Are you looking for an online community manager for your business and not sure what skills they need?
We’ve broken down the 5 skills that every community manager should have.
1. Good Writing & Communication Skills
Good communication is an essential part of being a community manager online.
Not only does a community manager create and post content, they also respond to comments, write clever captions and interact with other accounts.
“They need to be able to communicate effectively with customers or members. Getting information into the community and out to members is a crucial element to making sure people stay informed and engaged.” – Higher Logic
2. Data Analysis Skills
As community managers, we’re constantly collecting data. Data about images, hashtags, captions, comments – they’re all an important part of learning about our audiences and what they need. But data is of no use unless we can analyze it and use it to our advantage.
Having good data analysis skills means that your social media manager knows how to take information about your audience and apply it to the content they create.
A good data analyzer will look to information gathered through your channels to act today and also make projections about future needs.
3. Organization Skills
Social media managers need to be organized.
Social media managers often juggle multiple platforms and marketing tasks and they need to keep on top of them in an organized manner.
Timing announcements to go out at the same time across platforms, making sure blogs are up to date and scheduling tweets months in advance are just some of the things they do on the daily.
Since you don’t want a social media manager that gets easily overwhelmed, finding one with good organizational skills should be a top priority!
4. People Skills
Needless to say, your community manager needs to like people.
Online community managers need to be obsessive about your followers and what makes them tick. It’s not always positive feedback they’re dealing with, they also need to be able to handle negative feedback with care.
“Diplomacy, public relations and business development skills round out a great community manager in their role as ambassador and sales person for the community.” – Vision Critical
Running any good online community is about treating people with respect and understanding. So look for a manager that really gets what people are all about!
5. Design Skills
Your community manager does not need to be a Photoshop wizard, but having basic knowledge about how to brighten up, crop and edit the size of images is a must!
Also, “Hootsuite Enhance is a free tool that takes the pain out of remembering optimal image sizes for every different social network and can help automatically crop and store images for all your social media accounts. Easy peasy.” – Hootsuite
So even if they don’t have a degree in graphic design, they can still use their knowledge along with other tools for creating better social graphics.
Good online community managers don’t just have a handle on the latest app or platform, they also have a host of interpersonal and non-social media skills.
As your industry begins to take social media more seriously, be on the lookout for individuals who can handle the task at hand. Even with no prior social media experience, with these skills, your community manager will be off to a great start!
Need help managing your online community? Not to brag, but our team has a handle on all these skills and more! Contact us today to set up a FREE discovery session today!
