Social media is an inescapable marketing and customer liaison channel for businesses and organisations alike. 

Outside of our working lives, we are all consumers, and these days we naturally expect a certain amount of variety and ease of access when it comes to how we contact our service providers or retailers. 

In early 2019, I wrote a paper about how community management would continue to expand and grow as a professional discipline – and that I believed it was destined to become a ‘hero’ role for businesses and brands that want to maintain (and improve) relationships with existing and potential customers. 

It’s now summer 2019, and it’s clear that the demand for ‘Social Media Community Managers’ in the job market is still very much alive and well, with salaries for a dedicated community manager role typically hitting anywhere between £30k to £40k. 

In its early days, the job might have attracted a salary in the low to mid-20k region, but what the current salary level indicates is that community management is now viewed by the hiring companies as holding more value than perhaps previously perceived, and that it’s not in fact an entry-level position, ‘something fun we can give to our marketing intern’, or a ‘nice little extra’. 

Businesses are finally ‘wising up’ to the fact that skilled community managers can unlock valuable customer advocacy, be the helpful face of a business, and quickly resolve complaints should a customer or audience member have a gripe they need addressing, pronto. 

It all comes back to brands needing to meet ever more challenging customer expectations and formidable standards of service… 

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