What you don’t know won’t kill you. Arguable. But here’s something you should know: Community is one of the largest engagement-pushing forces behind major companies and a tool for increasing active users.
This somewhat less popular but fast-evolving arm of marketing or as Khoros categorised it: “a part of product, growth or communications team”, has seen quite a handful of entries in terms of career path.
In preparation for this piece, two categories of questions were mind-boggling:
- How the heck do you build a formidable community?
- How does one plot a career path in community management?
We weren’t fascinated with the idea of asking, so we invited entry-level community managers to take the microphone and champion asking one question on both spectrums.
And to answer the questions, we brought in the big guns. These folks have managed and are still in the business of shepherding communities for companies and startups like Gamic HQ, Bumpa, Enyata, and Web3Ladies.
Four newbie Community Managers; Four Community Management experts; One question each from the newbies, matched directly to a CM with a track record of pulling their weight in that regard. Take a front-row seat and dig in
Adedimeji Taiwo
Dimeji is a social and community manager who says “I can always be a product manager too”. For him, his journey into community management started from his University days where he was the class representative from 200 level to 500 level. He got used to managing, representing and communicating people’s interests. Dimeji also acted in the capacity of social director for his faculty and represented and managed over 3K students.
So he thought “Why not? I’ve got a flair for this and I’m in love with keeping people engaged and being impactful”.
What’s one question you’ll ask about community management?
“How can I keep a virtual community engaged considering the fact that the interests of community members might differ per time?”
Damilola Olopade
Damilola is Bumpa’s Community Manager. Bumpa thrives on providing seamless business management for SMEs in Africa. It is a no-brainer to incorporate community as a means to nurture its users. Dami from Bumpa, as she is fondly called by her community, does everything in her power to both provide value and engage community members.
Damilola’s response:
There’s a reason it’s called community. The people that make up the community will always share a basic interest. If you have a people with entirely different interests then it’s no longer a community. For example in Bumpa’s community, there are a lot of business people championing different businesses but what binds them together is that they’re all business owners.
So your community members can do different things and have different side interests and that’s because they’re humans. Your goal is to find their common interest. You have to ask yourself how to ignite that and tie it back to the purpose of the community itself.
Does this mean you won’t engage specific interests? No. But you have to find a way to tie it into the general interest either explicitly or implicitly.
Just to round up, a mistake that community managers make when it comes to engagement is they fail to have a relationship with community members. This helps you have a bird’s eye view so you know who to include in certain conversations. Plus diversifying your value offering in your community helps. This means you have days where you put out certain types of content centred on certain interests. I hope that helps.
Orji Kamdilichukwu Miracle
Miracle says he has done everything from content marketing to digital marketing, and even being an SEO specialist. He decided a year ago to niche down to community and social media management. Ever since that decision, he has worked in some A-list recruitment industry.
For Miracle, community management involves being able to connect and speak to the needs of its members/followers. All of which are great, he mentioned. But sometimes it’s doing something great and having moments of doubts in between
What’s one question you’ll ask about community management?
How can I get community members to become advocates of the community and what it offers?
Ezema Precious
Precious has a strong background in community management. She is currently the community lead at Web3Ladies and the community manager for Enyata. Precious holds a track record of growing a community with zero members to over 5,000 members. Closing strategic partnerships, being a leading voice for community management in Africa, and speaking at events such as OSCAFEST, DEVFEST and Google Women Tech Makers are all part of her career. But more importantly, she has the swaying power of making advocates out of community members.
Precious’s Response
To get community managers to become advocates, you have to give value. One thing you have to know is that value is relative. What is important to you as a community manager, might not be what is valuable to your community. At every touchpoint, you want to figure out what’s important to them. Not just something you feel from the bottom of your heart would resonate with them.
That way, you’re giving something more valuable to them. It makes them open to talking about it and telling other people about the community or what you’re pushing. It’s really simple. The answer is value and making sure you’re creating a convenient space for members to be able to open up and connect with you as the community manager.
There’s one thing I always say, as a community manager, you have to be very approachable. Rule out being inaccessible. You’re not a robot. You should be perceived more as a friend. Be relatable because if you can do all of these, it’s easier to listen to you and become advocates and also carry out a task when you ask them to. It’s no longer a chore, they willingly want to do it for you.
Mosopefoluwa
For someone who was never in love with community management, Mosope’s career trajectory is looking good. She started her CM journey in 2022 during NYSC and says “I can fit in as entry or mid-level”. Either way, this young Community manager has managed different Web 3 communities in different ecosystems.
Sope has handled an exchange community of over 18K members and an NFT community for an international company. Her major goals for the latter were building the community, maintaining conversations and urging members to both play NFT games and buy them.
“To a large extent”, she adds, “I did well in accomplishing those goals”. Now Sope currently works as a contract staff for a US company.
What’s one question you’ll ask about community management?
I might not ask about engagement, not like I’m trying to brag but I’ve sort of hacked it. I would ask what steps they took to be able to manage global communities
Ikegah Ruth
If passion for building communities was the only thing left in the world, Ruth would have it. From studying microbiology to being the first African woman to receive the GitHub Star award. She has been celebrated over time for helping beginners get into tech and open source. Both as a builder and as a manager, Ruth has made an impressive impression in the local and international scene. If there’s a list of community builders and mangers that inspire you, Ikegah Ruth should be among top three.
Ruth’s response:
I’d start with my personal experience. I have a very long background. I started my tech career within open source and in contributing to open source, there are a lot of people contributing from different regions of the world. Participating in open source meant that I’d interact with people from different countries. The particular projects I chose were global ones like CHAOSS project.
I also did a lot of advocacy for people to get involved in open source, it’s something I still do. I volunteered for a lot of global projects as well and by sharing, I realized I was building a community.
At the early stage I shared a lot of the knowledge I was learning and had. I was looking out for better ways to coordinate people and that’s how my community mamanegement career started.It’s been a couple of years and ever since then I’ve gone on to manage other communities and programmes for companies like GitHub.
Idongesit Akpan
Like Mosope, Idongesit started her career in 2022. Before that year, she never knew Community management existed. Idongesit would have the consistent plague of ASUU strikes to thank, as it was that year and on the world’s celebrated lover’s day, February 14th that she got into Her Tech Trail cohort programme. She learnt digital marketing for three months and at the end of the programme, there were calls for two vacancies within the community: Content development Manager and Community Manager.
Idongesit applied for the former but during the interview, the founder of the organization and Head of Operations advised that she would perform better in the com unity management role. That was the start of Idongesit’s community management career.
What’s one question you’ll ask about community management?
As a community manager, what are the benchmarks to know you’re growing?
Korah Na’adzenga
Ex-Gamic HQ, community manager, Korah is well versed in propelling growth through community. We’re not just telling you this because it’s in his bio. He sent a lengthy response to the question asked that left us dazed. Korah is dedicated to helping brands grow lasting connections and building brand loyalty through valuable community engagement.
Customer acquisition, retention, advocacy, visibility, engagement and meaningful interaction are not new accomplishments for him. With over 5 years in the game, he’s definitely not where he started.
Korah’s Response
For me, I try as much as possible not to be prescriptive because I think the question can be applied to pretty much every other career endeavour. I’d approach this from a more personal angle. You want to ask yourself what your goals are and what you are looking out for. Why did you become a community manager? When you ask this question, it helps you narrow it down.
What you’re focused on as benchmarks for growth include a timeline for promotion, your compensation or salary, network expansion, responsibilities, and professional recognition. All of which are benchmarks for growth measurably.
But then there’s your skill. How emphatic are you towards community now versus when you started? Because really at the root of management is human relationship. Your people skills. Every goal attached to community management, think of advocacy, leads etc. They’re all tied to how you make your community members feel.
It’s basic skills like this in your career journey that form the highlight of your growth as a community manager. Just to wrap up, personal satisfaction also plays a role. As much as there are general benchmarks, there are goals you should set for yourself to measure your career progression. There are no set-in-stone steps but there are certain must-haves which I’ve mentioned that when mastered, you know you can manoeuvre any format of community management both online and offline.