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Here's How CMOs Can Close the Community Manager Talent Gap

This article is more than 4 years old.

I had the pleasure to attend a Forbes CMO event with Forbes CMO Editor Jenny Rooney. One quote especially stood out to me: 

With a lot of marketers, there seems to be a gap between strategy and execution that is increasingly difficult to close. Talent that can simultaneously drive a strategy forward from a holistic brand perspective while also executing on the details is difficult to find. 

And it’s increasingly important, especially in fast-changing realms of marketing like influencer and community management. As relative newcomers to the marketing team, these positions have already transformed in terms of importance and strategic muscle within the modern brand marketing organization. I wanted to take a deeper look at the talent required to execute on this well.

I spoke to David Spinks, founder of CMX. CMX is an organization that helps professional community builders thrive in their work by providing them with world-class community programs and education. Our discussion follows, but ultimately I sought the answer to the question: How should CMOs work to actively close this talent gap as it pertains to community-oriented roles. 

KW: Great to chat with you, David. So, what makes a good community manager? 

DS: So we use "community professional" to describe the people who do this work, as community managers are generally going to be more junior level, and the field has a full range of seniority levels up to VP of community. So what makes a great community professional comes down being able to do these two things really well: 

  1. Build, engage and scale a community program
  2. Measure their work and ensure they're impacting business objectives

Most community professionals are good at #1. The great ones, the ones who succeed in the biggest way, can do both.

KW: How has the role of the community professional changed in recent years, if at all?

DS: It’s changed drastically, Kyle. The community professional role is becoming more strategic. Ten years ago, no one used the term "community professional". The community space barely existed. Community professionals were still seen as junior level, low impact positions. Today, the companies that get it are launching community programs at incredible scale and are hiring top-level talent to lead their community program – even at the VP level. Look at Duolingo as an example. With a small team on their in-person community team, they are running over 500 events PER WEEK. It's a massive scale that's having a huge impact on the organization. That's the future of community strategy. That's the future of business.

KW: What are the success metrics community professionals should be measured through?

DS: At CMX we break it down into three levels of measurement:

  1. Content and programming
  2. Engagement
  3. Objectives

For content and programming, you're looking at the specific things you're creating for your community. A post in the group, an event you hosted, an article you wrote...and you're looking at the metrics that will tell you if that piece of content was successful. For a post, it might be the number of comments. For an event, it might be the number of attendees.

For engagement, you're looking at whether the community is becoming more or less engaged over time. I recommend looking at growth (new members), churn (members lost), monthly active users and return attendees. You should always compliment the quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback using interviews and surveys. As we've learned from Facebook, you can't just focus on increasing engagement, you need to understand if that engagement is meaningful and valuable to your members.

For objectives, you should be measuring the community programs impact on specific organizational goals. Metrics include reduced support costs, retention, customer lifetime value, customers acquired, product feedback collected, and contributions to a platform.

KW: How can brands work to foster the skills needed to be a good community professional?

DS: Hire people who can execute, and give them the resources they need to be successful. The main reason community programs fail is because of a lack of support and resources. Community programs need to have a seat at the table. They are the voice of the customer, they are the organizer of your most loyal customers and advocates. Give them the tools, funding, training, and people they need to be successful.

KW: What do CMO’s need to look for when hiring for community professionals?

DS: Look for someone who's hungry, and overflowing with passion for the mission, so that passion spreads throughout the community like wildfire. The best community professionals are both operators and advocates. They get the human side and the business side. They can speak both the language of the customer and the language of executives.

KW: Should community management skills differ broadly between industry? 

DS: No. The audience is different. The content will be different. The members will have unique identities, needs, and cultures. But the fundamentals of community strategy remain the same. Like marketing, product, and every other role, you can use industry processes and methodologies, but the results come from getting to know the customer on a deep level and solving their problems.

Being set up for success, supporting your team members to be as strategic and focused as possible goes a long way. Especially in transformative roles like community management. As brands shift their focus towards community-driven marketing, hiring and supporting the best talent available to this role will be imperative to their growth in the coming years.