What are the big benefits of having skilled community managers looking after YOUR social media channels? Firstly, they get to learn about the customers in depth and discover what they want, expect, and need in terms of content, products, services, and support.
The Value of Good Community Managers
Community managers often develop a deep knowledge of who does what within the companies that employ them. Therefore they can quickly assign enquirers to product experts in the social media tool.
SME (Subject Matter Expert) lists are essential and must be updated regularly to ensure that these are passed onto the right people.
AI tools and Agentic AI help too
Great community managers turn conversations into relationships and AI now supercharges that. Modern models summarize long threads, translate in real time, and detect intent, sentiment, and urgency so nothing gets missed. Agentic AI goes further by running playbooks on its own: triaging issues, tagging posts, proposing compliant replies from your knowledge base, routing to the right SME, and scheduling follow-ups. The result is faster first responses, tighter escalations, and more personalized care at scale
Good community managers are essential during times of crisis, managing the “go dark” protocol and using the appropriate tone of voice. They capture insights as to how the crisis is developing. They can provide the first indications of the crisis coming to an end.
Community managers can build relationships that lead to new business opportunities. They can pass sales leads on via the social media tool which often can be interfaced with a CRM application.
Metrics to Measure Good Community Management
What metrics can be used to measure the performance of community management?
This post about social media metrics is a good start:
- Response Time
- Response Rate
- Answered Minus Ignored Questions
- Positive Sentiment
Skills of Good Community Managers
What about the skills needed? One of my favourite posts on this subject is by
Lindsay Kolowich Cox for HubSpot. She describes the required skills as:
- Strong Communication
- Adaptability
- Calmness
- Desire to Solve Others’ Problems
- Ability to Troubleshoot
- Knows where to Pass Complex Questions,
- Knowledge of the Company, Products, and Services
I can agree with this list after having done the role of a community manager in my past. I now add two of my own attributes. The first is simply “Energy”. That energetic enthusiasm that a good community manager has can often shine right through their words and actions. You can probably recall a social media account where you encountered this with fondness. Customers and clients will often look forward to having dialogue with accounts run by community managers that are “love dealing with people”.
I also find that a good sense of humour adds another dimension, as shown in this example.
With AI handling the busywork, your community managers can focus on what matters
Treat AI as your always-on teammate. Let agentic workflows watch for spikes, surface emerging questions, draft FAQs, and nudge experts when a case stalls. Guardrails keep tone, privacy, and policy on track. Start by mapping your top five community tasks (triage, reply, escalate, summarize, report, etc.), automate what’s repetitive. Measure time saved, first-response time, resolution rate, and CSAT (customer satisfaction score). With AI handling the busywork, your community managers can focus on what matters: trust, insight, and advocacy.
What type of community managers do you have? Do they have the right skills?
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