Hello!

I often get people asking if I am a social media manager or a community manager so I thought I best share my knowledge of what I perceive to be the difference between the two! We all know social media has exploded massively in the last 10 years plus and is now becoming a satured market with new apps emerging all the time. We are all confident about who the key players are and who will continue to be in the foreseeable future!

For smaller companies, one person may take on both roles; but in general, the two jobs are very different! Social media managers basically act as the brand ambassador whilst community managers represent and advocate for the brand with their own voice and personality and via their own social presence.

Social Media Manager: The SMM’s job is to ‘BE THE BRAND’ on social. They develop a social strategy for the business and execute from every angle. They act as the brand in every sense; they create, curate and schedule content that best reflects their brand voice. They manage campaigns and report on social analytics. They also monitor conversations on social accounts and engage with their audience under the mask of the brand. THis is basically what we do here at Marketing Madness.

When we talk about Community Managers; their job is basically to act as a spokesman for a brand and use their own voice to build a loyal community. This can be either on their own social accounts or by using the brand’s social account but announcing they are “taking over” for a period of time. Their job is much more customer-focused. They connect with their followers, stimulate conversations, make customers feel valued and try to spread brand awareness outside of that group. This is very prevalent with networking groups on social media and a great example of a community manager would be a network such as Ribbons Network.

I hope this goes some way to explaining the difference between these two roles! Any questions get in touch with us here at Marketing Madness @infuse7 07757593840 Polly