By esantiago@hubspot.com (Erica Santiago)

A few years ago, I had to manage a Facebook community for a TV station I was working for as a digital journalist. It was a completely new experience, and there were definitely times I stumbled.

Community management challenges are real and can be hard to navigate if you’re new to the field.

Fortunately, I gathered valuable information from experts, including a fellow HubSpotter, so you can be the best community manager you can be and avoid some of my blunders.

If you‘re an organization looking for a community manager, these challenges and their solutions will help you understand the skills to look for when hiring one. Let’s dive in!

Top 8 Community Management Challenges

Here are several community management challenges and how the experts overcome them.

1. Community managers need to be good at many things.

It takes a lot to build and manage a community around a business, so an excellent community manager will need to have a diverse set of skills.

I spoke about this with Hubspot‘s principal marketing of community (and fellow ’Erica’), Erica Finley.

“Community managers often mediate community conflicts and may be required to draft crisis communications,” Finley says. “They must be curious and adept at conducting research online and via people-centric methods like focus groups.”

And community managers aren’t just managers.

“They are content creators who may be called to create entire calendars based on a specific persona or theme,” she says. “They are public speakers who often serve as emcees and facilitators for community events.”

If you want to become a community manager, consider diversifying your skills. Some valuable skills to possess would be writing and public speaking. You should also be an adept researcher, content creator, and social media user.

2. Some leadership teams won‘t ’get’ what you do.

Community isn’t new, and 86% of social media marketers believe having an active community is critical to a brand’s success. However, community management is pretty new to marketing and less strictly defined in business settings versus sales or digital marketing.

As a result, community managers sometimes encounter marketing leaders who need help understanding their jobs or the value of community management.

“Community pros often have to work harder to prove their value and contribution to the bottom line and should work with other internal teams to illustrate how they amplify their efforts,” Finley explains.

So, track your work and pay close attention to metrics, such as the number of people who visited your company’s website after a community page post or the profits that followed a community management initiative or event.

And, like Finley says, work closely with other teams and get them on board with your vision so you can better illustrate your value.

3. Scaling is hard.

Finley explains, “More often than not, community teams are small, and sometimes, they’re a team of one. As your community grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to respond to each message, nurture your members, think proactively about your roadmap, and …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron