The ones posting announcements in discord/telegram servers, the ones hosting Twitter spaces, the ones that hop on 1-on-1 calls with you, the ones frantically running around to ensure that the IRL event's experience is A1.

Yup, that’s us. Community Managers.

Chances are, if you’ve ever bought into a crypto/NFT project which has some form of community (in which 99% of them do), you’ve come across a community manager.

But before we go down the rabbit hole, we have to first cover the foundation: community.

Why is Community Important in Crypto?

It’s pretty obvious that community is important in all aspects of society, developing a sense of identity or belonging over like-minded interests, values, and beliefs. 

Yes, but what sets crypto communities apart?

• The community offers valuable feedback and ideas, influencing the direction and enhancement of the product. 

• By spreading awareness and educating potential users, the community drives the adoption of the product being used. 

• They also have an influence on the market price by discussing market trends, as well as minting, buying, and selling tokens / NFTs which are part of the company’s ecosystem.

Now that we got that clarified, let’s move on.

Understanding the Role

Okay, so what in the world do Community Managers even do?

In traditional industries, a community manager acts as a liaison between an organization and its audience, fostering and nurturing digital relationships between a brand and its consumers.

Typically part of the marketing team, they possess a comprehensive understanding of the organization, including its products, structure, competitors, brand voice, storytelling, and strategies.

A community manager primarily focuses on facilitating communications, but they also spend time analyzing and gathering feedback. Additionally, they have some opportunities to be creative with various tasks they wish to execute.

In our crypto world, imagine it as described above, but on steroids.

What is the true value of a community / growth role?

The true value is among some of the top roles in any company, such as a CEO, a VP of Operations, Head of Product, etc.

Companies can create a wonderful product, but they cannot reach their audience without some form of Community Lead (whatever title you'd like to call it), someone who is able to understand the vision and properly communicate that to the proper audience. A CM position is a hybrid of a Head of Growth/Community and Marketing/Storytelling role.

As AI continues to evolve at such a fast pace and will soon take over many jobs (such as engineering work), one thing it cannot take over is creativity. There is a necessity for human imagination in any industry.

Only recently are roles that consist of communicating with people on a individual or audience basis becoming extremely valuable in our crypto industry — and it will continue to boom.

Tending to Your Farm

Believe it or not, Community Management is one of the most important roles in the crypto space. Why? Let me give you an example.

If you've got a big farm with lots of land and you want your crops to be plentiful, how do you make it happen? 

You tend to their needs by providing the resources, being consistent with their care, protecting them from potential damage, and giving them the time to grow.

Crypto and NFT communities thrive when they have a clear purpose and compelling reasons to connect. This connection can be to the product being developed, to the team behind it, or even to each other.

CMs are the ones that tend to their community; and they are the ones that provide the resources, consistently communicate with the community, protect them from any liabilities, and curate an ecosystem of organic growth.

Tending to your community everyday isn’t easy. But it’s well worth it.

Bridging Two Realms

Being a community manager means being the messenger. 

It is your job to ensure that the communications are effortless between the two parties, both top-down and bottom-up. 

A direct line to both the community and the team, you get to witness two different perspectives, two different goals, two different worlds.

With this role, you get to feel the community's excitement and passion while also getting a grip on the team's strategic and day-to-day tasks.

Make no mistake — managing communications with both a public audience and a private company is trickier than it seems. We'll explore this more later in the article.

The Highlights

Let’s talk about the best parts about being a community manager.

Being a Visionary and Having an Influence

As the crypto space continues to drive technological innovation, you have the opportunity to participate in groundbreaking projects that have the potential to revolutionize the world.

In fact, you get to be part of a vision you've believed in from the beginning, witnessing and contributing to its entire journey. It's a rare opportunity to work and have influence on a product that you're truly passionate about.

Early Adopter

There’s most definitely a lot of incentives within each ecosystem, where you can have a strong salary and the opportunity to receive equity, bonuses, tokens / NFTs, or beta access to the product being built. The more successful the project, the more you profit.

Flexible Schedule

You thought Working from Home (WFH) was cool in the traditional industries? Most startup companies in crypto break the 9-5 barrier. You work on your own time, have unlimited vacation, and can do whatever you basically want as long as you get your tasks done efficiently on time. Massive corporate culture upgrade.

Career Development

Being a CM, you gain skills in problem-solving, community building, marketing, customer support, content creation, and so much more.

As a content creator, you develop engaging content; from social media posts to educational resources. This also ties into event organization, where you have online or offline events such as AMAs, meetups, and other fun activities designed for the community.

Community, Networking & Recognition

Had to save the best for last! From in-person meetups to hopping on a zoom or discord call, it’s fantastic to engage with a global community of passionate members. You get to bond with people and hear their stories on their cultures, backgrounds, reasons for entering the crypto space, and so much more.

Your community also has their own networks, and if they see an opportunity, they will facilitate connections for you.

They are the ones that thank you for your hard work, they appreciate your efforts of relaying communications to the best of your ability, and they’ll even defend you from other folks who are attacking you.

The Struggles

Obviously, not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Let’s talk about some of the obstacles encountered as a CM.

Dealing with FUD, Trolls, Toxic Behavior

Alright, I’ll give it to you straight: People can be a complete ass sometimes.

On the internet, it’s very easy to dehumanize others and treat them like absolute garbage. When there are financial incentives mixed in with a project, and members have financial ties in these projects, the behavior of some people can become very nasty and unacceptable.

Some people just love to pick a fight, what can I say?

Pressure on Updates

Progress is never linear, everyone knows that. But the pressure to release updates isn’t easy, especially when the team isn’t ready to provide any updates.

24/7 Availability & Burnout

Shuffling between platforms like Discord and Twitter to tend to the community, communicating with the team via Slack, hopping on Zoom and Google Meets calls, getting your photos and videos from Figma, the list continues.

Being online for 8-12 hours a day can be stressful and exhausting. This is no 9-5 job, the concept of work-life balance is situational based on how much you can handle. And in 99% of cases, you don’t know what that balance looks like (until you do).

Scams, Phishing, and Personal Safety

Community Managers are the ones that take care of all of the precautions to ensure that your wallet isn’t drained because some stupid link was posted in discord. 

They are also responsible for making sure that their social media or announcements channels aren’t compromised. 

At the same time, community managers are one of the roles that tend to be the most targeted when it comes to impersonation or even having their accounts hacked, so the community could be emotionally and financially manipulated by the hackers.

Balancing Community Interests with Organizational Goals

This one is never easy. As a CM, you want to do more community-focused efforts; but the team has other ideas on what takes priority, and if that is even operable with the community’s interests. 

Out of the negatives I’ve mentioned so far, this is one that has some of the most amount of friction. 

Which transitions into my last point…

Incompetent Team

This is probably one of the more difficult ones to talk about. The reality of the situation is, there is only so much you can do as a community manager. If your team is uncooperative, it will make your life significantly more difficult.

You can have the coolest people on your team, but if they fail to communicate with you and provide you with the resources that you need, it makes it extremely tough to be on the front-lines of the community.

The community will be constantly asking for information from you, and you won’t be able to provide them with the information that you need, because (1) you have your hands tied behind your back, and (2) the team doesn’t value the community enough to be transparent / provide continuous updates.

Testimonials

That said, I don't want you to get all your information solely from me — I'm just one individual.

Curious to hear from others, I asked a few community managers from different companies / projects across our crypto space, to share their stories about the highs and lows in this dynamic role.

Click on the arrow to read the full story.

Azuki: A Helping Hand

Unlike other crypto-native projects, Azuki stands out for its exceptional support system, setting a benchmark for how a community manager should be treated and valued.

By delegating certain tasks to different roles and allowing for an easy streamline of communication, the community department is able to get things done a lot more quickly and efficiently.

Their system is broken into multiple parts:

• Dem: Head of Community

• Rose: Community Manager

• Aez: Community Lead / Support

• Community Mods (Discord)

Dem leads the community department, serving as the primary decision-maker on all community-related matters. While he handles a variety of responsibilities, his main role is to communicate directly with the founders (though others can also reach out to them, this is his specific duty). Additionally, he channels feedback, helps develop community strategies, and conducts one-on-one calls with community members.

Rose and Aez manage a diverse portfolio of projects, prioritizing community engagement on both Twitter and Discord. They offer valuable insights into current sentiments, advise on launch strategies to ensure positive feedback, lead and participate in Twitter Spaces and Discord stages, and create engaging dialogues for community members. Additionally, they develop comprehensive sentiment reports and community strategies. 

Rose oversees the entire moderation team, which is structured and managed by the lead moderator, Hana. Along with a global team providing 24/7 coverage, the community moderators are trained under Rose's guidance. Their responsibilities include ensuring the security of the Discord server, assisting with support tickets, maintaining order to prevent excessive FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), directing content through the appropriate channels, and being on standby during the team's off hours. Additionally, the moderation team actively engages on Twitter to interact with the community and gather sentiment.

Chiru Labs, the parent company of Azuki, is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, where most of the team operates. This central location facilitates seamless communication. For team members across various time zones, the company employs Slack, video calls, and other communication tools to ensure effective alignment and coordination.

If other companies and projects (that could afford to build out a bigger support system) followed this trajectory, it would catapult their community to the next level. 

Want to be a CM? Here's What to Expect

If you’re looking to become a Community Manager, this section is definitely worth reading.

Understand the Crypto Ecosystem + Current Market Trends

You need to be in tune with what is going on in crypto on a daily basis, because crypto is a very fast moving industry with hundreds of things happening per week. If you’ve been in this industry, you understand that missing a day feels like missing a week, missing a week feels like missing a month, etc. 

The more you are knowledgeable about the foundation of crypto, the better. If you understand other branches (DeFi, NFTs, Memecoins, Leverage, etc.), you give yourself a major advantage over both competition and your daily work-life.

Usually a couple of years experience in the crypto space is what is required on resumes (as it should be since most applications are for start-ups).

Identifying the Target Audience

This is a given. Know who your community is, and if they align as also being a target audience for the product that your company is building. Research and analyze to get an idea of the community’s needs and interests, and see if that lines up with your target audience. The more you understand your community, the easier it is to streamline communications between the two parties. 

Defining Clear and Achievable Goals for the Community

This isn’t the company’s job, this is for YOU to take the initiative on. Brainstorm, outline, rough draft. Build it out, take it to the team for review, and then finalize it. 

Setting these clear guidelines will help strengthen the communications with your co-workers on what you need. 

Know How to Manage Different Platforms

Discord, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Telegram, Warpcast, etc. Whatever the job role consists of, know those social platforms from the back of your hand.

If you’re more of a Social Media Manager like Twitter, Instagram and Warpcast, know how to be a reply guy, answer DMs and communicate messages to the team, understand memes, have an approval process for drafting up official posts all the way to actually sending them out, etc.

If you’re more of a Discord, Telegram or Reddit moderator, be quick to responses, understand how support tickets work for receiving feedback or ensuring users can get the proper assistance, make sure to have a security auditor to ensure that the servers / socials cannot get compromised, know how to post announcements and not spam users with the @everyone tag, etc.

You should familiarize yourself with business platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Suites, Zoom, etc. This is important when communicating with your team. Understand the basic features so you don’t waste extra time on the job. Being educated on design and editing softwares like Figma, Adobe Suite, ProCreate, FCPX, etc. is good to have in your pockets.

Creative Thinking Skills and Multitasking Aficionado

Pretty self-explanatory, don’t need to say much more than that.

Under Pressure & Ability to Adapt and Improve Quickly

In the crypto space, you need this. You have to be light on your feet, being able to be flexible and spontaneous if necessary, to wing it, and to do things on the fly if requested.

A lot of times, you might feel under pressure. You need to be able to operate under that pressure in a start-up environment.

Good Writing, PR, and Reviewing Skills

You’ll be typing a lot in this role. You’ll need to be good at writing for sure, or at the very least have the basics down and rapidly improve.

Positive Attitude

Always need to have a positive attitude (and mindset) in this line of work. A lot of things can break or completely flip a 180 when you last expect it to. And because you’re talking to many people, you need to have a smile on your face even if you don’t feel like it at times.

Setting Boundaries

One of the biggest issues that Community Managers fall on is that they don’t know how to set boundaries. So I’m going to teach you how.

Be Competitive with Salary

In the last couple of years, even getting a high 5-figure salary as a CM position was mind-blowing. Companies back then did not value positions like these as much, as community management was still a newer role in the crypto space.

Now, we’re seeing companies begin to ramp up the salary by two, maybe three fold.

Know your worth. Don’t settle for less. Understand the tasks of what the company wants and if the price is an under-ball, negotiate. 

I can’t help you with the negotiations though, that is something you’ll have to learn on your own.

Request for Help & Delegate Tasks

As mentioned with Azuki, the company that you’re working for needs a strong foundation when handing over tasks to the community department. 

Ideally, you should have another person in the community dept that can help you with things that you cannot get done on your own, or an appointed higher-up that can take certain issues to the executives and ensure that things that are out of your control can be handled.

At the same time, do not overwhelm yourself with more tasks than you are given. In a start-up world, you have to be multifaceted; but that does NOT mean you have to push yourself to do the extra mile every time. You can help with partnerships, you can help with social media management, you can do this and that. But you should not add those to your role if that’s not what you’re being paid for. Communicate to the higher-ups that while you may be able to assist, you will not do their work for them.

Furthermore, if you have community members who truly align with how you execute, don't hesitate to promote them to a moderator position (paid or unpaid) and delegate them tasks as well; they would be honored to help be a part of that journey and understand that you are not a robot, you need rest.

Take Breaks to Prevent Burnout

Being on Twitter, Discord, and other platforms 8-12 hours a day non-stop staring at a screen is unhealthy for you.

Learn to set timers and get up every 20-30 minutes, stay hydrated, go on a daily walk and clear your head, and do other activities in between work.

The last thing you want to do is ruin your mental and physical health for the sake of a job. Your eyes need rest, give it to them.

Don't Get Too Emotional

This is one of the harder things to maintain, because we reside in a very emotional ecosystem. But you need to keep your head on straight, trying to stay as unbiased as possible and not allowing people to anger you. 

Breaks really do help with this boundary.

But we also have the next section to help prevent this.

Establish Clear Guidelines: Moderation

As a CM, you (and community moderators you delegate tasks to) have a ban hammer for a reason. Discord gives you multiple options: timeout, kick, or ban. 

Use a 3 strike rule to warn members and keep track of their behavior. As the person in charge, it is up to you on how you set those rules.

Stick by those rules and try to be as unbiased as you can.

Be Mindful of What You Write Online

This is pretty obvious. You (as not just a CM, but individually) have a reputation to uphold. Whatever you put on the internet stays on there forever, and can sometimes come back to bite you in the butt.

Treat everyone with respect, and try your best not to lose your temper when things are heating up between you and another party.

DO NOT SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION

This is a major key alert right here. It is none of the community’s business to know about what goes on in your personal life more than what you feel comfortable sharing.

Do not be quick to trust anyone. Keep yourself on guard at all times. Not much more needs to be said on this.

Conclusion

Wow. This was a long article to write, if I’m being honest. Took days. Was about to yeet myself off a cliff. 

I wanted to make sure I covered as much as I could so you could get all the education you need in one place. If you know of anyone who wants to learn more about Community Management and might even be potentially interested in pursuing this role, please share this article with them.

And if you become a Community Manager, just know:

I’M PROUD OF YOU.