A Community Manager is a real spokesperson for your company who has the task of broadcasting your brand image on the internet, and increasing and retaining your audience through a relationship of trust.
Freelance Community Managers (or CMs) have the task of ensuring the digital visibility and referral rate of your brand on the internet using the various webmarketing levers (social networks, websites, mailings, search engines…). They watch over your e-reputation by monitoring what is being said about your company and playing the role of moderator when managing a crisis or bad buzz. Moreover, in addition to bringing a company's desired and its perceived image closer together, an e-reputation can be a lever for other communication strategies: marketing, corporate influence.
CMs create and publish relevant tweets on the web, take part in conversations with your community, develop partnerships with influencers to attract new customers and manage the budget for paid advertisements on the social networks (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn…).
In general, a Community Manager implements a content strategy that will have been defined by a digital communication consultant or the Social Media Manager of the company, by either creating the content himself or employing a graphic designer and/or editor.
The task of a Community Manager is to manage the presence of the brand on the internet and to participate in exchanges with its customers and prospects. A CM must therefore be responsive and have good relational skills. He must also have with a good overall education, be creative and on the lookout for the latest web trends in order to animate and develop his community with a content strategy that matches the branding of the company.
A Community Manager wears several hats. He plays the role of content manager, project leader, community facilitator and web editor. He uses various digital communication tools (Hashtags, Webmarketing, Benchmark, Facebook Ads, competition games, mailings…) and the tools necessary to monitor and analyse the traffic on social media (KPIs, analytics, Hootsuite, business intelligence tools, natural referencing…).
A freelance Community Manager can be involved at any stage during the life of a company. This means from the time of its creation to publicise its brand and become known, and then throughout the commercial development of the company with the creation and animation of communities on social networks, to the publication of content in agreement with the editorial line and finally, the management of partnerships.
Choosing a good Community Manager is essential. Indeed, your e-reputation will depend on the actions he implements to develop your digital communication and on his ability to respond sympathetically to your followers and customers.
Empathy and common sense are life-skills (or soft skills) which are just as important as his technical knowledge.