Our Community Manager left for an incredible new opportunity in 2017. I decided to not hire a replacement. For 3 years, the community was left to take its own natural course. It turned out to be an interesting experiment into WHY you need a Community Manager.
When we didn’t hire a right away, we were just fine. The number of website visitors was steadily climbing, and I would just check on things once in a while. That was it. After about a year of steady growth, we noticed our numbers suddenly plummeted. What was once a “trend” loses its appeal. You have to engage the community with new topics. This is one reason it’s necessary to replace the manager as soon as possible.
“If you want a community to thrive and reach a critical mass of activity, you need a full-time community manager to make that work. You can’t wait for a community to be successful and then hire one. And if your community manager leaves, you better find a replacement quickly.”
Key Takeaways:
- Without a Manager, you will attract similar levels of search traffic for a year or two.
- When the Manager leaves, you can expect an immediate decline in engagement and hit “rock bottom” within a year.
- If a Community Manager leaves, find a replacement quickly or lose all the value the community has created.
Read the full post here.
