Community Management.

Community management encompasses the day-to-day activities of cultivating and maintaining an online community — moderating comments, responding to questions, sparking conversations, welcoming new members, and resolving conflicts. Communities can exist on owned platforms (Discord, Slack, Circle, community.io) or brand social channels (Facebook Groups, Reddit).

Community Management vs. Social Media Management

Social media management focuses on publishing brand content and monitoring brand mentions across platforms. Community management focuses on the interactions within a defined group — nurturing relationships between members, not just between the brand and individuals. The distinction matters for staffing: the roles require different skills and tools.

Community-Led Growth

Community-led growth (CLG) is a go-to-market strategy where the community itself becomes an acquisition and retention lever. Users help each other, share use cases, generate UGC, and become advocates. Successful CLG communities (Figma, Notion, HubSpot) reduce support costs while accelerating product adoption.

Metrics

Community metrics include daily/monthly active members, conversation rate (posts per member), response time, sentiment, churn (members who disengage), and community-sourced revenue (deals influenced by community interactions). Vanity metrics like total member count are less informative than engagement rate.