What is a community manager?
If you’re looking for someone to lead and manage your community via social networks, call on a freelance community manager. Their duties: to define the objective of community interactions (to increase sales or improve brand image, for example) and to deploy the means of implementation (blogs, Instagram or Facebook accounts).
All you need to know about freelance community managers
What does a community manager do?
A community manager – also known as a ‘CM’ – brings your online community together. The community manager can also be called a social media manager. These are the social media professionals to turn to if you need to share content online that is relevant to your business. With freelance community managers, you can attract an audience and unite them around your brand and products.
An essential pillar of a successful digital strategy, freelance community managers interact with your customers and prospects on a daily basis. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit...: CMs will use these social networks to manage your brand’s online presence. True experts in online interaction, freelance community managers maintain the link between you and your customers by distributing relevant content on different channels.
By regularly posting relevant content on the right social networks, you can increase your visibility and improve your brand image among your target audience.
The community manager’s role in your digital strategy
While community managers handle the execution – posting, responding to users, monitoring content engagement – social media managers focus on your social media strategy. In practice, a community manager is considered a social media manager after several years of experience. They often work closely alongside marketing consultants, graphic designers, and content writers to name a few.
Community managers are the ones in charge of disseminating content to your target audience. They interact with them via social media. They are then the final link in a content strategy. By creating content that is relevant and brings value to your customers, you can attract an audience that’s interested in your products/services. This already qualified audience will then be in regular contact with your company’s posts, allowing you to:
Increase your visibility
Improve your brand image by setting yourself apart from your competitors.
Because a community manager must be able to share quality content, some of them have dual roles: they can be both community managers and content creators. Take Laëticia and Clara for example. They are both community managers and content writers.
No matter their Malt headline, freelance community managers will be able to help you establish a relevant and effective strategy for your brand. Highly proactive, they can also help you put together a medium or long-term action plan in order to reach your objectives: increase website traffic, increase sales, grow your mailing list, etc.
How to brief a community manager?
When reaching out to a community manager, it’s a good idea to have decided beforehand what you want to achieve with their expertise. Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Who is your target audience? What is the message you want to convey?
Working together with a freelance community manager, you can transform your company’s business objectives into marketing objectives. Defining KPIs (key performance indicators) will allow you to measure and analyzeanalyse the effectiveness of your strategy and adjust it accordingly.
It is then important to be clear on your company’s identity and positioning. It is with a solid marketing foundation that you’ll get the best return on your investment in your community management strategy.
As with any strategy, freelance CM assignments are medium to long-term. You’ll decide together on the social networks that are relevant to your objectives based on your sector, the products and/or services you offer and your target audience.
In order for the freelance community manager to better understand your business and positioning, feel free to send them internal or external material such as (brochures, flyers or your, website). This’ll also allow them to get an idea of the tone you usually employ to communicate and to reproduce it on social media.
How to choose a community manager?
When choosing a freelancer to work with, it’s worth considering several criteria:
Their experience: whether online or offline, a freelancer’s experience in your industry is crucial. While the engagement techniques are similar, a community manager for a B2B (business to business) consultant would work in a different way to that of a cosmetics brand. So be sure to take a look at freelancers’ previous experience on their profiles.
Choose based on community manager's specialisation:
Freelance community managers are always up-to-date with the latest social media trends. Nevertheless, freelancers often focus on 1 or 2 social networks in particular. For example, some may be LinkedIn specialists, while others are more familiar with Instagram or even TikTok. It’s worth making sure the freelancer has a solid understanding of the social network you’d like to use to get the most out of your collaboration.
Their reputation: to make sure that you only work with the best freelancers, we’ve set up an end of project review system. These reviews can be freely consulted on freelancers’ profiles.
Choose based on community manager's rate:
The average day rate (ADR) of the freelancer is shown on their profile. This may be either based on the deliverable (per project), or on the time spent (hourly). In terms of community management, freelancers typically offer a monthly fixed rate that is based on the amount of time they spend each month. On Malt, freelancers set their own rates. This means that any negotiation takes place with the freelancer directly.
