It’s becoming essential for brands to engage with their audience online as people spend more time there. Many brands have already adapted to leverage various online marketing tools and engage actively with their users and potential users. Social media is at the forefront of digital marketing actions as it’s where users and followers engage, find the latest information, and connect with brands or people. But how do brands leverage social media to communicate with users, acquire new customers, and create long-term loyalty? That’s where a community manager comes in.
What is a community manager?
A community manager is a professional marketer who manages and develops a brand’s online community. They build, grow, and manage the brand’s online community by connecting with users and followers on social media. They use various techniques and tools to monitor what is being said about a brand online in blog articles, forums, and social media posts to ensure the brand maintains a positive image and engages with users to provide added value.
Here’s are some of the core responsibilities of a community manager:
- Creating engagement: They start conversations, reply to comments, and ensure your community always feels heard and valued.
- Moderation: They maintain a positive, respectful space. When they need to, they remove spam, resolve conflicts, and set the tone.
- Listening: They pay close attention to what your audience says, identifying common pain points, desires, and trends. Since they regularly engage with the audience, they can help the marketing team find the most effective marketing messages.
- Advocacy: They become your brand’s voice in the community. And the community’s voice in your company.
- Content creation: They help to create social media posts, newsletters, or events that keep your audience coming back.
- Influencer collaboration: Community managers can engage with influencers to get them to talk about your brand so you can reach more people and acquire new customers.
Why use a community manager?
Consider your favorite brands and the most successful ones. They are certainly not just selling you a product. But are constantly engaging with you, talking to you. They have a community vouching for them and doing their marketing for them.
Here’s why a community manager can help you grow your business:
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Improve customer loyalty:
People stay when they feel seen and heard. A community manager will ensure users and customers feel heard and seen.
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User-generated content and word-of-mouth:
A community of promoters loves to create content, share it, and recommend the brand they are passionate about. Your loyal users and customers are your best promoters. Learn how to leverage them so they promote you.
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Get user feedback:
With a community manager, you’ll have feedback on what’s working and not working for customers. It’s a great way to ensure you’re always providing a great experience and gives you direction when you need to make improvements.
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Control a crisis:
If something goes wrong, a community manager can step in early to calm things down and manage the situation before it blows up.
A great community will elevate your brand by talking about it, promoting it, defending it, and always highlighting it. A community manager will not only build a strong community. They will keep them engaged and loyal.
What skills does a community manager need?
People skills
A community manager will be engaging with your audience regularly. So, they need great people skills to engage positively with users. This is an essential skill to have.
Communication skills
They need to be capable of writing well and communicating clearly with their audience. Whether it’s blog posts, social media, or newsletters, they need to know the correct vocabulary, tone, and approach to engage audiences positively.
Being organized
They need to track what is said online, feedback, manage posting content across platforms, and measure results. Community managers need to multi-task and be organized.
Data analysis skills
To ensure community managers are performing well, they keep track of their results across various platforms. They track key metrics that give insight into what is working and what needs to be improved.
Creativity
The best community managers find creative ways to keep audiences engaged. They use fun ways to get people to talk and exchange. And the content they post is insightful and provides added value.
Technological literacy
A community manager may leverage various platforms with different codes and rules. They need to leverage each different platform and understand how they work to generate the best results is essential.
Where to find a community manager?
There are many different places to find a community manager based on your needs.
ComeUp
ComeUp is a freelance marketplace platform where you can find online services to complete all your projects. It’s the perfect place to find highly skilled freelance professionals. There are freelancers with all kinds of expertise. Including community managers. Find the community manager you need to manage your online communities on ComeUp. You can contact the sellers on the platform before placing an order. It’s a great way to see if they are the right person for the job, and if your needs are slightly different from their services, you can exchange. So, the seller can make a personalized offer based on your needs.
Other freelance marketing platforms
ComeUp is not the only freelance marketplace platform you can use to find a freelance community manager. There are many other platforms, like Fiverr, Upwork, or TopTal. We recommend trying a few platforms until you find the one that’s right for you.
If you don’t want to use a freelance platform, you can use LinkedIn. There are two ways to use the platform. You can either post a job that people can apply to complete. Or, you can contact a few community managers you find on the platform. Be careful. Without a freelance marketplace platform, you may need to ensure there’s a contract and that both parties are crystal clear on expectations.
Your own audience
If you’re not going to look for a freelancer on a freelance platform and you want to find someone to hire through different channels instead. You can find a freelance community manager by asking your audience. Using one of your customers might make you lose a customer, but you’ll gain someone who knows your business best to complete your project. Hiring users has become increasingly popular as they know the product best, and it usually makes the onboarding much smoother.
Why use ComeUp to find your community manager?
ComeUp is not the only freelance marketplace available. It’s not even the largest or most famous one. But ComeUp is a great platform to order your first freelance service. The platform is known for having a more reasonable commission (so the freelancer you choose will earn most of what you pay), better working conditions, and a helpful support team ready to help at all times.
In fact, in 2023, ComeUp scored among the freelance platforms with the best working conditions by the Oxford Internet Institute’s Fairwork cloudwork study. The platform is continuously working with Fairwork to improve the working conditions of all its users.
In addition, ComeUp has one of the best customer support teams that can help you anytime you have an issue. The support team is one of the main reasons the platform is rated 4.2 stars out of five on Trustpilot (as of April 2024).
Besides that, there are a lot of other reasons to choose ComeUp. There are many skilled freelance professionals on the platform, and the order process guarantees you get, precisely what you order. When you order a service, you pay for it right away. But the money is placed in an escrow account. The freelancer will only receive the money once they have completed the work and you have approved it. So you’re sure to get what you ordered.
Conclusion: Find a community manager on ComeUp to grow your business
Now you know what is a community manager and how they can help you grow your business by leveraging your community and turning it into a strong marketing tool. Find the community manager to grow your brand on ComeUp. You’ll find a professional freelance community manager who delivers the best results. Try ComeUp today and find your community manager!
