Social Media Manager vs Community Manager: What is the Difference?

Social Media Manager vs Community Manager: Just having an online presence is not enough today for acquiring complete business productivity. One still requires a strategy to adopt a separate path to ensure efficient outcomes by implementing digital content & community development. 

Many companies now have communities over the internet, and respective managers do the needful for managing the production goals. People are also hiring managers for social media to create exclusive social media content & add extensive value to the business. 

Follow this article till the end to know some additional details about social media manager and community manager. 

What are the Similarities between two Managers?

You can expect some similarities between community & social media managers as they work together for answering complex questions by users and replicate content strategies. At times, the community manager comes up and assists the social media person in analyzing the type of content. 

Both positions are meant to respond to questions asked by users as well as respond to user mentions. They do adopt different ways to execute it, but they commit to the same role. The social media managers are hired for attending all types of general inquiries, whereas the community manager deals with the technical queries or questions followed by the troubleshooting. 

What are the Distinguishing Elements Between two?

They both have some important roles to play, but their way of approaching the audience is quite different from one another. Social media manager represents the products of the company as the brand itself to leverage sales opportunities. The community manager is responsible for enhancing the audience engagement aspects and deals with the necessary support solutions. 

Another fact where the roles of two managers differentiate is their goal. Community managers work on improvising the techniques and approaching new measures for achieving long-term goals. Social media managers, on the other hand, have productive goals to achieve, but they are short-term that are meant to focus on the increase in sales rate and better conversions.

Responsibilities Of Social Media Manager

Social Media managers are usually destined to handle the objectives related to sales. They keep a track on the conversion rate flow and click-through rates. Apart from that, they have also been assigned to do some other essential tasks. Some of the responsibilities of social media managers include:

• Brand representations across different platforms as the front-end voice of the company.
• Conveying latest updates to consumers based on services, features and products. 
• Creating new contents.
• Scheduling the post of new contents.
• Tracking metrics with social media analytics.

Mandatory Skills of a Social Media Manager

These managers work as a strategist, marketer, designer, copywriter, support representative and an analyst as well. They need to possess the right skills to come up and showcase their efforts to help the business avail productive outcomes. 

Every designated social media person or manager possesses tremendous skills for carrying out all these responsibilities. Some of the skills that are highly essential for the managers to possess include:

Healthy Communication

Communication is the key to ensure that the business social media platform thrives. The managers of social media are professionals who need to master the respective communication skills to interact with the targeted audience and consumers. 

Quality Writing

The managers need to adapt the skills of copywriting to be the brand voice and convey the updates through interactive words. You need to get hold of the audience’s emotions through your write-ups and content. It is the main job of these managers. 

Being Creative

Creativity is the key to attain productive benefit for the brand. Social media managers must possess creative minds to plan unique social campaigns. Similarly, they also need to create video contents with visual creativity. In this way, they will assist in promoting your business on higher scales.

Care for Customers

Amongst all the manager skills, this remains the most important and essential one. One needs to be aware of an efficient strategy to ensure customer retention and handling of their issues. A social media person needs to understand the query, find a solution, and retain the consumer. Understanding consumer problems needs patience and strategy. Social media management persons need to possess the same. 

Main Tasks Of A Social Media Manager

These managers have a long list of duties that need perfect replication for productive goal achievement. Some of the main reasons for which the companies hire these managers are:

• They are specialized for creating and executing different strategies for achieving social media goals.
• They plan & create budgets for an extensive range of social campaigns and activities.
• Hiring the marketing team to implement social media strategies to make the organization thrive.
• Hook social media onto the running work process of the organization. 
• Blending social media marketing measures with all other marketing departments of your company for better results. 
• Management of daily social media activities.
• Brand presence management over social media platforms.
• Searching influencers, bloggers and forums to promote the brand over the platform.
• Creating and posting contents.
• Monitoring all metrics of social media platforms.

These are some of the main tasks for which these managers sign-up to their role. All the companies expect their managers to handle these roles at ease. 

Where do The Social Media Managers Fit In The Company?

They are one kind of brand ambassadors of a company over social media platforms and fit in the marketing team of the company. As most of the people across the globe are on social media, maintaining a social presence over the platforms is highly essential for the brand. 

They are the right designated persons that every company must hire to seek better website traffic and promote the brand image. The social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others have millions of active users. It is a planned move by the companies to hire managers to try and make the business reach out to those several active users for a better sales rate.  

Thus, such managers in a company take part in almost all marketing activities within the firm. They take part in visual designing, promotional campaigns, social communications, making conversion strategies and a lot more. They have great importance in a company and play a valuable role to help make the business grow with productivity.

What Is The Pay scale and Post-Demand Of Social Media Managers?

These managers have a great demand as the opportunities are increasing at a higher pace. They are destined to get a starting salary of Rs.5 lakh per year in India. On average, social media managers get Rs.5.6 lakhs per year for their job role.

When one gains experience in the field, the salary might go up to Rs.7.5 lakhs per year. Many budding entrepreneurs are starting up new businesses and are hiring the managers to make their brand reach out to the targeted audience. 

As social media opportunities are growing beyond expectations, the post-demand of the social media managers will eventually be higher than it is today. 

Responsibilities Of Community Manager

The role of these managers is to connect with the business audience on a personal note. They post discussions in the group being an average user to which the community members respond and engage. You can refer to these managers as the brand advocate to find out the loopholes and plus-points in the products or services. 

They will put up such discussions to get productive feedback from the targeted audience or community members to seek improvements in the services or products for future consumers. Apart from this, some of the responsibilities of these managers include:

• Community development for the consumers or buyers of your products.
• Enhance engagement factors by leveraging discussions.
• Community management head handles questions put up by users and troubleshoots their problems.
• Connecting users with extensive company resources.

Skills Essential For Every Community Manager

Online communities are an essential strategy imposed by the managers to engage the audience with the company products and discussions. For handling these heavy responsibilities, a community manager needs to have those skills in him/her. Some of the skills that every community manager must possess in order to give profitable outcomes to the company are:

Understanding the Consumers

The managers need to make sure that they understand the consumer’s point of view. For that, they have to be patient while talking to them or responding to their queries. The better one understands the problem, the easier will it be to give a definite solution. 

Being Empathetic

Without possessing the quality of being empathetic, you can never convey the message to the consumers or community members. A community manager needs to give priority to the needs and concerns of all the managers. 

Analytic Skills

The managers handling the community need to attain user data and statistics based on their experiences with the company to give out a better response to the users. Therefore, this skill is quite essential for ensuring a successful community. 

Communication

They also need to possess the communication skills just like the social media managers to ensure a proper conversation with the consumers or community members to replicate the brand discipline. 

Main Tasks Of A Community Manager

The managers handling the community are destined to manage, grow & develop a community that revolves around the digital platform for a brand to make better rapport with clients and consumers. It is the core task of every community manager. But apart from that, they are hired for delivering a particular set of tasks that include:

• Adopt measures to ensure that the brand gets better visibility amongst the community members.
• Work on improving web traffic, newsletter subscribers, followers, etc.
• Engage consumers with newly launched products or services. 
• Develop interactive channels for assisting consumers in handling their technical queries.
• Handling the public & media relations by coordinating with respective departments.

A community manager is committed to the company to help develop a marketing strategy from his/her end by imposing the efforts on the assigned roles. 

Where Do The Community Managers Fit In The Company?

All the jobs that are done by these managers are associated with brand marketing. Therefore, he/she will fit in the marketing department of the company. In the marketing department, their focus is not on the aspect of gaining social presence but gaining more community members to the group. 

They listen to what the consumer or community member has to say and then give a definite solution to make the consumer stay engaged with the product or service discussion. It is known as a productive way of marketing and promoting the brand. 

As a strong unit of the company, the community manager interacts with more people over the digital platform. They usually channel their efforts to interact with the new users and existing members as well. 

What Is The PayScale And Post-Demand Of Community Managers?

The average salary of a community manager in India is around Rs.4.7 to Rs.5 lakhs per annum. The community managers do have lots of responsibilities to handle for which this is supposedly the starting package for the individuals who are seeking a career as community managers. 

As the demand for digital opportunities for business is rising, the post-demand and the pay scale is also expected to rise in the long run.

Importance of both the Managers in Company

If the business is looking for creating a digital presence and expecting to grow from those opportunities, both social media managers and community managers are highly essential for serving the purpose. 

Most of the companies still believe that one person can manage both roles due to fewer investment strategies. But it would eventually hamper your relations with customers over those platforms. Therefore, both the roles are essential in order to help you transform your business and get more sales and revenue by leveraging the digital platform.

Conclusion

So, what kind of business do you run? Does it involve online promotions over social media and other channels? If you answered yes, then you are in need of social media managers and community managers.

You can hire them by putting up vacancy ads over your social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and others. They would eventually help your business connect with the social media audience and community members well for ensuring a better brand reputation.