Social Media Managers and Community Managers: What’s the Difference?

People often use the titles “social media manager” and “community manager” interchangeably. (Social recruiters, look out!) Most of the time, we don’t think much of it. But as time progresses, we become wiser. Suddenly, we want to find the answers to the world’s mysteries. (Or maybe you’ve completely abandoned that hope, who knows.)

Whatever the case, we wanted to figure out a little mystery of our own: Did community managers and social media managers really have the same job? Or were people simply confusing the terms?

Turns out, there’s a whole bunch of articles out there covering this exact issue. Many of them contradict each other. Some seem to agree. Though, if we had to pick out key disparities, we’d have to go with the following:

COMMUNITY MANAGER:

Serves communities offline in addition to online
Manages, hosts, and speaks at events to reach offline audience
Responsible for other forms of content; i.e. editorial, website, etc.
Responds to customer complaints/requests, reporting back to the product development team

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER:

Responsible for posting content and updating corporate social media pages
Measures performance through key performance indicators (KPI’s) using social media analytics
Plans campaigns, contests, and promotions to be leveraged through social media

An article on the Leader Networks blog parsed out another interesting differentiating factor: B2C and B2B companies. As they put it, B2C companies are more likely to hire social media managers since so many of their customers, being consumers, use social media.

Then again, not all B2C companies and brands are built the same. Take Xbox, for instance. The video gaming brand employs community managers, who work within the Xbox ecosystem and serve their customers. This way, they make sure that their customers have great experiences, without making them leave the video game platform.

On the other hand, B2B companies are more likely to hire community managers because B2B business deals usually require more offline interaction. The right hire for this job would be a community manager who has a fuller knowledge the needs and wants of suppliers, investors, partners, and other companies.

If there’s anything that almost every article out there agrees on, it’s that the two roles often overlap. A social media manager might act as a company’s community manager and vice-versa. This might be due to financial limitations, or company size, or hiring managers simply not knowing the variations between the two roles.

Metaphors and analogies aside, it’s clear that there is a bit of a difference. A social media manager is definitely responsible for handling a company’s social media accounts. Meanwhile, a community manager doesn’t necessarily have to.

This ties into other debates flying around the web, which state that branded social media pages aren’t true communities. This argument is based on the idea that likers or followers don’t always participate in the conversation, which is sometimes true. But that’s only true if the social media manager forgets about the community that makes up their audience. If you’re only pushing content for the mere sake of it, that’s not building a community, that’s setting up a wall. Your audience will only be able to get past that wall if you take it down. Create content that sparks conversation; only then are you building a two way communication street. That’s what’s at the heart of a community, not your vanity metrics. While some social media managers definitely operate with their community in mind, there are those who can benefit from doing so even more.

Perhaps it’s time to change our idea of what a community manager is, because nowadays it seems like everyone is a bit of a community manager. And if they aren’t, then they will be soon.Think about this: more and more, sales, development, and C-level teams are starting to use social media. They use it to distribute information, join conversations, and answer incoming questions about the company. All of this, while reaching an ever-widening audience, unseparated by national borders or oceans.

If social media management is seen as a strategy through which we can achieve ROI, gain and retain customers, as well as interesting insight and feedback, then community management is the propeller behind it. A propeller that everyone in the company will benefit from if they adopt it.

How do you think companies might benefit if they stop seeing community management as a one-man job and start seeing it as a company’s core principle?

This article by Defne Gencler was originally published on Social Media Today.