What If You’re Not the Problem, It’s the Community Manager Job Description.

There’s a reason so many community managers feel burned out, underpaid, or like their job is just a never ending to-do list of busywork.

And here it is:

The traditional community manager job description is broken.

One company might treat the role like customer support. Another expects full blown influencer marketing. Some hand you a dead forum and say, “fix it.”

I've even see it advertised as a building manager who collects keys at the end of the working day!

But most importantly? It fails to frame community as a strategic driver of business growth.

And when the role isn’t seen as strategic, neither is the person in it.

You were hired to "engage", but not to lead.

If you scroll through job listings for community managers, you’ll see the same vague expectations:

• "Drive engagement"
• "Be the voice of the community"
• "Plan events and create content"

Rarely do you see:

• "Own a business-critical function"
• "Use community insights to guide strategy"
• "Report on community driven outcomes that influence retention, revenue, or product"

Which means: Community managers get stuck executing tasks rather than designing systems. And when leadership looks at the role, they see someone doing "nice-to-have" work, not essential work.

The Real Problem Isn’t You, It’s the Broken Framing of the Role

You’re in meetings. You’re replying to messages. You’re keeping the community alive.

But because there’s no strategic structure behind your role, none of that insight becomes action.
So you stay stuck in reactive mode, constantly “doing”, but never driving.

And it leads to a dangerous cycle:

• You do great work, but it isn’t positioned in business language.
• It gets overlooked.
• So your role stays limited.
• And you stay frustrated.

Not because you’re not capable. But because the entire framing of your role is wrong.

A strategic community manager looks very different.

Here’s what the job should look like:

• Strategic Planning: You design systems, journeys, and programs based on member needs and business goals.
• User Research: You collect insights and use them to influence product, marketing, or support.
• Engagement Loops: You create mechanisms that bring members back and increase lifetime value.
• Metrics & Reporting: You track real impact, not just vanity stats.
• Internal Influence: You communicate your wins and get buy-in from leadership.

It’s not about doing more, or what is expected. It’s about doing less of the things for the sake of doing them and more of things that drive value and long term engagement.

And it starts with redefining your role, even if no one else has yet.

You don’t need to wait for permission.

The transformation doesn’t happen because someone updates your job title. It starts when you decide to treat your role like a strategic one.

When you start tracking the right metrics. When you tie your work to outcomes. When you communicate your wins in a language leadership respects.

Because when you change the narrative, you change the outcome.

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