How do you guys feel about the Community Manager title? I noticed that in some companies / market, it can be strictly associated with the person in charge of posting and moderation, while in others it encompasses responsibilities closer to that of a social strategist (who also does publishing and moderation). Reason I'm asking is because I'm considering changing those titles in my resume to better reflect some of my past experiences. Thoughts on what I could change it for?

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Honestly regardless of the distribution of responsibilities, I think listing a title that you didn’t hold could backfire.

I think it would be better to list your duties with accomplishments in that position than to rename the position and risk your former employer inadvertently revealing the discrepancy.

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You're absolutely right, although those experiences were 8-10 years ago so no one would think of checking them imo.

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I love being a Community Manager. It does depend on the brand and social media model that is set up because personally I do not handle posting or moderation, but I do monitor response rates, social copy and messaging, influencer marketing, and social activations/ campaigns. I also do a lot of data analysis regarding social listing, digital flirting, customer reviews. I cross function with E-Comm and marketing a lot too.

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Use a slash. For example, Content Creator / Community Manager.

Or include one of your bullet points as “Served as Community Manager for 4 social accounts, engaging daily with followers, posting daily, and xyz.” If you did social strategy, write you did socia strategy

likesmart

That's actually a great idea!

In my department, we’re moving away from it because I’ve found most people read “Community Manager” as shorthand for “Very Junior Person,” and our team actually has people at all different levels of seniority who are focused on publishing/real-time insights/responding.

That doesn’t really answer your question, though. My general tests for whether it’s okay to change a title on your resume are:

1) Does the change bring your title more obviously in line with industry norms? E.g. changing “client engagement manager” to “account manager.” If yes I think it’s fine.
2) Are you changing your title to something that is/was an actual job title at that company, and that you did not have? I would be very very cautious of this.
3) If I asked your old boss, “was so-and-so a [title your resume says]?” would they correct me or not even notice the discrepancy? Ultimately this is the only question that matters as it’s a combined outcome of the first two.

helpful

Exactly, CM is short for intern for many people unfortunately. In my CM roles I was at the intersection of editorial, creative and strategy but in my market people brush it off as just moderation.

Change the title. None of my titles are what I was called at the company and it's never been an issue because I always write the requisition title on my background checks. No one has ever asked but if they were to I would say, "Outside of my former company, someone with my responsibilities and skills is more commonly called a [job title]. I have adjusted to this title to reflect the current market and align with opportunities that fit my experience."

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Community Managers usually don't have the Strategic view. Mostly because the limited experience usually doesn't allow it. Some start ups and small company mix these two (strategist and CM), and i think this is ridiculous. Because someone with an actually strategic view is not only going to be useful in social but in a lot of things related to the digital strategy, those +6-7 yrs of experience can be a lot more precious for high-value. The posting and programating and keeping up with a calendar can be done by someone with 2yrs of experience. Basically this mentality is wasting salary and ressources.

I've worked with all sorts of clients both in B2B and B2C. In 80% of cases, the community manager has an average of 3 years of experience. I never said this was an intern with no clue of what's happening. I said there's no strategic view because the experience doesn't allow it. This doesn't mean the experience doesn't allow for proper copy writing, data analysis and so forth. Being able to keep up with a calendar and answering messages doesn't necessarily gives you the baggage to anticipate the strategic and budgetary ROI of one year of investment.

In conclusion : a Strategist should be guiding and following the CM, the CM should be doing the non-strategic work. And if the CM is too senior to be doing just this, time to upgrade him/her for social media manager and hiring a new junior.

I think you'll find answers from this community of a great variety which won't help you much. I feel your pain - my title is social media manager when in fact i operate at a senior level of strategy + manage a team of 4 + 3 agencies and a central budget. When i applied for a Director position i was told I'm too junior with only social media manager experience - they didn't even look at the description of responsibilities nor impact i generate.
So depends why you want to change your title? In hindsight i should have edited my CV to say senior manager or what the heck, director.

My point exactly! In my case I moved to strategy after 3 years as a CM and 2 years as team leader (original title was Community Director but I changed it to Social Media Director). I now have 10 years of agency experience split equally between pure social roles and pure strategy roles. I want to give my strategy experience more weight because I'm worried I'm being cast as a midweight planner "only" although my previous social experience helped me a ton in my strategy roles.

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