So, you wanna be a Community Manager? Or, maybe you’ve run into one and you’re curious about what they do and whether it could be something you could do too.
Googling “community management” you’ll run into the usual suspects: The Wikipedia page, Hubspot and a few other marketing tools that are writing about community management because they’re trying to sell their services.
“Community Manager” title has been around for decades and has been most often associated with online games (I have many a fond memory of interacting with great “GM” or gamemaster in MMORPGs of old). I’ve yet to find when this title was first used but what’s more important is the skillset for community management has been around for longer than the Internet.
Without deferring to the usual Google search results, I would define a Community Manager as someone who’s responsible for a community of people, most often online, who gather around a shared interest.
I start with a broad definition because communities themselves cover a broad array of interests. Here are a few examples:
If a public figure, group, product, business or franchise exists, there will be a community for it and usually across multiple platforms.