Creative agency glossaryRoles and Job Titles

Community Manager

A community manager is the person who speaks for a brand in its online spaces, answering, moderating and starting the conversations that turn an audience into a community.

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What does a community manager do?

A community manager runs the human side of a brand's presence. Where a social media manager plans and publishes the content, the community manager lives in the replies, the comments, the direct messages, the forum, the Discord server and the fan groups, talking with the people the content reaches. They answer questions, defuse complaints, welcome newcomers, enforce the rules, spot the fans worth elevating, feed what they hear back to the brand and set the tone of the whole space by the way they speak in it.

The role exists wherever a brand has an audience that talks back: consumer brands, games, sports teams, media, software products and creators. Its roots are in the forums and fan communities of the early web, and it has grown as every platform became a conversation.

Why it matters

Why a community manager matters

A brand's community is the only audience it does not have to pay for. People who feel heard come back, defend the brand when it stumbles, bring friends and produce content of their own, and the community manager is the person who makes them feel heard. The reverse is also true: a brand that broadcasts and never answers trains its audience to stop talking, and a comment section left to itself turns hostile quickly.

The community manager is also the brand's earliest warning system. They see the complaint before it becomes a thread, the joke before it becomes a meme, the product fault before it reaches support. Brands that listen to their community managers find out what their customers think in real time; brands that do not find out in the quarterly research.

In practice

How a community manager works in practice

  1. 01

    The day begins with the inbox and the mentions. The community manager works through comments, messages and tags, answering in the brand's voice, escalating anything that needs customer service or legal, and removing what breaks the rules. Alongside the reactive work there is proactive work: starting conversations, replying to creators and fans, running polls and prompts, seeding the community with the content that gets people talking and spotting user-generated content worth sharing.

  2. 02

    The manager writes or maintains the community guidelines and the tone of voice guidelines for replies, which are different from the brand's campaign voice: shorter, warmer and faster. They use social listening tools to track sentiment and mentions beyond the brand's own channels, and they report regularly on what the community is saying, what it wants and where it is growing.

  3. 03

    During launches and live moments the role becomes real-time. A product drop, a game, a reveal or a crisis all produce a surge of conversation, and the community manager is the one answering as it happens, often with a prepared set of responses and a direct line to whoever can make decisions.

  4. 04

    Two records keep the role defensible. The first is an escalation map: which complaints go to customer service, which threats go to counsel, which journalists go to communications, each with a named person and a response window the community manager can promise in public. The second is a moderation log, where every removed comment and every ban is recorded with its reason, so a decision can be explained a month later when the person who made it has forgotten why.

At RIOT

Community managers at RIOT

Our work for the Washington Commanders was built to be talked about: the 2022 rebrand film, the Major Tuddy mascot reveal and the Scary Season social content all landed in front of one of the most vocal fan bases in American sports. Work like that is made with the community manager in mind. The reveal is the start of the conversation, not the end of it, and the people answering the fans the next morning need content that gives them something to say.

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What people get wrong about community managers

Confusing the community manager with the social media manager. One publishes, the other converses, and a brand that gives both jobs to one junior hire gets a feed that is posted to and never answered. The second mistake is treating the role as customer service with emojis. Support solves a problem; community management builds a relationship, and the skills overlap less than they appear to. The third is isolating the role from the people who make decisions. A community manager who hears everything and can change nothing becomes a shock absorber, and they burn out.

Related terms

Social Media ManagerCommunity EngagementSocial ListeningUser-Generated Content (UGC)

Questions

People also ask

What is the difference between a community manager and a social media manager?

The social media manager plans, creates and schedules the brand's content and reports on its performance. The community manager handles the conversation that content produces: replies, messages, moderation and relationships with fans. Small brands combine the roles; larger ones separate them because both are full-time.

What skills does a community manager need?

Writing that sounds like a person, patience, judgment about when to engage and when to step back, familiarity with the platforms and their cultures, and the ability to stay calm when a thread turns hostile. Knowing the brand's audience as well as the audience knows itself is the real qualification.

How much does a community manager earn?

In the US the role typically pays a mid five-figure salary, rising for senior or specialist roles in games, sports and technology. Agencies offer community management as a retainer service, usually alongside social content.

Does every brand need a community manager?

Every brand with an audience that talks back needs someone doing the job. A small brand can fold it into the social role; a brand with a large or passionate following, or a launch that will generate conversation, needs a dedicated person or the conversation will manage itself.

Next to it in the glossary

  1. Chief Experience Officer (CXO)A chief experience officer (CXO) is the executive responsible for how every interaction with a brand feels, from the first ad to the last support call.
  2. Client Services CoordinatorA client services coordinator is the person on an agency account team who keeps timelines, deliverables and client requests tracked and moving, so the account lead can focus on the relationship.
  3. Client Services DirectorA client services director leads an agency's client relationships, owning the accounts, the people who run them and the health of the business they bring in.
  4. Content Moderation SpecialistA content moderation specialist reviews the comments, posts and submissions around a brand and decides what stays, what goes and what needs a reply, according to the brand's values and the platform's rules.
  5. Content Production ManagerA content production manager runs the machine that turns a brand's content plan into finished work, coordinating people, budgets, platforms and timelines so content ships on schedule.
  6. Content StrategistA content strategist decides what a brand should say, in what form, on which channels and how often, so that every piece of content serves a plan rather than a deadline.

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