Does a social media manager qualify as a community manager? What does a community manager do?
I think a social media manager and a community manager are two different roles.
Social media managers work on the content strategy of their organizations. They manage the timing of posting, monitor the performance posts, develop engaging and competitive content, prepare reports, and collaborate with influencers.
Who is a community manager? Community manager is an enabler, who activates users and makes them work together efficiently. What a community manager does depends on the stage of the development of the community and the number of active users in the community. On the initial stage the primary goal for a community manager is to acquire the first users. When the community reaches its critical mass, the community manager needs to change the focus to activities like looking for volunteers and creating opportunities to act for users who want to show off their talents. In the more advanced communities the community manager focuses on scaling the community by polishing community rules, creating new user roles, doing software updates, etc.
As you can see, the roles are very different: A community manager wants to make others create content whereas a social media manager creates content themselves. So, I think we can say a social media manager’s core skill is to know how to create compelling content while a community manager needs to know how to build relationships with users, activate them for action, manage conflicts, etc.