A great online community manager can transform your business, creating a thriving space where your audience connects, engages, and ultimately becomes loyal customers.
Or, it can be a complete waste of your time and money.
I say this as an online community strategist myself, and I’m fully aware this post may seem like a counterintuitive career move. But too many business owners hire community managers who don’t deliver meaningful results, and I’d like to help you avoid that mistake.
What Is An Online Community Manager?
The first thing to understand is that a community manager’s job probably isn’t what you think it is.
An online community isn’t just a group of people who follow you online. It’s not about accumulating members or generating constant activity. Those are tactics, not goals.
There’s a LOT of hype around online communities, and it’s easy to convince yourself you need one to succeed. It’s tempting to compare your membership numbers, engagement rates, and activity levels to competitors and believe your community strategy is failing.
But unless your community exists as a public service, your true goal isn’t community success for its own sake. It’s to build relationships that support your business objectives, whether that’s selling products, creating opportunities, or furthering a cause.
A good community manager knows the point of an online community is to accomplish a real business goal, not just to be “good” at managing a group.
So before you hire a community manager, make sure they can explain how their approach will help you accomplish your actual goals and not just improve your community metrics.
Community Metrics Don’t Always Matter
Once you recognize that the community itself isn’t the goal, you’ll discover that many community metrics are often misleading vanity metrics.
If your goal is to sell more courses, then it’s not your community size that matters. The true measure of success lies in how many courses you sell through that community.
A good community manager knows the point of an online community is to accomplish a real business goal, not just to be good at managing a group. — Tonya Kubo Share on XSome community metrics correlate to business outcomes that actually matter, but often they don’t. You can triple your group membership, but if those members don’t convert into customers, then who cares?
That’s not a community success story, but too often it’s presented like it is by community managers who don’t actually know how to use communities to drive truly meaningful results for your business.
Community Strategy Is More Valuable Than Community Management
Most people overpay for community management and underpay for community strategy.
I’ve seen countless proposals from agencies offering to manage a business owner’s online community. These proposals typically include detailed plans about content posting schedules, welcome messages for new members, and comment moderation guidelines.
You know what’s often missing from these proposals?
An explanation of the strategic approach to the community, how it will help the business accomplish specific goals, who the target audience is, and how this investment will further the business’s objectives. The proposals lack any real strategic vision. This is true of most community management proposals I’ve seen.
And if all you are paying for is the proper care and feeding of your people, where is the strategy driving how the community is cared for coming from? If it’s not the community manager you’ve hired, then it’s either you or it’s non-existent.
Community managers often sell you on lightening your load by taking over the day-to-day tasks that drain you. But in doing so, they ignore the importance of community strategy. While posting content and moderating comments in volume can be time consuming, it’s not a complicated set of tasks.
What’s hard is developing a community strategy that uses that engagement to accomplish your actual business goals. Make sure you don’t pay for community management without a clear strategy behind it.
Hire A Community Manager Who’s More Than Just A Community Expert
Non-community experience is as important as community experience.
Since the strategy piece is more crucial than the management piece, look for someone who understands your industry as well as they understand community-building. Just because a community manager knows the latest Facebook Groups features or Circle platform updates doesn’t mean they understand how your industry works and what your customers are looking for.
The latter is just as important — maybe more so — than the former. The community manager you hire can only be as good as their understanding of your business.
A Community Manager Is An Amplifier, Not A Magician
If your product, service, or creation doesn’t provide actual value, the best community manager in the world won’t be able to help you.
Online communities aren’t shortcuts to success — they are a vehicle to amplify things that deserve amplification and deepen relationships with people who already see your value. So if you hire a community expert to help you, make sure what you give them to work with is worth people’s time and attention.
Your Community Manager Should Give You A Conversion Strategy
A community strategy without a conversion strategy is incomplete.
Your online community is an entry point or a nurturing ground. It’s the beginning — or continuation — of a relationship with your customer and audience. But that relationship has to ultimately lead somewhere. To a purchase or an action. To a conversion that supports your business. A community strategy that doesn’t include a conversion strategy is a beginning without an end.
The greatest community in the world is meaningless to your business if it doesn’t lead to anything tangible.
So make sure you hire a community manager who can not only tell you how to create engagement in your community, but also has a plan to convert that engagement into business results. Or, at the very least, is forthright about the limitations to their scope of service.
The greatest community in the world is meaningless to your business if it doesn't lead to anything tangible. — Tonya Kubo Share on XHow I Can Help You With Your Community Strategy
In case you think otherwise, I believe online communities are incredibly valuable tools when used the right way.
Since 2007, I’ve specialized in online community design and development. People hire me and my team to design strategies for their free and paid groups and — when it makes sense — to manage the proper care and feeding of their members, so they can focus on other aspects of their business.
If what I’ve said above resonates with you and you’d like help approaching online community building in an effective way, there are three ways I can help:
- Get a community strategy designed specifically for your business goals. We’ll work together to create a strategic plan that aligns your community with your business objectives.
- Have my team manage your community with purpose. We’ll implement your strategy with intentional management that focuses on both engagement and conversion.
- Learn how to do it yourself. Through coaching and resources like my Community Content Calendar, I can equip you with the tools to build and grow your own thriving community.
If you’re interested in exploring any of these options, book a call so we can discuss your specific needs and determine the best approach for your business.
Ready for the next step? If you’ve decided hiring a community manager makes sense for your business, read my comprehensive guide: Hiring an Online Community Manager: What You Need to Know. It covers everything from costs and expectations to avoiding common mistakes in the hiring process.
Online communities are incredibly valuable business tools when used the right way. — Tonya Kubo Share on X
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