Hello everyone! 👋
It's been a while since I've done one of these but I will be honest, these last few months have been absolutely wild. Now that I'm through the first few months my new role as Senior Community Manager at Riyo Games (aka onboarding information overload), I figured now would be the opportune time to buckle down and write about a question I get OFTEN:
“Sam! What education and/or training is needed to do what you do?”.
I've written about what Community Managers (CM) DO, but because this is such a new and developing discipline, there's no direct Community Management 101 course that you can take to learn the ropes of the role. FEAR NOT ASPIRING CMs, below I will provide some insight that may (or may not, idk) help you on your journey to becoming a CM.
Education and training needed to be a CM
The following formal training and education are absolutely required to become a Community Manager in the gaming industry:
JUST KIDDING!
While there are definitely courses you can take that would be considered nice-to-haves on your resume, having a post-secondary education on ye ol' CV/Resume will not necessarily make or break your chances when applying for Community roles. So long as you can demonstrate your ability to perform or learn the skills that they're asking for, that's all that matters! The willingness and drive to learn can be just as valuable (in this particular field at least) as a post-secondary degree.
What Studios look for in a Community Manager
This is a tough question to answer and depends massively on a couple different factors:
Size of the studio
Amount of CMs on the team
Size of community
Age of project
Live Operations/Games as a Service (GaaS) vs Standalone
Mobile vs Core
These are some common factors that you’ll have to take into account, but definitely not all of them.
Community Management job descriptions are like snowflakes - no two are the same. Part of this is due to the variables above, and another part is that NO ONE REALLY KNOWS WHAT THE HECK WE DO (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Learning and understanding what a studio is looking for in a Community Manager requires applicants to look at job descriptions on a case-by-case basis and build their resumes and cover letters around that (which I will get into below).
For now, let's dive into some skills that are fairly consistent among most Community Management roles.
Transferable Skills and how to attain them
There are a TON of skills that come in handy in the Community Management field, both in the form of hard skills and soft skills!
Hard Skills
What are hard skills you ask? (I mean, unless you didn't - then you can just skip to the next part.)
Hard skills are what you're capable of doing aka crafts that you've mastered or are very good at. These four that I'm about to dive into are, in my opinion, pillars of the Community Management discipline:
Copywriting
Community Building & Retention
Social Media
Analytics
Hard Skill: Copywriting
Working in Community, or in a Community-adjacent role, you'll spend the majority of your working hours cultivating creative ways to communicate with your audience — the players! With most core gaming communities finding homes in online spaces, this means that copywriting is arguably one of the most important hard skills to hone if you want to make your way into Community Management.
How to Hone it
Honestly, the easiest way to master copywriting is just to do it. Which, I know, sounds easy but hear me out — it doesn't have to be perfect for you to learn something. In fact, it doesn't even have to be good per se. The goal isn't to create a masterpiece from the get-go, it's to find your unique voice and experiment with different ways to tell a story.
Where it Comes in Handy
Developer Blogs
In-Game Messaging
Social Copy
Discord Announcements
Email Marketing
Hard Skill: Community Building & Retention
As a Community Manager one of your main tasks is grow, foster, and develop the community you manage.
Source: Chainsaw Man
How to Hone it
One of the best ways to learn how a community works is to join some. Interact with other members, observe how moderators and admins handle announcements, updates, and moderation. Try and understand what brings you and other members back to these particular communities. Here are just a few places you can find some awesome communities to join:
Twitter Communities
Reddit
Facebook Groups
Discord
Twitch & YouTube
Once you have a better understanding about being a member, either create your own community OR apply to moderate for one. Starting off small is ideal to get a grasp on the fundamentals and will give you the space to learn what keeps members around and how to grow it even further!
Where it Comes in Handy
Discord
Social
Twitch
YouTube
Hard Skill: Social Media
While there is an entire other field for this particular skill set (social media is more about marketing to an audience rather than retaining a community), large communities can be found on multiple different social platforms - all of which have different rules, unspoken rules, and ways you navigate them. Smaller studios tend to forgo hiring separately for Social and Community Management so having this knowledge in your back pocket will definitely give you a leg up when applying for opportunities.
How to Hone it
There are SO many resources for learning the ins and outs of social media and it can sometimes be overwhelming. Due to the fact that I could write an entire post around learning and understanding social, I'll break down 3 ways you can get started:
Start with the basics | What brand channels capture your attention? Make a list and break down the reasoning as to WHY those particular channels keep you engaged. Do they reply to every tweet? Is their strategy slightly unhinged? Do they have the best memes? |
Research Research Research | As Social Media Changes just as quickly and unforgivably as GameDev, it can prove rather challenging to search "how to social" on google without getting overwhelmed. @ThatChristinaG wrote a fantastic jumping off point featuring a significant amount of valuable marketing resources, including a nice little section for Social Media. |
Build a fan/brand page | It's time to get your feet wet! Pick a topic that you're passionate about, or use yourself as a brand if you're a content creator, and build a page using one of the big 4 to start (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok). Select the one where you feel most of your audience will be and go in with a goal of learning. From here you can get a better understanding of:
Once you have a better understanding of one of the big 4 channels, branch out to other social platforms. As a bonus, take a look at some scheduling software (I'd recommend the free version of Buffer!) to learn how to navigate these specific tools (which, I'll be honest, are a godsend). |
Where it Comes in Handy
I think this goes without saying but - ✨ Social Media ✨
Hard Skill: Analytics
Learning how to answer the question "What KPIs do you track" is crucial as it is often asked in interviews for Community and Social Media roles. While the majority of community-related success is measured by qualitative data, analytics still play a key role in giving a full scope of what your community is engaging with and what they care about.
How to Hone It
In addition to the many courses you can find online about tracking analytics, you can also look right on the page or community you've built as most social channels have their analytics built right into their platforms! Understanding how your post types, time of day, post frequency, and copy all have an effect on engagement and reach will better prepare you for when you build your next content calendar. Maybe your audience really loves memes? Or does your community engage best with thoughtful questions? Analytics will give you a full scope of who you're trying to keep engaged, and how best to best maximize that.
Where it Comes in Handy
Discord
Dev Blogs
Email Marketing
Social Media
Soft Skills
Soft skills are more along the lines of personality traits which can be just as tricky to master (but are just as valuable!). Some examples of soft skills that I feel are important to the Community Management discipline are:
Time Management
Empathy
Radical Candor
Charming...ness (?)
Soft Skill: Time Management
When you're balancing 3 social channels, Dev Blogs, in-game messaging, gathering feedback, engaging a Discord server, attending team meetings, and everything in between, you're going to need to be comfy with organizing tasks and setting priorities.
Here's some tools you can practice with to get you started:
Day Planner
Soft Skill: Empathy
Empathy is one of the most important soft skills to have when gauging community sentiment. It's not enough to know the feedback that's coming in, but understanding why this feedback is important to players. Putting yourself in the shoes of the community and seeing their perspective gives you the tools and understanding of their circumstances to effectively advocate for them. With this, you can provide insight to team members on what changes would mean the most to players and why they would have a positive impact.
Soft Skill: Radical Candor
One of the most valuable courses I took from a community with Michaud Garneau at Weird is Nrml. Michaud taught our group about Radical Candor - a term created by Kim Scott. What it means is to care personally and challenge directly. Knowing what's best for our players is what we, as Community Managers, are hired for, and learning how to voice "difficult" feedback to the appropriate teams (even when it can be scary) is such an integral part of nurturing any community. Understanding and implementing Radical Candor has made a significant impact on my ability to be an effective Community Manager.
There will be times when leadership, or other team members, will not agree with what you propose, and vice versa. Speaking up and providing examples to support your feedback in a healthy way will have a huge impact on the community, the game, and your work relationships. You won't win every battle, but you can't effectively advocate for your community, or yourself, without a strong and confident voice.
Soft Skill: Charming...ness?
This sounds like a weird soft skill to have but hear me out - learning how to create memorable moments builds a rapport with your community which will make them feel included and keep them coming back.
Victoria Tran, The Community Director at Innersloth, gave a wonderful talk about how to Charm Your Communities and explains why these joyful moments can help turn your audience into a community.
Preparing your CV/Resume
Now it's time to put it all together! Even if you don't have experience in the field (or the gaming industry!), you can highlight the tools and knowledge that you have learned to effectively navigate the Community Management role.
A tip I learned from Dylan Clark-Moore, a friend and past colleague, is to have a master resume that acts as a living document which you can then curate down for each application you’re submitting.
Say Studio A is looking for someone who will be managing the Discord community and owning long-form communication such as Dev Blogs - Social Management isn't necessarily needed for this particular role so there's no reason to clutter up your resume with something Studio A may not be looking for. Instead, highlight your proficiency in copywriting and community building/engagement with some examples of how you've honed these skills.
On the flip side, maybe there's a skill on the job description that you definitely need to work on. Does that mean you shouldn't apply? HELL no. Expressing your excitement to learn, and ways you're trying to improve that skill, can be just as valuable as mastering the skill itself. Everyone starts somewhere and no one knows everything.
Although education and post secondary can absolutely be beneficial when looking for a Community Management role, it isn't necessarily a requirement to land a career in this field. The SMCMG Discord Community has been a real eye-opener about how many different paths and backgrounds can lead to a Community Management position.
Personally, I don't have a post-secondary degree and a large majority of Community Managers I've interacted with have all been self taught.
To the Community Managers reading this - What was your career path that led you to where you are now?
Til next time!
Cheers 🥂
✨ Sam Gee
If you're still reading this and want to find a community as an aspiring Community Manager you should check out the SMCMG Discord Community! You can apply for access here!
✨ Edited by the wonderful Gale! You can find them here ✨