here’s what it generally covers:

• Ideate, and implement community-focused campaigns and strategies
• Create snackable and engaging content like daily/weekly product updates, short videos, group discussion topics, or other types of content as required
• Respond to customers and be valuable, all in friendly and a timely manner
• Monitor and track metrics and report them on feedback and online reviews
• Boost brand awareness by organizing and managing events and webinars
• Liaise and coordinate with other departments like marketing teams, communications teams, customer support teams, sales teams, development teams, and content teams
• Build relationships with industry experts and invite them to collaborate
• Stay up-to-date with digital technology trends and explore innovative ways to engage the community
• Lays down strict community guidelines to promote an inclusive and safe space
• Plans and executes community-engaging like giveaways or contests

Community Manager vs. Social Media Manager

You might be wondering: Isn’t it exactly the same as what a social media manager does? Well, of course not. While there are some similarities, there is a clear difference.

Indeed, several duties overlap between a “Social Media Manager” and a “Community Manager”. But the role of a community manager doesn’t revolve around acting as the brand and promoting its products on social media. It is much broader because their specialty lies in understanding the community as a whole.

A social media manager is the person who creates a social media strategy for all channels.

They post directly from the brand’s account and are responsible for organizing and managing budgets, plans, and the brand’s voice and tone for replying and engaging with the audience.

The community manager is the person who actually implements those plans.

They take the directions set by the social manager and then manage the communications and interactions afterward.

Community managers often post from their own accounts, not the brand’s, which allows them some more freedom to choose how they interact with followers and gives some leeway on the type of content they create.

It means that community managers are often seen as advocates rather than just strategists for the brand’s social media content.

Qualities of a Good Community Manager 

Building strong relationships lies at the helm of community building. In order to successfully take on this role, one needs to focus on various skills and qualities. These are a few of those skills that a qualified community manager should be capable of:

• Passionate and dedicated. First, community managers need to have an inherent passion for communities. Their role is to create a lively space where the members can foster genuine relationships, and interact in a hassle-free manner. Passion for people is requisite because only then you can make sure that each person involved has a positive experience with your brand.
• Be the go-to person for the community members. Gone are the days when 1:1 communication between brands and their customers was a rarity. Today that happens every day. A community manager needs to establish a rapport of being the go-to person for queries, or any help in general. That can be built by offering value.
• Great communication skills. Community managers are a brand’s ambassadors. Anything they say directly affects the brand’s reputation. So strong communication skill is required. More importantly, they should be able to empathize with the audience. They must be good at delivering information, creating engaging content, and having the know-how to deal with any conflict or crisis that may occur.
• Data-driven decision-making. Undoubtedly, a community-center brand still needs to boost revenue, and a community manager needs to possess make decisive actions.
• Adaptability. There’s an obvious fact about social media: It changes almost every day. Thus, businesses have to catch up with the latest news and trends quickly. Anyone working in a role in social media needs to be able to adapt to changes both with the brand directly and with general cultural and societal changes.

?Pro Tip: Being a community manager is more than just being the face of the brand. You need to spend time interacting and posting thoughtful replies to proper topics. You should also try to share informative articles or useful tools with your community when you come across them.

A community manager is essential to growing communities!

A community manager is a key role in building long-lasting relationships between the community and the brand.

Also, a community manager needs to be highly skilled in communication, necessary tools, and relationship building.

When a community manager excels in their job, your brand will have a better online reputation, more brand mentions, and more engagement. That will lead to more chances for sales, for sure!

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Want to boost community engagement? Be more engaging.

We are frequently asked how to make the online experience more compelling, and more engaging. Here are 12 proven techniques that will work for community engagement. Not all are applicable to all types of Communities. You will get a sense of what will work and what won’t with your given audience. Pick two or three to start with and experiment. Then add a few more. Please leave us a comment below to tell us which ones you picked.

Importance of Community Engagement

Online community engagement helps you strengthen your relationships with your audience. It also allows you to build customer loyalty. By helping your customers when they’re in need, building a relationship with them, and offering a one-of-a-kind customer experience, you’ll be able to increase your customer loyalty. Customers will trust your brand because you’ve answered their questions. They’ll fall in love with your brand because you’ve joked around with them, expressed your gratitude, and resolved their issues.

You may also boost your sales through community engagement. By being active and responding to community posts, members will feel confident making a purchase through your store. Even if there are negative comments on your site, if you respond positively and resolve the issue, you’ll still grow your sales. You can also grow your sales by recommending certain products when asked. Avoid making every reply about your products. The sales will come naturally.

We can listen to our customers more personally through optimized community engagement posts. In other words, the more engaged your audience, the more loyalty you’ll build for your brand.

12 proven community engagement tactics you can steal

1. Post content worth engaging with

If you want to increase community engagement, you need to create content that people can engage with. It could be a poll, a video people can relate to, a meme that makes people laugh, or a product photo that encourages someone to tag their buddies. Choose to post content that will receive a positive reaction from people. Is your post about something beautiful, inspiring, funny, or relatable? Post content that’ll drive emotional feelings from people.

2. Host live events and webinars

Live webinars are paramount to attracting more followers and boosting community engagement. The first thing you should consider before starting a live webinar is your target audience. The vital factor is choosing a topic of interest for your followers to make sure you increase community engagement. Keep in mind that your content should cater to all tastes.

A live webinar should make users curious and want to interact with your content. Keep the content light, friendly and exciting to draw your followers’ attention.

Being the host of a live webinar helps you learn about your community’s concerns, questions, and uncertainties regarding your brand.

When you go live, you can host around any subject. Whether it’s a new product release, a tour of your company, or a Q&A, you create an opportunity for your audience to connect with you directly and learn more about your business.

Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Advertise before you go live!

?If you want to step into Live Streaming and make it your powerful communication tip with community members, check out phpFox Live Streaming solution!

3. Boost engagement with contests and giveaways

People love free stuff, and if they have something to gain from engaging with your content, they’re going to do it.

Offering your audience something in return for commenting or sharing your content or becoming a follower is a great way to reward and acknowledge engagement.

People, in general, are more than happy to get involved with a brand if it means they will get something from the business. That could be a freebie, discount code, or perhaps a cheaper membership, the choice is yours. Running a simple contest that gets users engaging with your brand is a great way to attract more customers and raise brand awareness.

Top Tip: Try to make your contest as fair as possible when generating a winner. If you have to choose, using a random selection tool is a great way to give all of your users a fair chance of being picked for the prize.

4. Host Question & Answer Sessions

Handing out nuggets of gold to customers is as easy as giving them useful information and answering their queries. Joining Q&A answer sessions is a great way to provide users with value and gets you seen as a helpful brand. If you can offer relevant answers to customer queries and spark discussion with your prospective customers, all before your competitors, you will become the go-to seller.

With consumers becoming more impatient and wanting answers to their queries almost immediately, having a dedicated customer response team is perfect for catering to those needs.

Asking a relevant but fun question is a great way to get your customers to leave a comment on your post. For example, you can create a post that compares two different dresses and ask ‘Which would you rather wear on date night?’ This allows you to incorporate your product into the question while still being playful with your audience.

5. Create Polls & Surveys

Another good practice for creating engaging posts is through polls and surveys. Social polls and surveys are super simple for obtaining that needed community feedback quickly.

Best Practice: Post your poll or survey at the optimal times that your target audience tends to be active.

The data obtained from polls and surveys are great for future marketing material. Airbnb created a poll to learn what it is customers see as a need for their short breaks and escapes. The results show that users prefer mountain views the most with outdoor hot tubs coming in a close second.

From this information, Airbnb can tailor their future holiday deals around properties that include these features to try and improve conversions and sales. Although this particular poll is pretty generic, it seems targeted to get customers interacting with the brand by voting, rather than trying to obtain useful data for future marketing campaigns. If you can use your poll to do both at the same time, even better!

6. Start a debate

As a matter of fact, debates drive some of the most quality conversations you’ll see in a community. They can also create some conflict, which is sometimes necessary for communities. When there’s conflict, and people disagree but work through it and find common ground, their relationships grow stronger. They will feel safer in the community knowing that they can express their opinion without being attacked. But make sure you have clear rules and guidelines in your community, and that you moderate consistently to prevent and remove attacks and abuse.

7. Reply to your audience

Replying to your audience is one of the easiest ways to improve community engagement, but companies often overlook it. Many businesses will post content and leave it at that. This action is a mistake — you want to comment back to your followers and engage them in conversation.

It takes two to have a conversation, so you must spend the time conversing with your audience. If people comment on your content, comment back. Engage in conversation and start a dialogue with your brand.

If you post content on your profile, monitor the comments, and take time to comment back.

Even if someone leaves a comment like “This is awesome,” you can reply and say, “Thanks, we love it too!” Having conversations with your audience is one of the most effective social media engagement strategies because it encourages them to keep engaging with your business. You motivate them to comment on future posts and connect with your company in the future.

Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Use the person’s name when you respond to their comments.

It helps them feel more connected to your business because you’re addressing them personally. Chewy is a great example of addressing the person’s comments while using their name.

8. Encourage readers to Comment, Like, and Share 

There’s a proven tip that when you create a post, always add a call to action at the end of it. You can informally ask your community members to like, comment, and share with their friends. People are much more likely to share a post if you ask them to.

9. Use Emojis in posts

According to OPUSFidelis, using emoticons can increase your community engagement. Each emoticon can increase engagement by a remarkable amount. A smiley face can boost interaction by 25% whereas a grimacing emoticon can increase engagement by 138%. Those who use emoticons in posts tend to see an increase in likes, comments, and shares.

10. Stay on top of the trends

Have you noticed how everybody’s using Instagram’s Reel or Facebook Reel as soon as the feature rolled out?

Staying on top of the trends is a key factor that will determine a brand’s success in audience engagement.

Of course, this doesn’t mean every movement, challenge or feature is right or relevant for every brand or industry. However, your audience is likely to resonate better with content that’s aligned with the current trends.

Staying on top of the trends will not only offer your content a fresher vibe, which will lead to your desired community engagement increase, but it will also help you gain more inspiration for future post creation. Isn’t it interesting?

11. Ask for feedback on how to make the community better

Asking for feedback is a way to get new ideas, but it’s also a great engagement tactic. Members love to be involved in brainstorms and discussions. This will make them feel heard, and important and make them more invested in the success of the community since now they’ve been part of the development process.

Try to be clear when asking for feedback. Don’t just ask how to make your community better. You might say, “What can we do to increase the level of activity in this community?” or “What kind of event would you love to attend for the community?”

12. Host in-person events and empower your members to organize

If you’re hosting an online community and haven’t created opportunities for your members to get together in real life, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Connecting with people in person will allow them to forge stronger relationships, which will bring more energy and engagement back into your online community. This one might seem obvious, but too many people forget about it.

Don’t have the time and resources to host an event? Ask your members to organize a small get-together in their local city. Doesn’t have to be fancy. It can just be coffee, brunch, or a happy hour.

Let’s wrap up!

And there you have it – the big list of our favorite online community engagement tactics. Try each of these activities and see which ones generate the most activity in your community.

Once you find your favorites (and your community members’ favorites!), repeat them. This helps you create a habit of engagement in your members.

The best way to achieve all of your community engagement objectives and build the perfect engagement strategy is to have a deep understanding of your audience.

Collect different information about them, do some research, ask questions, and be sure to listen!

For more ideas around online community engagement platform, visit our blog, where you’ll find practical tips and strategic guidance.

Ready to try Live Streaming? Get started now or contact us to request a demo and ask for advice.

The primary goals of building an online community include increasing engagement, providing better support at reduced costs, building customer loyalty, converting customers into advocates, etc. However, there are people and organizations who have started to make a fortune out of their online communities with proper monetization strategies. Ever wondered if you can do so too?

Can you earn a good income from your online community? The answer is a definite “yes.” But it takes a lot of hard work to know what your community is truly capable of.

In This Article:

1. Why You Should Monetize Your Community Site?
2. How to Monetize Your Website: 7 Actionable Strategies
3. Build Your Online Community with phpFox

Why should you monetize your community site?

You built your online community from day 1 with tons of effort with the primary goal to produce quality content for your audience. The more you engage your community, the more likely they will stick with you and even be willing to pay to receive good content. Don’t overthink that your community members will leave you when you start monetizing. In fact, they would be more than happy to support your business if they think it’s totally worth it.

So here’s the right way: To make money from your online community, first, build your audience. Attract them with great quality content that answers their queries. Remember to be consistent when creating your content and growing your social media base. If you do this month after month, there’s a great chance you’re ready to start monetizing your community.

How to monetize your website: 7 actionable strategies

This guide won’t teach you how to make loads of money in a few clicks, but it can show you how to get tangible ROI from all the hard work you pour into your community. The following 7 strategies will set you on the right track.

Start a paid membership website

This is one of the best ways to monetize an online community. Membership sites allow you to leverage the interest your audience already has in your content.

You can start by creating free content for your website that attracts your audience and gets them hooked. Once you see demand for your content growing, you add a paywall into the mix. This means that people will need to sign up for paid memberships to access certain pieces of exclusive content.

The key is finding the right value to offer to your paid subscribers and one of the best ways to determine your content strategy is by surveying your community members.

Premium Subscriptions

Initially, you can offer a free basic membership to your customers to build your community. As it grows, and members continue to interact and seek out more information, you can offer them fee-based premium content, such as case studies, whitepapers, or exclusive access to podcasts, webinars, etc. This content will be only accessible to paying subscribers. It will keep your members engaged in the community, and earn you more revenue.

Advertising

Advertising is another excellent solution for generating revenue from a community. Nowadays, companies of all sizes want to strengthen their connection with their audience by advertising on various platforms.

If you already have significant traffic and a strong following, then you can appeal to brands in search of promotions.

There are several ways to advertise on your site and make money from it. You can charge fees for displaying banner ads at different positions and pages on site. The pricing for ad display will depend on the traffic of your site.

Another option could be to have sponsored content featured on your site. For instance, if you run a community that’s all about SEO, and a marketing agency wants to advertise on it, they could write a blog post for your community with the top tips on what to look for in an SEO agency.

This sponsored post would link back to the other company’s website, and make the brand look good to your customers.

Host live talks or virtual events

Hosting regular virtual events is another great way to monetize a community. Why? Because it gives you a chance to talk directly to your members. Imagine that, face-to-face communication, who doesn’t love that!

This includes events such as workshops, meetups, and private talks and charging a fee for that. In today’s post-pandemic world, it can also be online events in a webinar format, e.g. via Zoom, or Google Meet. Such events bring your community members together, no matter which part of the world they are in, and your brand gets extra revenue. To begin with, you can organize small meetups, but with the growth of the community, the events can become more ambitious and large-scale.

Organizing events can be time-consuming, but at the same time, it unlocks new opportunities to monetize your community. Some easy ways you can do this are inviting guest speakers, providing live-coaching events, or holding events where members can network for professional development. Besides entrance fees, you can sell merchandise, ad space, sponsorships, and VIP tickets.

Launch online courses

Running online courses is another great way to monetize your users. The global eLearning market is expected to quadruple in size from around $250 billion in 2020 to $1 trillion in 2027.

Online learning has quickly become the go-to mode of learning across the world. If your members already love the tips and tricks that you share in your community, they’ll appreciate the chance to learn more.

The key to success with online courses is picking the right idea. Start by looking at your website analytics and finding out which topics your customers visit most often.

You can also think about the kind of issues that people in your industry face and examine what your competitors are doing to help customers just like yours.

The more you know about your audience, the better.

Remember, when creating an online course, it’s important to go beyond high-level overviews of topics. Get deep into a specific issue or concern that your customer has and deliver the value they can’t get anywhere else.

Extra resources like videos, quizzes, and tools that your audience can use to increase their understanding can be very helpful.

Sell branded merchandise

Selling merchandise that showcases your branding can drive extra income for your business in two key ways: First, you gain a profit from the sale of each branded item you offer. Second, those branded items provide advertising for your community when members use or wear your merchandise out in the world where other potential members will see them.

With an emotional connection created, your audience will be likely to show their support of your brand by buying products with your logo or colors on them. If you’ve ever proudly worn a customized t-shirt or hat with the name of your favorite brand, you’ll know how valuable branded merchandise can be.

For instance, Netflix opens a merch shop selling goods related to movies. Thanks to print-on-demand, you can allow your customers to choose from a range of branded products, from mugs and hoodies to pieces of home artwork.

Accept donations

Lastly, if you don’t want to sell to your community, and you can’t think of any branded products or specific items that you’d like to advertise, consider donations. There’s no shame in asking your readers to support you. Pro gamers, writers, artists, and other creative types will often have a cohort of raving fans ready to donate some cash.

Donations are all about helping a company to grow. If you stand for values that you believe that your customers appreciate, then they may be willing to donate to help your business grow.

To receive donations, you need to have a deep emotional connection with your audience that generates some intangible value. For instance, you might be able to get donations if you convince your audience that your content can help them to improve their knowledge. You could also convince people to donate so that you can continue creating the videos that they find entertaining.

It’s extremely easy to implement donation opportunities into your community, as all you need to do is create a donation form using a form builder. Remember to thank your audience for what they give you. A bonus sticker on their member account that shows they’ve donated could be a great way to show your appreciation.

The best place to build an online community for your brand is phpFox

We hope that the article has been helpful and now you have all the necessary information to turn your online community into an additional revenue channel.

phpFox is a leader in the world of online community building and has all the tools for you to create, grow, and monetize your community, instantly available on the web, iOS, and Android.

Ready to start building your successful community? Start a free trial now!

?Get started now or contact us to request a demo and ask for advice.