What is Community Management - The Art of Building Loyal and Engaged Communities
Have you noticed how the strongest brands today don’t just sell products? They invest in building communities.
The smartest brands truly understand the importance of having a loyal fanbase. An engaged community attracts new customers, engages them and also turns them into loyal brand advocates.
That’s the reason why community management has become a must have for every business. It’s a growth engine.
What is Community Management?
Community management is the practice of building, growing and nurturing an online or offline space where your customers and audience connect with each other and your brand.
It’s more than moderating a forum. It’s about creating trust, dialogue and belonging. When you do it right - it becomes the foundation of organic growth.
Why Community Management Matters for Business?
Not sure if it’s worth your time? Take a look:
Customer loyalty: Who doesn’t want customers to feel a sense of belonging with your brand.
Organic growth: User-generated content is a goldmine of organic traffic. Its power to target long-tail keywords wins any day over a 10,000 word all-fluff article.
Feedback: Regular businesses ask for feedback, smart businesses get it on autopilot. The key to making better products and delivering a great service is listening to user-feedback. Communities help you gather real-world feedback directly from your customers; without any middlemen.
When done right - a strong community can help reduce churn, increase referrals and power long-term retention.
Different Types of Community Management
1. Customer Support Communities
Customer support communities are self-service hubs where members help each other troubleshoot, share solutions and swap advice.
Instead of waiting from your support team after 24 hours; members get help from other members. The result? Faster resolutions, lower support costs and of course - happier customers.
The best example of this is SaaS businesses that build support forums around their businesses. For example, Asana the productivity and project management SaaS invests in Asana Forums to lower support costs and build a loyal fanbase that is ready to help others.
2. Product Advocacy and Evangelism
Community management focused on advocacy and evangelism turns users into brand evangelists. These are your power users who love your product and naturally recommend it to their colleagues and friends.
Every business aspires to build such a community and those who succeed see a massive RoI.
3. Knowledge Sharing Communities
Knowledge sharing communities are designed for collaboration and exchange of expertise. Members learn together, share best practices, tips and grow professionally.
A classic example of this is the Laracasts community forums. It’s built around Laravel Framework. Members of Laracasts answer questions, share short tutorials and even help other developers solve coding problems.
4. Internal Employee Communities
Not every community needs to be public-facing. A lot of startup teams have Slack Groups for their employees. These groups are designed for collaboration and culture. Think of it as a digital town hall.
Skills Required for Community Management
Community management requires a mix of hard and soft skills. A good community manager requires technical knowledge as well as great communication and empathy to connect with people from diverse backgrounds and expectations.
If you are interested in learning, I recommend reading: Essential Community Management Skills. We discuss top 21 skills a community manager needs to have to succeed in the role.
Roles and Responsibilities of a Community Manager
It’s important to hire the right community manager to building and maintain the right community atmosphere. Your community manager has the power to grow a community from scratch as a growth and retention engine and also turn your thriving community into a ghost-town.
Read - What Does a Community Manager Do?
Parting Thoughts
I hope you now have a better knowledge of community management. Community management as a profession as seen a growing demand after 2020. If you have any questions about community management or overall community building as a profession, do ask them below.
