Community Manager Job Description (WORK AT HOME!)
Posted by:
Abbey Ashley
Looking to add Community Management to your list of services (or just wondering what is an actual community manager job description!?)
You’re in the right place, sister.
I’ve been training virtual assistants for years now and for the most part, I tell my students to start out with “general” services.
Those would include things like data entry, simple graphics, social media scheduling, appointment setting, inbox management, etc.
But every once in a while, y’all get zealous (and I LOVE IT).
If you’ve been wanting to add more HIGH-END services to your repertoire… a community management job could be just what you’ve been looking for.
Do you love getting to know new people and getting them engaged?
Do you love to get creative with graphics and ‘catchy’ content?
Does putting the details of an event together sound exciting?
If the extroverted side of you feels like you are exploding into 1000 pieces of shiny glitter right now, a community manager job is something that you really need to look into! Let’s jump in!
Table of Contents
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The Facebook Group Opportunity
I remember when I hit that first 100 members inside of my Facebook group. Wow, was I so incredibly excited! Now, we accept around 100 new members a DAY inside of that same group.
As somebody who owns a massive Facebook group, I can tell you it can be SO FREAKING amazing.
I can also tell you that it can be INCREDIBLY overwhelming.
There’s a lot that happens inside of a Facebook group that you have to attend to. Small business owners, especially those with really large groups, feel this pain all too well.
Within a Facebook group, the community manager job includes accepting new members into the group, finding out who’s going to be a good fit, weeding out spam (because unfortunately, all groups have spammers that try to come into them). You could also be releasing new content, posting, or commenting on the posts of other members.
Overwhelmed clients with Facebook groups are thinking, dang, this is a lot of work!
Yep… and it can be too much to bear without a community manager to help!***Cha-ching*** may have just happened inside your head. Don’t worry… it’s a valid thing to get excited about 🙂
People who have Facebook groups need community managers to help them manage that community.
Why do business owners have Facebook Groups?
I personally believe that Facebook groups can be incredibly powerful for business owners. They engage your community, build trust and create a sense of belonging for customers and potential customers.
Here is what we do know. Facebook groups are not going away. In fact, Facebook is putting even more emphasis on groups this year than they ever have.
- There were Facebook commercials in Super Bowl LIV (2020) that had a sole focus on groups.
- There is a new “Groups” tab on Facebook mobile and it’s one of the quick features that you can go to.
Facebook groups are really where Facebook wants people to be joining and they’re going to be highlighting them more and more.
In my opinion, if a business owner doesn’t have a group, now is the perfect time to start one.
So, the question is ‘Where does that leave us?’
Answer: With community manager jobs to be seized!
I’m going to show you how you can offer this amazing service. Part of your community manager job description will be helping your clients run their Facebook group in a way that’s not only easy to do, but in a way that doesn’t take up all of your (or your clients’) time.
Tip: want to learn how you can leverage Facebook for not only your clients but also your OWN virtual assistant business? Check out out my post, Facebook Marketing For A Remote Virtual Assistant.
Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more information about working from home!
Community Manager Job Description
A community manager job description is pretty obvious from the title. They manage an online community.
And… this post is done! J/K.
There are a couple of things about online communities that I want to point out here:
1. Online communities don’t necessarily have to be housed on Facebook.
Community managers can manage Facebook groups, but they could also manage other closed communities as well. Examples include clients that may have their own membership site, website, or another social network like LinkedIn groups. (Yup, I have LinkedIn tips for you too, jump on over HERE.)
So “community manager” doesn’t always necessarily mean “Facebook group manager.” That’s important to clarify.
2. Managed communities may be free OR paid groups.
Our community manager (you may have met her before) is amazing. She manages our free massive community of 40,000+ Virtual Assistants, our VA Savvies group. (Shameless plug: You should all be in that group. It is likewise amazing.)
Our community manager manages both our free community and our paid communities. The paid communities are smaller communities, but they get different types of attention.
She’s not answering every single question in our massive group. That would take ALL day err-day.
But inside of our smaller paid communities, she’s really, really engaging in them. She’s giving lots of feedback.
When somebody joins a paid group, she has to make sure they’re a paying member.
But at the same time, the big group has its own set of challenges when she’s accepting people into that Facebook group. She’s having to make sure these people are real people.
I just want to point out here, that there are free groups AND paid groups. In your community manager job / position, you can be doing one or both.
Community Manager Job Duties
Ok, so what will you be doing day to day as a community manager?
Well, your tasks could vary, but one of the first things you may have to do is accept new people into the Facebook group. And if you have a paid community, you’ll have to make sure that the member requests are actually from an active paying member.
You could be moderating the group. You could be answering questions. Your job also may include things like posting graphics and engaging in threads. The frequency of your engagement will depend on how much your client WANTS you to engage.
As a community manager, you could even be going live or scheduling guests to go live in the group.
Or if your group is a really large group (like what we have over in the VA Savvies), you may have additional group moderators. The VA Savvies group has other admins in the group apart from the community manager that help to manage it. So as a community manager, you could actually be managing the other moderators.
Tips and Best Practices for Community Managers
The Virtual Savvy has been running the VA Savvies Facebook group since 2016. I have some tips on what we have done to make it such a massively successful but also healthy (!) group that really contributes to our business.
At the end of the day, you want to create an awesome Facebook group that becomes an asset and not a liability for your business.
I want you to consider these tips and best practices if you’re wanting to start your own group or if you are planning to become a community manager. Take this as advice on how to do it the right way. Learn from my mistakes and from my successes as far as how to manage a massive group.
1. Adhere to a strict acceptance policy for your group.
It’s really easy when you’re first starting a group to just let it be a completely open public group, not a private group where anyone can join.
I highly suggest starting your group out as a private group.
It can still be visible to the public, but people need to request to join.
One of the reasons I recommend this is because you want some kind of filtering system for who’s coming into your group.
We do this by taking a look at their profile picture, we just want to know if they have one. If someone doesn’t have a profile picture, they are not allowed in our group.
It doesn’t mean that the profile picture even has to be their face. This picture could be a picture of a cat or some cake or something. That’s fine. It doesn’t really matter.
A lot of times if somebody doesn’t have a profile picture it is a big warning sign that they are a brand new Facebook user. You can even go to their profile and see how long ago they created their account.
So, why is that important?
It’s important because we’ve noticed a trend that a lot of times these spammers are fake accounts or people who just opened an account yesterday or the day before.
You need to know if the profile looks like a real person, not just somebody who created an account just so they could go spam Facebook groups.
That’s what you’re looking for—you want to know if this is a real person.
Having a stricter acceptance policy also includes asking a few questions before a member joins a group.
Facebook has an amazing feature where you can actually ask the individual who’s wanting to join your group questions.
Here are the questions we ask before someone becomes a member of our free group:
Getting somebody to actually answer our question with a full sentence shows us that this is a real person.
Having those prequalifying questions to ask members before they join your group is something that I highly recommend!
I had a group before the VA Savvies group and I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t have a strict adherence policy. Honestly, I kind of just let anybody in who wanted in and REALLY quickly guys, it turned into a total Spam Fest.
Ew.
Members were promoting their stuff left and right, doing their own live streams, posting political rants, and like all these things that were not at all the purpose of the group.
Spoiler Alert: I had to shut that mess down.
Please learn from my first mistake and go about it the right way from the very beginning.
2. Run a contest to grow the group.
This is easy to do, especially if this individual already has an email list or a following somewhere else.
You might say, “Once this group hits 100 members or 1,000 members, we’re going to do a giveaway.”
It could be as simple as a gift card. It could be a course or some other product that you or your client have, but provide some kind of an incentive to get people to join the group.
Again, I don’t recommend just adding people to your group. It’s one of my pet peeves that people just blindly add others to groups.
Don’t do that. Nobody likes that.
Instead, have some kind of an incentive where people will want to join your group. And then once they join, especially right after the contest, be super active. Create posts that are ‘questions and answer’ type posts. That’s going to help you really grow the culture and the health of the group with purposeful engagement.
3. Use your group as a list builder.
This is just kind of a sneaky thing that I’ve actually been doing in the last year that has been huge.
Listen up, y’all. With this one tip, I’ve added over 12,000 people to my email list.
I’ve started asking the question, “Would you like my <insert lead magnet here>?”
The freebie that I personally offer is my Virtual Assistant Checklist and Starter Kit. So I ask, “Would you like my Virtual Assistant Checklist and Starter Kit? If so, drop your email below and I’ll send it to you.”
Basically, this person is opting in to join your list.
I have a secret weapon for capturing email addresses within my group.
My friend Arne Giske create Group Funnels and I highly suggest it!
Arne has a massive group himself that’s super healthy and contributes to the success of his business. He’s been able to grow his email list through growing his group with this awesome tool.
Check it out, because if you manage a massive Facebook group, it can be a very helpful tool. It might not be for people just starting out, but the idea of collecting emails from your group is awesome.
This is how a group can become an asset instead of a liability.
4. Have amazing rules.
That might sound really, really lame and I fully acknowledge that.
We have created rules for our Facebook group and we really strictly adhere to them, because there are just things we straight up do not tolerate. You can actually go right now and view our group rules.
Or check out the shortened version of them here:
There is a no promo rule inside of the group. (I’ll get to that more in a minute.)
We also just don’t accept rudeness. One strike and you’re out.
Mama don’t play…
The point of having rules is so that the group experience is good for everyone overall. Being the community manager or owner of the group you have to be willing to develop tough skin so that everyone wins.
For our group, we aim to be supportive and respectful at all times. Ultimately, you can see that reflected in our group rules.
5. Have a No Promo Rule.
I already alluded to this in the last tip, but this one deserves its own point.
I’m going to be ruthlessly honest. This is something that we have STRUGGLED with when dealing with members. People want to promote their own businesses and people use Facebook groups a LOT for self-promotion.
I’m actually a fan of self-promotion in general, but I’m not a fan of promotion like, “Here are my services! I have this giant discount! You all should buy it!” going on in somebody else’s group. Don’t post about your services and the special deal you have – that’s just super spammy.
It’s basically hijacking the audience the group owner worked so hard to create.
Not cool, Robert Frost.
What I DO love is for Facebook groups to be a place for true community to happen.
So if somebody comes inside of a group and they are super helpful and are really giving and giving generously and somebody ends up hiring them because of that, then that’s awesome. That’s what we want to happen inside of groups.
We have a strict no-promo policy. Again, you can look at our rules to check out how we administer that.
There are definitely gray lines. You’ll have to work with your client to decide how you’re going to navigate those gray lines.
But watching for spam and watching for people doing self-promo are the main things you’ll have to take hold of and embrace as a community manager.
6. Enlist the help of ambassadors.
We started an Ambassador program a little over a year ago inside of our VA Savvies Facebook group and OMG… we love it.
Here’s how it works: we recruit 5-6 people (this could vary with your size group) that say, “Hey, I want to volunteer my time to help moderate this group because I love it and I believe in it.” You can offer them incentives to do this. It doesn’t always have to be a paid position.
You’ll see a lot of massive groups do this.
At The Virtual Savvy, we give our ambassadors different incentives. An incentive might be a free strategy call with us, a t-shirt, a gift card, or otherwise helping them one on one with their business.
Our ambassadors also end up on a preferred list of Virtual Assistants that we send out to people whenever they’re looking for job candidates. There are a lot of benefits for somebody to be an ambassador with us.
In this case – your community manager job wouldn’t be JUST moderating the group.
You would be MANAGING those who moderate the group.
*** Hello there…. you can just call me “Upper Management” ***
Your position as a community manager should be paid because you should be in the group daily monitoring, commenting, posting, and taking care of the overall ‘health’ of the group.
With volunteer ambassadors, they should have a more relaxed schedule. I’ve seen it done where it is one person per day and also where it is one person per week of the month.
There is no right or wrong with the schedule, it is what best fits the company and group needs.
You should also give the volunteers a list of things you would like for them to help out with. Have them watch out and help enforce the rules. Give them details about any promotions/events the company has going on. Encourage them to provide company resources when questions arise. The goal here is to have everyone on the same page, informed, and providing amazing support to the community.
I truly believe enlisting the help of the ambassadors is a huge way to help a Facebook group not be so overwhelming, especially when it starts to get into those tens of thousands of members.If you use these tips consistently, you’re on your way to having a healthy Facebook group that’s an asset for you or your client’s business!
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Meet Abbey
Abbey Ashley is the Founder of The Virtual Savvy. She helps aspiring virtual assistants launch and grow their own at-home business from scratch. She's since gone on to grow a multi-six figure business and retire her husband ALL from her at-home business. It's now her passion to help others start their own VA business so they can taste the freedom and flexibility of entrepreneurship as well.
This free one-hour training combines thousands of hours of research, years of experience in growing a virtual assistant business!
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Great post abbey! How much can a community manager charge?
Ariette, Thanks for your comment! That is totally up to you. Have you checked out our post on setting your rates? You can find it here: https://www.thevirtualsavvy.com/set-rates-virtual-assistant/
Hi I would love to be Bay community Manager I’m online a lot and I am a member of a couple of groups but I honestly not sure if we even have a moderator or if I’ve even noticed one.
I’d say it’s safe to say that there isn’t anyone actively moderating it.
Jillaina, Maybe those groups would be the perfect potential clients to reach out to, then! 🙂
Hi! I believe that I would be an amazing community manager and more importantly, I would enjoy it.
Carren, YES! It is so important to enjoy what you do. Go for it, girl!
Thank you so much for such a detailed post. As a community manager, it was something that I kinda jumped into and learned as I go, kinda thing. Boy has it been rough out here. I had a very slow sign up rate for persons looking to join my group and because of it accepted anyone into the group to grow the numbers. I will implement the tips from this post and make the necessary changes to my group, hopefully I am able to grow from here.
LuAnn, Thank you for your comment! There is a learning curve for sure! Please reach out if you have any questions. Keep rocking it!