Community-Management-Study-Guide-200717c-v03 (1) (1).pdf

Community Management Study Guide 1
Community
Management
Study Guide
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0

Table of
contents
Overview 3
Define and Establish a Community 4
Develop Community Strategies and Processes 13
Make Strategic Content Decisions for a Community 34
Engage and Moderate a Community 43
Measure and Analyze Community Success 60
Glossary 74

Overview
Certification helps you stand out in your field.
Welcome to the Community Management Study Guide.
Throughout this document, you will have the opportunity to
explore community-building strategies, and learn about tools
to support the moderation and engagement of your online
community. The document is organized in chapters and sections
that cover topics that can be applied to non-profits and interest
communities, as well as brands and agencies. Reference this
guide as you build, scale and sustain your online communities.

Define and Establish
a Community
1

Community building is at the heart of Facebook’s mission, and it’s a community manager’s
key task. Learn the basic elements you need to define a community strategy and start building
your community online. This chapter will help you identify your mission, goals and success
criteria and create guiding principles to better support your community.
1.1. Build an online community
Facebook’s mission is to give people the
power to build community and bring the world
closer together. People use Facebook to stay
connected with local and global communities
through common interests, discover what’s
going on in the world and share and express
what matters to them.
There are millions of communities that help
people connect, which can give members a
feeling of belonging and access to a network
of peers with shared interests. Overseeing
and running a community is called community
management, and is done by a community
manager.
Community managers are in charge of building,
growing and maintaining a meaningful
community. Whether you’re managing a
community on behalf of an entrepreneur,
brand, agency or nonprofit—and whether it’s a
new or existing community—this section can
help you learn how to build, scale and sustain
a meaningful community more effectively and
efficiently.
Community-building on Facebook
Online communities come in many shapes
and sizes. They can meet in Facebook Groups,
nonprofit Facebook Pages or brand Instagram
accounts. Many platforms support community-
building online, and community managers
need to have a coherent strategy to oversee
building, scaling and sustaining a meaningful
online community. However, these tasks require
thoughtful planning and execution.
Community managers can use Facebook
products and technologies along with
additional strategy frameworks to do their jobs.
Let’s start with the basics and review how
various platforms support different types of
online communities.

FA C E B O O K G R O U P S Facebook Groups enable people to come together around a common
interest to learn, share and discuss. Groups can be public or private and the
Groups themselves can be searchable or unsearchable.
Community managers can define rules to set group standards and ask
membership questions of prospective members to learn more about the
people who want to join your group.
Community managers can create content and communicate with group
members. Groups also allow member-to-member interactions and
member-curated content.
FA C E B O O K P A G E S A Facebook Page gives your community a public-facing presence on
Facebook. Pages are built around a product, business, cause or public
figure, and give you a place to share information. Think of your Page as your
storefront—it’s visible to everyone. Pages are public, and members can join
the community by liking or following your Page.
Community managers curate all the content on a Page, as opposed to
Groups, where community members can post, too.
I N S TA G R A M A C C O U N T S Instagram builds communities through visual experiences. The Instagram
community comes together to share their passions and to be inspired
through multimedia content. Instagram accounts can be public or private.
Community managers curate the content on an Instagram account and
broadcast it to the community, just like a Facebook Page.
In future sections, we will review strategies to help you decide which platforms are best suited to build and
scale your community online.

Community Strategy
There is a set of processes, known as a
community strategy, that every community
manager should follow. A community strategy
is a plan that a community manager uses
to build, scale and sustain a community
online. Usually, a community strategy covers
community goals and guidelines, as well
as strategies for engaging the community
through content and platforms, among other
key tactics.
We will learn more about how to build your
community strategy in the following chapter.
As you begin, be sure to:
• Give the community a name and identity.
Think of a title, description and image that
represents the community.
• Invite friends to join your community. Start
with people you trust who are interested in
what brings the community together.
• Post something. Welcome new members
and start the conversation.
Facebook products and technologies include
several different tools that can support
communities, such as WhatsApp and
Messenger, where you can create group chats
to connect with your community in real time,
and Facebook Events, which can bring your
community together for experiences both on
and offline. Explore all the options to engage
and empower your community.
Key takeaways
• Community managers are professional
community builders who are in charge of
maintaining a community. They determine
a community strategy to build, scale and
sustain meaningful communities, and put
it into practice.
• A community strategy is the set of core
processes that community managers use
to run their communities.
• Use one or more platforms (like Facebook
and Instagram) to build community in
different ways.

1.2. Community goals
Communities need to set clear purposes and
strategies to thrive. Whether a community
is new or established, community managers
should pay close attention to its mission
and goals, and determine metrics to build a
healthy community and assess its success.
These key elements will help to build the
other components of your strategy.
Community goals and parameters
Let’s review key definitions and a question-
based strategy that will support you in defining
your community goals and parameters.

Definition Guiding questions
M I S S I O N
The overall impact your community is
trying to make on your members and in
the world.
Why do I want to build a community?
What do I want to accomplish with this community?
What impact do I want this community to make
in the future?
G O A L S
What you want to achieve through your
community to support your mission.
You can have one or many goals. They
are often broad and general statements.
What endeavors or activities do you need to accomplish
to achieve your mission?
How does this goal support the community mission?
O B J E C T I V E S
What you want your community to
achieve as you work toward obtaining
your goals. You can have one or many
objectives associated with specific
goals. Objectives are usually precise,
measurable and time-bound and will
help you define what success looks like.
Are your objectives specific, measurable, attainable,
relevant to a goal and time-bound?
How can you evaluate if the objective has
been accomplished?
M E A S U R E M E N T
The data and key performance
indicators (KPIs) that you’ll track to
determine your community success at
each of the objectives that lead toward
achieving your goals.
What data will help you determine whether you are
meeting your community goals and objectives?
Do you have access to this data?
Is the data source reliable?
VA L U E S
The behaviors and targets that are
important to you and your community.
Values set the standard of how you
want to achieve your objectives and
goals and fulfill your mission.
What kind of behavior do you expect from a valued
member of your community?
What does it look like, feel like or sound like for a
member of your community to act on these values?
What are the values that you want your community to be
known for?

Think of these foundational elements of your
community strategy as taking you on a journey.
Your mission is your destination, and your goals
give you a map to get there. Your objectives are
the distinct milestones that you’ll reach along
the way. And your measurement will provide
you with information about how quickly you’re
progressing: Are you delayed, or are you on
schedule?
Once you define a baseline community
strategy, share your mission and goals with
your community members. They will play a
fundamental role in making it successful.
Key takeaways
• A successful community needs to have
a clear mission, well-defined goals and
measurable objectives for determining
success. These elements are key
components of your community strategy.
• Community values define the important
behaviors that your community should
follow to fulfill its mission.
• Share your mission and goals with the
community members and stakeholders.

1.3. Community guiding principles
Creating and communicating guidelines and
rules is an important part of being a community
manager. As a community manager, you should
work to keep your community safe and enlist
your community members to connect with one
another in meaningful and respectful ways.
Your mission and values will reflect the kind
of community you want to build. Share a set
of guiding principles with your community
to ensure that members understand them.
Guiding principles are statements that instruct
your community on how you plan to uphold
your mission and values. These can range from
stating what kind of content is appropriate to
encouraging respectful communication.
Defining guiding principles
Community managers use guiding principles to
moderate content and interactions that don’t
align with their community values. Think of
rules as your tools to maintain the environment
you envision for your community. Follow these
tips for writing your community principles:
• Make sure that your guiding principles are
aligned with your mission and values. Your
guidelines should establish the kind of behavior
that will uphold your values.
• Effective guidelines should include affirmative
statements that encourage a positive
community culture. For instance, guidelines like
“We believe in respectful conversations, so we
do not allow profanity” instead of “Do not use
profanity” send a clearer message.
• Your guiding principles should be posted
publicly with your community. Share these
guidelines when admitting new members.
For existing members, encourage behavior
that reflects your guidelines. If you are using
Pages, make a pinned public post to share your
guidelines. If you are using Groups, make an
announcement, which you can refer to when
needed, or use the rules section. Consider using
post approvals. This way, you can approve
posts before they appear in your community or
decline posts and provide feedback.

• Great guidelines are more than just a
list of what’s not allowed. Experienced
community managers recommend
guidelines that encourage the kind of
member behavior they want to see in the
community, so members know how to
engage positively with other members.
• Guidelines can change over time. Introduce
changes gradually, not all at once, to give
the community time to adapt and react.
Your rules will change and grow as your
community does, and you can establish
these guidelines as a living document early
on to let your community know that you
will revisit them.
Writing great rules is a starting point for
maintaining a safe community. However,
guidelines need to be enforced through
moderation. In future sections, we will further
explore how to use guidelines to moderate your
community and help your community adhere
to them.
Key takeaways
• Your community guidelines reflect how
you can enact your mission and values.
• Creating clear guidelines helps build your
community culture and prevent member
conflict.
• Guidelines show what is expected and
what is not allowed from your members.
• As your community evolves, so can
your guidelines.
12

Develop Community
Strategies and Processes
2

Communities thrive when they have strategies in place to support their mission. In this
chapter, we’ll share key processes and strategies that community managers use to build and
scale their communities.
2.1. Audience strategy
To best represent their audience, community
managers should be able to answer questions
like: Who are the members of our community?
Where are they from? What do they like? What
kind of content do they engage with online?
And who would you like the members of your
community to be? The answers will help you
to understand and define your community’s
audience profile.
In this section, you will learn how to divide your
audience into segments, determine a strategy
for the content you will share with your
members and choose the platforms that will
best support your community online.
Persona profiles
Without a clear idea of who your audience is,
scaling your community and engaging your
members can be challenging. You can define
your audience and their needs by creating
persona profiles.
Imagine that someone asks you to describe the
average member of your community. You would
probably start by describing some general
characteristics that your community members
share, such as where they are from, their age
range and their common traits and interests.
You can consolidate all this information into
specific profiles that reflect your community
members. These are known as persona profiles.
A persona is a fictional character that
represents a segment of your community.
To create a persona profile, you will need
to do some research. Members’ locations,
demographics, interests, behaviors and
connections are crucial information for creating
a persona profile.

Here’s how to start researching and define
your persona profiles:
INTERVIEW, POLL OR OBSERVE
A GROUP OF YOUR COMMUNITY
MEMBERS
Remember that you are looking for publicly
available information about their locations,
connections. Be sure to collect enough data
in order to represent the community you are
studying, not just a small group of people who
happen to show up. Use polls or ask open-
ended questions to survey your community.
LOOK FOR OTHER COMMUNITIES THAT
YOUR MEMBERS MAY BELONG TO
This will help you understand your members’
interests and connections more deeply. For
instance, if you manage a Facebook Group,
you can investigate which other Groups your
members have joined and which Pages they
follow.
DEFINE YOUR COMMUNITY’S VALUE
TO MEMBERS
Members will join your community with
expectations of what they can do in it.
Understanding what motivates members to
join your community will help you to set clear
expectations for its value and address your
members’ needs.
FIND PATTERNS FROM YOUR
RESEARCH AND GROUP SIMILAR
MEMBERS TOGETHER
If you see that a group of members share a
common characteristic, you may have found
a member pattern within your community.
Patterns can include members sharing
common interests and members in the same
age range.
CREATE REPRESENTATIVE MODELS
OF THOSE GROUPS BASED ON THE
PATTERNS YOU FOUND
Representative models, which are also known
as archetypes, are ideal models of types
or groups, such as a member type. These
archetype models will be your personas.
You can create as many persona profiles
as necessary to represent your audience
segments.
MAKE PERSONA PROFILES UNIQUE BY
GIVING THEM A NAME AND A STORY TO
REPRESENT THE SEGMENT YOU ARE
DESCRIBING
The persona’s description should have
information on his or her location,
connections.
01
02
03
04
05
06

There is no right or wrong answer for how
many persona profiles you should create for
your community, though you should avoid
getting too granular and creating dozens of
them. The best approach is to assess how
many segments you will need to reasonably
represent your audience.
Defining an audience strategy using persona
profiles will help to identify which content
strategies you can use to engage your
community members better and select the
best platforms to build and scale your online
presence. The more insights you have on your
audience, the better equipped you’ll be to
deliver meaningful messages to them.
Also, as your community evolves, your
audience may change too. Revisit your
audience strategy frequently to see if your
persona profiles need to be updated or your
audience segments need to be reviewed.
Using Insights to understand your audience
One way to research your audience
characteristics is using your community
Insights tool. Insights provide information
about your community’s performance,
including demographic data about your
audience and how your community members
are responding to your content.
Insights can also help to answer questions
such as: What is the distribution between
women and men in your community? What
age groups do your community members
belong to? You can see the countries and
cities your community members live in and
the languages they use. This information can
further inform your persona profiles and your
audience strategy. For example, based on the
demographic data in the example below, you
could determine that one of your persona
profiles should represent women ages 25 to
34, since almost one third of your member base
falls within that segment.
Insights access and capabilities will vary
depending on which product you are using
to build your online community. You can only
access Insights once your community has
grown to a specific size. In Pages, for example,
demographic data, such as members’ age,
gender and location, is only available once
the community has 100 or more members. In
Groups, you can only see certain information,
like top countries, cities, age or gender, when
you surpass 250 members.

Key takeaways
• Community managers should be able to define audience
segments within a community.
• Creating persona profiles is a strategy to define audience
segments using insights from your community members,
researching members’ information and creating models of
representative groups.
• You can use Insights to help define persona profiles and
understand your members’ demographics.
17

2.2. Platform strategy
You can build and grow your community across
several different platforms; choosing the right
tool is critical for setting your community
up for success. Each platform has different
strengths and opportunities, and some will be
better suited to pursue your goals.
As a community manager, you will decide
which platforms are appropriate for building
and scaling your community. Research and
understand what platforms can and cannot do
for you and your community. This might lead
you to choose one or many platforms, but you
should keep your choice consistent with your
community strategy, mission, values, goals and
audience.
A multi-platform strategy may result in having
more ways to deliver and share content, and
more significant reach. Or, it could require more
work and resources to manage. Find a balance
that suits the resources that you have and the
goals that you have set for your community.
Community managers should consider the following
questions when researching which platforms to use
for building an online presence:
• Are the potential platforms aligned with my
community’s needs?
• What are the products and features that each
platform offers to create, share and manage
engaging content for my community?
• How does each platform support user
management and moderation?
• What community member insights does each
platform provide?
• How will success and relevance look on each
platform, and how can you gauge these on an
ongoing basis?

Build a platform strategy
Let’s work on an example of how to build a platform strategy. We will use Facebook apps and
technologies here, but you can use this strategy with other products based on your needs.
M I S S I O N State your community’s mission, as it should always be your guide. Your platform
selection should be aligned with your overall community strategy.
A U D I E N C E Briefly describe your audience segments. You can reference your persona profiles here.
P L AT F O R M Facebook Instagram WhatsApp Messenger
O P P O R T U N I T I E S Foster
member-
to-member
interactions
Broadcast
information
and updates
Focus on
visually-
oriented
audiences
Synchronous
messaging
for small
communities
Make
connections
through
conversation
P R O D U C T Groups
Groups are
a place for
people to
communicate
about shared
interests
and facilitate
peer-to-peer
connection.
You can create
a group for
anything—your
family reunion,
your after-work
sports team or
your book club.
Pages
You can like
or follow a
Page to get
updates from
businesses,
organizations
and public
figures.
Anyone with
a Facebook
account
can create a
Page or help
manage one,
as long as
they have an
assigned role
on the Page.
Accounts
Use an
Instagram
account to
share photos,
videos and
stories. Here,
you can view
what you’ve
shared, the
people you’re
following
and who’s
following you.
Groups
Keep in touch
with the people
who matter
the most. With
group chats,
you can share
messages,
photos and
videos with
up to 256
people at once.
You can also
name your
group, mute
or customize
notifications,
and more.
Chat
Messenger is
a messaging
service. Use
Messenger
to make
connections
and build
relationships
through
conversation.
Messenger
can make
your
community
more
accessible to
members.
S A M P L E
F E AT U R E S
Membership
approval
Groups Insights
Membership
questions
Pinned posts
Fundraising
tools
Page Insights
Ads
Photo and
video posts
Stories
Instagram
Insights
Fundraising
Ads
Instant
messaging
Secure
encryption
Invitation only
Send direct
or group
messages
Make voice
and video
calls
Automated
messages for
your Page
S A M P L E
M E T R I C S
Number of
members
Comments per
post
Number of
user-generated
content
Number of
reactions
Reach of a
post
Number of
followers
Likes per
photo or
video
Number of
group chat
participants
Number of
messages per
day
Number of
messages per
day
Number of
connections

Once you finish the comparative table, assess
which platform or platforms would be best for
cultivating your community’s online presence.
Remember that some platforms will be better
at achieving specific community objectives
than others. For instance, if you need to foster
member-to-member connections, a Facebook
Group would work well, while an Instagram
account would be better suited to building a
visual experience.
As you choose a platform, think about how to
tailor content and engagement strategies to
accommodate its capabilities and constraints.
We will review tactics to make your content
more engaging in future sections, but these
strategies will depend on the platform that you
have chosen to build your online presence, as
each one offers different ways to share content
and unique features for connecting with your
audience.
Key takeaways
• Community managers should be able to determine the
platforms that will best support community-building and
creating an online presence for their audience.
• A platform strategy can help you align your community’s
needs with a platform’s products and features. Each
platform has its own unique strengths.
• Community managers should tailor their content and
engagement strategies to accommodate a platform’s
specific capabilities.
20

2.3. Branding strategy
It is important for a community manager to
define and understand your audience and
determine your community experience. As
a community manager, you represent your
community’s brand, mission and voice.
A community’s brand is the collection of
characteristics that distinguish and define
how members feel as part of that specific
community, and the way your community
is perceived by others. Community brand
attributes can include your name and logo,
the colors and styles of graphics and the tone
of voice you use when posting content and
engaging members. Communities can thrive
when you keep your brand consistent with your
overall community strategy across platforms.
What are the elements of your community’s brand?
There are three main components that will define your
community’s brand:
YOUR ESSENCE AND CORE VALUES
These are the same values that are part of your
community strategy and should be aligned with
your community mission. For instance, if you
want your community to be a respectful place for
conversation, you should include “respect” among
your brand’s core values, and all your messaging
and content should be aligned to that principle.
YOUR MESSAGING STYLE
This demonstrates your brand’s personality.
Will you address your members formally or in a
colloquial manner? Is your community a funny
place or a more serious environment?
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02

YOUR VISUAL IDENTITY
This incorporates elements such as your logo,
imagery, typography, colors and creative
design, and defines how your brand looks and
feels.
How can you put a community branding
strategy in place?
Once you define your brand’s core elements,
ensure brand consistency in your strategy and
your community with the following tactics:
MAKE YOUR COMMUNITY EASY TO
IDENTIFY
Pick a recognizable name and use a profile or
cover photo that represents your community
clearly. In Groups, you can create a custom
URL for easy access, and in Pages, you can set
up a username in your custom URL.
DEFINE AND DOCUMENT BRAND
GUIDELINES
Write down your brand rules: Logos, colors,
layouts, styles and tone of voice. Annotate
everything that makes your community unique,
and specify how you are going to use those
features. Check out Facebook brand guidelines
to review an example.
ENSURE BRAND CONSISTENCY IN YOUR
CONTENT
Maintain your brand’s core elements
throughout your content. For instance, if
you create an Instagram account dedicated
to black and white photography, don’t post
color photos, as they would go against your
guidelines. Also, if you engage with your
members in a friendly way, keep that tone
consistent in all interactions.
BE CONSISTENT WITH BRAND
GUIDELINES ACROSS PLATFORMS
If your community has an online presence
on multiple platforms, make sure that you
follow your brand guidelines on all of them.
For instance, if you use a Facebook Page and an
Instagram account, make sure that your logo is the
same on both.
Your branding strategy is not set in stone. You can
always update it to reflect how you want your brand
to be perceived by your members, but don’t change
it so often that people won’t know how to pick you
out of a crowd.
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04
01
02
03
Key takeaways
• A community manager represents a
community’s brand and voice.
• A community’s brand is how it is
perceived by others. Your brand
consists of your core values, your
messaging style and your visual
identity.
• Document your brand strategy
and identity, and adhere to it in all
your content and across different
platforms.

2.4 Launch Strategy
Ready? Set? Launch! You have prepared
by determining a strategy and guidelines,
figuring out how to define your audience,
deciding on appropriate platforms and
writing down brand guidelines for your
community. This is all just the beginning for
your community, and keeping your strategy
in place will be key to your success.
Community managers can use a launch
strategy to define milestones, determine
tactics and actions to get to their goals, use
metrics to gauge early success and establish
a process for redefining their targets on an
ongoing basis.
How to build your launch strategy?
First, think about how you are going to
pair the components of your community
strategy with specific tactics that will
help you meet your goals. For instance,
if you want to reach a specific number of
members by the end of the month: What
practices are you going to follow to achieve
that objective? How will you consider
audience segments to determine the most
engaging tactics? What will those tactics
look like on the specific platform you are
using to grow your community? And how
will you implement your brand guidelines
when using these tactics?

For example, imagine that you want to grow a Facebook Page follower base.
Here’s how to implement a tactic for achieving this goal:
• Define your community parameters
and community strategies. There are
foundational and fundamental parameters
you need to establish in order to define
your community, such as its mission, goals,
objectives and values. In this case, our goal
is to grow Facebook Page followers.
• An objective is precise, measurable and
time-bound, meaning that it needs to be
accomplished in a certain time period.
Plan tactics that will work within the
timeframe of your objective. For example,
to grow Facebook Page followers, be
specific about how many new members
you are expecting and when you should
expect them by. Be realistic about your
objectives and set specific numbers and
due dates.
• Choose a tactic for how you are going
to reach each objective. Consider
your audience research, your platform
capabilities and your brand guidelines.
An appropriate tactic should detail how,
when and with what you are going to
achieve your objective. To grow a Page, for
example, you could use Facebook ads to
reach potential new followers.
• When you reach your deadline, use your
measurement data to assess whether
you have accomplished your objective.
If you reach your objective, think about
how you can set a higher bar next time to
keep enhancing your community. If you
didn’t meet your goal, think of ways you
could improve your tactics. It may also be
necessary to redefine your objectives.
• List your tactics, as they will create an
action plan for your launch strategy.
Compile your tactics and use them as
part of a roadmap for managing your
community. Facebook Ads is one of
many tactics that you can use to grow
your followers. You could also invite your
friends to join the community, or rely on
organic growth and let people find you
through word of mouth. All these tactics
can contribute to an action plan that builds
toward your goal during the launch period.
• Feel free to make changes anytime
you redefine your goals and objectives
through this process. Things can and will
change over time, so it’s important to
revisit your parameters and strategies to
make sure that they still reflect the reality
of your community and the sentiment
behind your mission.
Other launch goals may include creating a
certain amount of content to post, getting
a specific number of reactions per post or
launching a set number of campaigns in
a period of time. Think about your launch
objectives and determine specific tactics to
help you reach them.
Growing your community
As you launch your community, you will set in motion a strategy to start building your community’s
presence. But you can’t build and scale a community without members to engage with.
One of the first objectives to pursue in your launch strategy is growing your member base. There
are two main ways to do it: Organic and paid growth.

Organic growth
Growing your community organically means
bringing in new members through unpaid
tactics and strategies. Some examples of
tactics that can lead to organic growth:
• Invite people you know. If you are starting
a community about a topic you are
passionate about, you probably know
some people who share that passion
already. Get them involved early and
encourage them to be active in the
community.
• Ask members to invite their friends.
If your members are having a positive
experience in your community, they might
consider inviting their friends to join them.
Encourage your members to help promote
your community and expand your reach.
• Optimize your community for online
search tools. There are several ways to
help people find your community online.
For example, use keywords that represent
what your community is in its name,
since potential group members might be
searching for those common terms. You
can also use hashtags in your content to
make it easier to find.
Paid growth
Paid marketing campaigns can help
your community grow by leveraging the
reach of social media channels, including
Facebook apps and technologies, and using
merchandising.
• Create ad campaigns. Facebook apps
and services provide a wide variety of ad
options to grow your community. If you
manage a Facebook Group, you can create
and link a Facebook Page to it, from which
you can run ads. With ads, you can create
campaigns to increase overall awareness
of your community, grow the number of
people who are visiting your community
and get more people to engage with your
posts through comments, shares and likes.
• Use merchandise to advertise. Give
souvenirs or merchandise with your
community name and URL to members
or potential new members. You can
also make flyers or business cards as
offline advertisements to promote your
community.
When growing your community, you can
combine organic and paid strategies to
achieve your goals. Use the combination of
tactics that best fits your goals and budget.
Key takeaways
• Successful communities set launch strategies that align an overall community strategy
with an audience, platform and brand strategy.
• A launch strategy considers several tactics to achieve your objectives. Community
managers can compile a list of tactics in an action plan for success.
• Use organic or paid growth options to expand your membership base and reach
potential new members.
25

2.5 Team Strategy
Running a community by yourself is complex,
and requires posting relevant content,
welcoming new members, moderating
discussions and maintaining engagement.
As the number of community members
grows, this will take lots of time, effort and
resources. Community managers can work
in teams of administrators, moderators and
other roles to distribute their workload and run
a community effectively and efficiently.
If you are at a point where you need community
management support, you may be asking,
Where and how can I find a team? And how can
we work together to grow our community?

Team-building strategy
Overall, your team strategy should consider
a process to assess your community’s needs
and define ideal team candidates, strategies
to onboard and train new team members,
and tactics to empower your peers and
delegate responsibilities. To start building an
all-star community team, you’ll need to:
DETERMINE THE TASKS YOU
NEED HELP WITH
Do you have a backlog of content to
review? Then you need someone to
moderate content. Are conversations
going off-topic? Then you need
someone to moderate discussions.
Identifying your needs will help you
figure out the profile and skills to look
for in a potential team member.
DEFINE THE PROFILE OF YOUR
TARGET TEAMMATES
Build a list of characteristics that
are most likely to make your team
successful. In Groups, you can use
the suggested moderator feature to
determine candidates who may be a
good fit for your moderation team.
TRY TO BUILD YOUR TEAM WITH
MEMBERS FROM YOUR COMMUNITY
Active members who frequently engage
with others, support your cause and know
your brand might be interested in joining
the team. These members are usually
well established in the community and
are familiar with its culture. If possible,
consider these people when building
your team, as their knowledge of the
community will be a valuable asset.
FIND PEOPLE WITH DIVERSE SKILLS
AND PERSPECTIVES
While you are passionate about your
community, there will be things that you
know less about. Try to find people who
believe in your mission and can bring a
different point of view to the team.
01
ONBOARD NEW MEMBERS AND HAVE
FREQUENT TRAINING FOR YOUR TEAM
Explain your management approach and
community goals upfront so your team
is on the same page. Be clear about each
individual’s responsibilities and your
expectations for their performance. Every
team member is critical to maintaining
your community’s culture and should
be well versed in understanding and
implementing the community strategy.
Find ways to develop the team’s skills
through mentorship, coaching, training
and feedback.
COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR TEAM
Establish a private communication
channel to discuss community issues. Use
meetings to coordinate with your team
and collaborate on moderation decisions
before taking action. You can set up a
WhatsApp or Messenger group chat to
stay connected.
RELY ON YOUR TEAM FOR HELP
Share and divide responsibilities among
team members to avoid overwhelming any
individual. Be sure that team members
know what they are responsible for, so
no single person takes on too much and
there are no redundancies. As you build
your team, trust that they will share
responsibilities.
KEEP YOUR TEAM MOTIVATED
Some communities will have paid
community managers, but others may
enlist volunteers. Find ways to incentivize
and reward your team to encourage
them and keep them engaged. Show how
thankful you and your community are
for your team’s work. For example, some
communities acknowledge outstanding
admin work by dedicating posts to them.
02
03
04
05
06
07
08

Key takeaways
• Scaling your community provides an opportunity for growing your
team. Assess your needs and invite the right people to collaborate in
running a growing community efficiently and effectively.
• Communicate with your team members on an ongoing basis. Set
expectations for your team so they can manage the community and
stay aligned with the community strategy and mission.
28

2.6 Operational Workflows
Your community runs through a combined
effort from people who are following
processes and defining strategies. To run
a community efficiently, be sure to clearly
define, document and share strategies and
procedures with your team. Community
managers define operational workflows to
manage their community in an efficient and
effective way.
Defining and documenting workflows will
help you organize how things get done
in your community. For instance, you can
establish protocols to categorize responses
by priority or sensitivity, design documents
that include key resources to better onboard
new team members and determine a service-
level agreement (SLA) commitment to set a
response time to community needs.

Key takeaways
• Community managers should define the
most important operational workflows to
run the community.
• Operational workflows can consist of varied
tools and documents, including flowcharts,
project schedules and playbooks.
How can you build operational workflows?
Not all workflows need to be defined in one master document. You can use a group of supporting
frameworks together to form your operational workflow protocol. Here are some examples of
documents that your workflow might consider:
• Flowcharts that define a sequence
of activities. A flowchart is a visual
representation of the steps in a procedure
and the decisions needed to perform a
process. You should establish a flow for
each critical process required to run your
community, such as a protocol to escalate
crises, accept and welcome new members
into the community and a sequence of
steps to approve content.
• A Responsible, Accountable, Consulted
and Informed (RACI) chart, or similar, can
define roles and responsibilities. RACI
charts are usually displayed as a matrix
with a list of processes alongside the team
members who are responsible for them. It
is a good practice to map your flowcharts
to a RACI chart. For instance, you can use
a RACI chart to determine who is the point
of contact when you need to escalate
conflicts and who will be in charge of
onboarding new members.
• A Gantt chart illustrates mid- and
long-term milestones. This project
management tool is used for high-level
planning and can help you schedule,
coordinate and track specific tasks in your
community. For instance, use it to keep
track of the target dates for milestones
and the weekly activities that you are
implementing to achieve your community
objectives.
• A content calendar. While a Gantt chart
illustrates long-term tasks, a content
calendar can be broken down by days,
weeks and months. Content calendars
specify what content you are going to
share with your community and when.
• A community management playbook.
In a playbook, you can write down your
mission, goals, values and guidelines.
Also, you can use this document to share
tips and best practices. For instance, your
playbook can list expert advice on how
to create engaging content and how to
measure content performance. Ask your
team what topics they would like to see
covered in the playbook to take advantage
of it as a training tool.
• A list of frequently asked questions
(FAQs). Your team and your community
members will have many questions that
will come up often. Gather the ones that
are most frequently repeated and write
down the answers to them. You can refer
members to the list to save yourself some
time.
Operational workflows will support you in
managing your day-to-day tasks. Revisit
your workflows over time to see what
needs to be updated based on how your
community evolves. Share your documents
and workflows with your team and train
them on how to use the documents to run
your community efficiently and effectively.

2.7 Partnerships Strategy
As your community grows, you may be
thinking of ways to expand your community’s
impact. Some communities have found that
connecting with different strategic partners,
like other communities, brands, nonprofits
and organizations, helps to strengthen their
community’s efforts.
Community managers can define strategic
partnership criteria and classify potential
partners, steward mutually beneficial
partner relationships and determine terms of
collaboration between parties.
In this section, you will learn more about
what strategic partnerships are, how they
work and how your community could benefit
from this type of collaboration.

What is a strategic partnership?
A partnership works by connecting two or more communities or organizations who offer unique and
exclusive benefits to support each other’s causes and help each other achieve their objectives. Your
community could partner with other groups, nonprofits, brands or organizations.
What are the benefits of partnerships?
Strategic partnerships represent an important opportunity for communities to connect with other
organizations that can help support their goals and further their impact. Partnerships offer a simple
and effective way to increase your community’s presence without financial strain. For instance,
you can partner with an elearning organization that helps you provide training courses to your
community members while you raise traffic to the organization’s website by sharing a link to it in
your community.
What kind of partnerships are there?
From brand and business partnerships to nonprofit and fundraising options, there are a wide variety
of opportunities. Some partnerships are purely motivated by cost-saving, but there are a variety of
other benefits to partnerships that can strengthen your community. Here are some examples:
• Cost-sharing Communities can partner
with brands or nonprofits to share costs
for mutual causes. For instance, you can
co-host an event and divide the cost
accordingly.
• Sponsorships Brands can partner with
communities for sponsored events and
provide products, funds and venues for
the event.
• Discounts and promotions Brands can
offer communities discount codes and
promotions that are unique for members.
Make these opportunities relevant and
beneficial to your community members,
not just the brand.
• Content partnerships Co-create content,
like a blog post, video or podcast, with a
partner. This content can be shared, cross-
posted or featured from a Page to a Group.
Be aware that certain restrictions may apply
to branded content in your community when
using Facebook products.
• Link-sharing opportunities Work with a
partner to share news about a specific event
or program. For instance, you can direct your
community members to an event invite that
your partner is hosting.
• Charitable opportunities Partner with
other organizations that relate to your
community’s mission and provide your
members with volunteer opportunities or
become key partners in fundraising efforts.
• Market research Plan learning opportunities
to help partners create better and more
relevant products. This is particularly helpful
for community managers who run brands for
market insights.

How can I establish a partnership?
Knowing the benefits that strategic partnerships can bring to your community is the first step. Let’s
review the strategy that a community manager should follow to establish and nurture partnerships:
DEFINE PARTNERSHIP CRITERIA AND CLASSIFY POTENTIAL PARTNERS.
A potential partner should share common ground with your community, such as values or
mutually beneficial goals. Ask yourself questions such as: Do our values align with those of the
prospective partner? Are our community members interested in the partnership outcome? Is
the potential partnership aligned with our overall community strategy?
PREPARE A PITCH TO LAND YOUR STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
AND REACH OUT TO YOUR PARTNER CANDIDATES.
Think of something concise that answers who your community is, what you expect both
parties to gain from the partnership and how you envision success for both partners and
their communities.
CULTIVATE AND NURTURE A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL PARTNER RELATIONSHIP.
Make sure that the partnership will be beneficial to everyone involved. For instance, ask your
members if the outcomes of the partnership are beneficial to them, and check your content
performance to assess if there has been a change in engagement with content related to
the partnership.
DEFINE THE TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT FOLLOWING LOCAL RULES AND REGULATIONS.
Be open and share with your community the news of the partnership and the reasons for it.
Adhere to rules or policies that the partnership may be subject to.
MEASURE THE SUCCESS OF A PARTNERSHIP AND DEVELOP YOUR RELATIONSHIP.
Assess the collaboration on an ongoing basis, asking questions such as: Is the partnership
working? Are both parties benefitting from the partnership? How can the partnership be
amplified or extended in the future?
01
02
03
04
05
Key takeaways
• Community managers can establish partnerships with other communities or organizations
to amplify their impact.
• There are various partnership types. Community managers should assess when and if
partnerships are necessary and who are possible partner candidates to collaborate with.
• To establish partnerships, you need to define the criteria, cultivate mutual benefits and
measure the success of your collaboration.
33

Make strategic content
decisions for a community
3

Part of the role of a community manager is to create and curate engaging content. In this
chapter, you’ll learn the practices and tools you need to build an engaging content strategy
for your community.
3.1 Relevant Content
Everything you share with your community
online—like posts, photos, videos and
stories—is content. In order to build, scale
and grow your community, engaging content
is key. Creating and curating content that
is relevant to your community is a complex
task that requires planning, strategizing
and understanding your audience. As a
community manager, you should set a
content strategy that outlines when and
what to post. A good content strategy
will lead members to check in often to see
what’s new.
To know when to post, observe your
audience’s habits and behaviors, including
the time they are most active online. You
can create and use a content calendar to
plan when your content will go online.
To know what content to share, first, learn
what’s relevant to your audience and how to
create or curate content that will be meaningful
to them. Community managers create and
curate content that is reflective of their
community members’ interests.
Creating your content strategy
A content strategy connects your everyday
efforts to your overall community strategy and
the needs of your community. You can build a
content strategy in three steps:
DEFINE WHAT TO POST
DETERMINE WHEN TO POST
ASSESS THE PERFORMANCE OF
YOUR CONTENT
01
02
03

Let’s review each of the three elements of a content strategy:
WHAT SHOULD YOU CONSIDER WHEN POSTING CONTENT?
01
• Use tools that support your creative
process. You don’t need to use
advanced graphic design software to
create beautiful multimedia content.
Instagram filters, Boomerang,
Layout and other tools can help you
streamline graphic design work.
• Amplify someone else’s content.
In addition to original content,
you can also share high-quality
material from other sources with
your community. Always ask for
permission and give credit to the
source. Tailor it to your community
by saying why you think the content
you’re sharing is good for them.
• Encourage members to share
content when the platform
allows. Members are at the heart
of meaningful communities, and
their interest is what moves the
community forward and keeps
other people engaged. Harness your
members’ interests and experiences
by encouraging them to create
content for the community. You
can moderate and curate member
content in your Facebook group
using post approvals. Promote
challenges or topics of the week,
engage with the content your
community members post and
acknowledge and thank your top
contributors.
• Consider your community mission.
The content that you share with your
community should contribute to your
overarching mission. It should also
adhere to your community strategy,
rules and branding principles.
• Think about your platform strategy.
Content works differently across
different platforms. For instance, if
you manage an Instagram community,
your members will most likely see your
content on their phones. Plan ahead,
and use the strengths of the platform
to your advantage.
• Get to know what your members like.
Your content should be relevant to
the people in your community. To best
understand what your community
members like, use tools like Page
Insights, Group Insights and polls.
• Use eye-catching multimedia. Don’t
limit yourself to plain text. Engaging
content often consists of multimedia
assets such as pictures, animations or
GIFs, video, infographics and links to
other sites.
• Decide what action you want people
to take. Ask your community to
do something with a clear call to
action in the content you share. It
could be to answer open-ended
questions, reply with a GIF, provide
feedback or comments, tag a
friend or ask your community to
share content to their feed.

• Post regularly. Your community needs
to stay active and engaged. Commit to
a periodic release of content to keep
things interesting.
• Use a content calendar. Determine
the days and hours when you will
post. Prepare your content calendar
in advance by scheduling posts in your
group or on your Page.
WHEN SHOULD YOU POST CONTENT?
• Research your community’s online
behavior. Use Page Insights or
Group Insights to figure out the
times your community is most
active. Your audience has a greater
chance of seeing your content at
those times, and the more people
who see your content, the greater
the likelihood of engagement.
02
03 HOW CAN YOU MONITOR AND ASSESS YOUR CONTENT?
• Keep track of performance metrics.
You can track the reach, engagement
and conversion metrics of each post.
Reach is defined as how many people
see your content. Engagement is
how many interactions community
members have with the content,
such as Likes, comments and shares.
Conversion relates to how many
member interactions turned into
new actions, such as website visits,
sign-ups or event attendance. Track
your content performance using
Page Insights or Group Insights.
We will learn more about content
performance and further explore how
to track it in a future chapter.
• Test your content and optimize it
for performance. If a particular post
isn’t performing as well as others,
compare it to past posts that were
more successful. Experiment with the
variables that may have contributed
to past performance. Some variables
that you can optimize are the time
of a post, the type of media you
share and the call to action you
use. Change one variable at a time
until you determine which ones
perform better with your audience.
• Use Facebook tools to manage your
content and measure its performance.
If you’re running a community on a
Facebook Page or Instagram, Creator
Studio brings together tools you need to
effectively post, manage and measure
content across all your Facebook Pages
and Instagram accounts. Creator Studio
also helps you take advantage of new
features and opportunities for your
community when they become available.
Key takeaways
• Community managers can use a content
calendar and community insights to post
content that is relevant to their audience
at times their audience is most active.
• Track and measure the reach, engagement
and conversion from your content to
understand which pieces perform best in
your community.
• Your content strategy should always
be in sync with and contribute to your
community’s mission and values.

3.2 Valuable Trends
Your community is not isolated from global
and local events, trends and issues. This can
include global issues such as climate change,
a health crisis, or local news and events.
Pop culture trends will also affect the social
media platforms that your community uses,
and most of your members will engage with
trending topics in some way.
In this section, we will share examples of
trends and issues that can help community
managers create relevant and valuable
content to increase engagement with
their communities.
Common trends
Community managers can research trending
topics and incorporate them into content to
increase its relevance to their audience. Here
are a few examples of trends and issues that
you may consider:
• Global and local news. Events that occur at
a global or local scale may affect members
of your community. Include these issues
in your content to acknowledge how a
particular event may be affecting your
audience. Make sure to cite reliable
sources and avoid misinformation.
• Holidays and festivities. Refresh your
content with seasonal elements, whether
it’s to celebrate the beginning of spring or to
commemorate an upcoming festivity.
• Viral memes and Internet challenges.
Have you seen what is trending on Facebook
and Instagram? Chances are that your
community members have. Make use of
memes, GIFs and Internet challenges to
engage your community, but make sure that
the content that you are sharing adheres to
your community guidelines and aligns with
your community mission.
These trends are valuable for connecting your
community to the wider world but are best
used sparingly, as they could shift attention
away from your mission.

Find valuable trends
The key to finding valuable trends is to
monitor traditional and social media. What’s
happening in the world? What’s happening
outside your community? What other social
media are your members consuming? Here
are some ways to find valuable trends to
engage your community:
• Insights. Facebook IQ can lead you
to powerful, actionable insights and
measurement about the behavior of your
community. Use Insights To Go to look at
insights aggregated by region, industry
and more. Page Insights and Group
Insights can show you which posts are
trending in your community.
• News. News outlets can provide valuable
information about what’s happening
globally and locally. If you want to share
news with your community, make sure to
post news from reliable sources. Facebook
News offers a collection of headlines and
stories from trustworthy publishers.
• Social listening. Social listening is
the act of monitoring social media to
determine what people are saying about
a particular topic. You can use hashtags
and keyword alerts to start social
listening in your community. Hashtags
turn topics and phrases into links in your
posts and can help you find more related
posts about topics you’re interested in.
Keyword alerts enable you to receive
notifications when specific words and
phrases appear in your community.
Your community members will often provide
valuable trends and give you ideas of what
content they would like to see. Engage your
community in conversation and explore what
valuable trends you can include.
Key takeaways
• Community managers can include relevant
trends in their content strategy to improve
community engagement.
• Trends may include global and local news,
holidays and festivities, viral memes and
Internet challenges, among others.

3.3 Goal-driven Activities
Creating engaging content for your
community is one of the core tasks of
a community manager. But traditional
text-based media may not be enough to
accomplish your strategic goals, such as
improving your reach and engagement, or
kicking off conversation. Facebook apps and
services provide product-specific tools to
help you enhance your content engagement
and support your overall community strategy.
As a community manager, you can create
different types of posts using Facebook
products and services to engage your
audience and mobilize your community in
different ways. In the next section, we will
review examples of the tools you can use to
reach your goals.

TOOLS FOR HIGHLIGHTING CONTENT IN THE LONG- AND SHORT-TERM
Announcements and pinned posts
Available in Facebook Groups and on Pages
• Group announcements are posts that
appear at the top of your group and in the
announcements section.
• Similarly, you can pin a post to the top
of your Facebook Page. While you can
only pin one post at a time, you can
feature multiple announcements.
• Use announcements or pinned posts to share
important information with your community,
such as your guidelines, or news that you
want members to see clearly at the top of
your community News Feed.
Stories
Available on Facebook and Instagram
• Stories are collections of images or short
videos that you can create from your
Facebook Page or Instagram account. You
can add overlays, stickers and effects to
your stories, and they are visible to your
community for 24 hours.
• Get creative with stories to achieve
broader reach and engagement. For
example, create a narrative with a
collection of short clips or survey your
audience using poll stickers.
TOOLS FOR HELPING YOUR COMMUNITY GET TOGETHER ON AND OFFLINE
Events and get-togethers
Available through Facebook Pages
and Groups
• You can host in-person and online meetups
using the Events tool on your Facebook
Page or in your group.
• In your group, you can create get-
togethers, which enable you to set a date,
time and location for a meeting. You can
also choose to “decide later” if you don’t
have those details worked out yet.
• With events and get-togethers, your
community members can make more
robust connections by meeting in
person or online. These relationships
can contribute to an increased sense of
community and belonging.
Live and Watch Party
Available through Instagram and Facebook
Pages and Groups
• You can use Facebook Live to broadcast
events, performances and gatherings in
real time. Your community can watch from
a smartphone, computer or connected
TV. Start a live video on Instagram, or on
Facebook from a Page or a Group.
• You can host a watch party to bring your
community together for a shared video
experience. Choose videos relevant to your
community and invite members to join
and discuss them. This feature is available
through your Facebook Page or Group.
Products and features
Certain types of posts can help you achieve your particular strategic community goals. Community
managers should be familiar with the tools available and how each one can engage and mobilize
their audience.
Here are some product-specific tools that you can use to enhance your content and reach your
overall community strategy goals:

TOOLS TO GET TO KNOW YOUR
COMMUNITY’S OPINIONS
Polls
Available on Facebook Pages, Groups and
Stories and Instagram Stories.
• Create a poll on Facebook or Instagram
to ask a question. Customize the answers
and let your community members vote for
their favorite option.
• Polls can help you engage your community
and start conversations around topics that
are of interest to them. For instance, you
can ask your community for feedback, or
ask what types of content they would like
to see more of in the future.
Units
Available through Facebook Groups
• Units enable group admins to organize
content and share educational resources
with their community. You can use units
to create a series of sequential or themed
Facebook posts (for example, a member
training guide or learning path) and track
who has completed it.
TOOLS TO SUPPORT
COMMUNITY LEARNING
TOOLS TO MOBILIZE YOUR COMMUNITY TO TAKE ACTION
Fundraise
• Use fundraising tools on Facebook and
Instagram to donate and raise money for
both nonprofits and personal causes. You
can create fundraisers as a community to
support your overall cause or mission.
Ads
• Facebook ads can help you reach new
people on Facebook or Instagram who may
be interested in your community. Use ads
to increase overall awareness, expand your
reach, get more people to engage with
your content, and grow your member base.
Think of creative ways that you could use
these tools to pursue your community
goals. You can also create campaigns that
achieve your goals through a mix of tools.
For example, if you want to grow your
community, you can use stories and ads, and
plan an in-person event to invite new people
to join your community. If you want to assess
your community guidelines, post them in
an announcement, use a poll to survey your
community and host a live event to chat
with your audience about your mission and
how your values should be reflected in the
community rules.
Note: Some of these tools are not yet
available worldwide.
Key takeaways
• Facebook apps and services include
many tools that can help you create
content and activities that support your
community goals.
• Community managers should determine
which tools can best enable them to
engage and mobilize their community.

Engage and moderate
a community
4

Community managers have the ability to cultivate a welcoming culture. Learn how to engage
and moderate your community by onboarding new members, encouraging member-to-member
connections and using Facebook Community Standards to keep your community safe.
4.1 Onboard New Members
A community is a group of people who
connect around a common topic to learn,
share and discuss. Each community
has its own mission, values and culture.
Community managers work to create
spaces that support the community
strategy and culture.
Community managers should help new
members get oriented. The first step in
the onboarding process is to make new
members feel welcome and comfortable
in the community. In this section, we will
review different ways to onboard new
members of your community.

How can you make new members feel welcome?
New members may have a hard time engaging with your community at first.
Help them to feel more comfortable with these strategies:
Be explicit with your new members about
your values and rules. Include a link to your
community guidelines in your welcome
post in order to set clear expectations,
encourage positive behaviors and help
new members understand more about
your culture. As an added bonus, sharing
the community guidelines in frequent
welcome posts will help to reiterate the
rules for everyone.
• Create a safe environment for your
community. Building a welcoming
community culture is an ongoing effort.
Encourage members to engage with your
community content and each other in
a friendly manner. Cultivate respectful
conversations so everyone feels invited
to participate.
• Use membership questions. In Groups,
membership questions can help you
screen new members. Learn more about
potential members before introducing
them to your community—for instance,
you can ask them why they want to join
the community, and ask them to adhere to
your guidelines.
Your onboarding strategy will depend on
the platform you are using. For instance,
membership questions and rules sections
are available in Groups, while in Pages
you can post a welcome message with
your guidelines and pin it to the top. With
Pages, you can also create a group in which
your Page is the admin, and move your
community-building strategies from your
Page to a group. Adjust and revise your
strategies to make them suitable for your
platform and community.
• Post a welcome message. A greeting
makes new members feel appreciated and
accepted. Each platform your community
uses offers a unique opportunity to
welcome new people. For instance, in
Facebook Groups, you can tag new
members in a welcome message. In Pages
and on Instagram, you can post a photo
that invites new members to introduce
themselves in the comments. Across
platforms, you can create a welcome post
that invites new members to say hello and
prompts current members to greet them.
• Encourage members to welcome each
other. Empower your community members
to support one another and contribute
to the community culture. For instance,
your members can organize a welcome
committee that greets new members.
Members can also tag each other to make
connections and start conversations.
Reach out to members who help you make
your community a welcoming space, and
thank them for their support.
• Involve everyone on your team in the
onboarding process. Encourage your
teammates to welcome new members
and to introduce themselves and share
their roles in the community. This helps
new members get to know the different
community management team members
and feel acknowledged.
• Refer new members to your community
guidelines. If you are using Pages,
make a pinned public post to share your
community code of conduct. If you are
using Groups, make an announcement,
which you can refer to whenever you need
it, or create rules for your group.

Key takeaways
• Community managers should help new members to feel welcome
and comfortable within the community. Try tagging new members
individually or share a collective welcome post.
• Make sure that new members understand your community
guidelines when they join.
• Encourage other community members to participate in the
onboarding process.
46

4.2 Member-to-Member
Connections
Fostering meaningful conversations and
connections among your community
members can lead to a strong sense
of belonging. Experienced community
managers encourage participation from
everyone, recognize members on an
individual level and enable meaningful
connections among peers.
In this section, we will review a series of
strategies to help you boost community
engagement by strengthening members’
connections with each other and creating
opportunities for participation.

Tactics to encourage meaningful connections
Here are some great ways for community managers to promote participation
among community members:
• Curate member-generated content. Your
members are a great resource for content.
Encourage them to share their favorite
stories, images, memes and opinions
to start discussions. This can also help
lighten your workload when creating
content for the community. In Groups,
you can pre-approve members to post, or
you can use the post-approval function to
curate individual member contributions.
• Ask for feedback and questions. Use
polls and open-ended questions to
make it easy for your members to
participate. Polls are great for members
who are reluctant to post, while open-
ended questions enable you to engage
with people who are eager to share
their thoughts. You can create polls in
Facebook and Instagram communities.
• Be aware of the differences in your
audience. Some members will be very
active and comment on everything,
while others will prefer to engage with
content but not start or participate in
conversations. Acknowledge both active
members and members who don’t often
engage publicly, and invite them to
participate in the ways that make them
feel comfortable.
• Lead by example. Reply and engage
in meaningful conversation on your
members’ posts, demonstrating the
kind of tone that you want others to use.
As you set the standard on community
participation, other members will follow.
• Acknowledge contributing members.
Recognize and reward people who
exemplify your community culture and
values. You can encourage members to
give shout-outs to other helpful members,
identify your most active members in
Group Insights and use top fan badges
in Pages to identify the most active
members in your community. There are
several ways you can acknowledge your
top contributors: You can post picture
collages of them with a thank-you
message, interview them and share it with
the community or pre-approve their posts
in your Facebook group.
• Encourage member-to-member
communication. As you get to know your
community members, think about ways
to connect them, such as asking them
to share the region or city where they
live or similar interests they may have.
Tag members and invite them to start a
conversation. Motivating members to get
to know one another on a deeper level can
help your community form stronger bonds.
• Coordinate in-person events. Face-to-
face meetings can increase a sense of
community and belonging. Consider
hosting real-life events or get-togethers to
gather with your community offline.
• Host special online meetups. Online
events are a great way to connect with
your community both locally and globally.
Use Watch Party or host a live video
with your group or Page to kick off a
virtual gathering. You can also encourage
conversations and plan events using
Messenger Rooms.

Key takeaways
• Build a welcoming community by
fostering member connections. Thriving
communities encourage member-to-
member conversations for people to make
meaningful bonds.
• Recognize the members who contribute
to the community and exemplify your
ideal participatory culture.
• Encourage member participation through
tactics such as sharing member-created
content, asking open-ended questions
and collecting feedback through polls.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest tools
and products to foster engagement and
member connections.
As with most engagement tactics, try new
strategies one at a time, and assess which
ones work best for your unique community.
Stay up-to-date with the latest community
management resources in the Facebook
Newsroom and on the Community Leaders
website. Learn about new tools and trends
that you can use to manage your community.

4.3 Community Standards and
Terms of Service
Previously, we learned strategies for
developing the guiding principles of your
community. These were specific guidelines
based on your plan to uphold your community’s
mission and values. And, if your community
expands across Facebook apps, you need to
adhere to the Terms of Service in addition to
your specific community principles.
In this section, we will review Facebook
Terms of Service and Community
Standards. We will also review how to
identify when someone goes against these
guidelines in your community and what you
should do if it happens.

What are the Terms of Service and Community Standards?
What values are Community Standards based on?
Facebook Community Standards address what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook.
They are built to support the following values:
The Terms of Service outline the legal
agreement between a service provider (in
this case, Facebook) and a person who
wants to use that service. When you build a
community using Facebook apps and services,
Facebook is the service provider and you are
the service user. These Terms govern your
use of Facebook apps, including Instagram,
and the other products, features, services,
technologies and software on these platforms.
Every person who uses Facebook must
follow these Terms. Community managers
in particular should be familiar with and
follow Facebook Community Standards,
Pages, Groups and Events Policies, and
Commerce Policies.
These Terms, Community Standards and
Policies evolve over time to keep pace with
changes happening online and in the world.
They are written and updated based on
feedback from the Facebook community
and the advice of experts in fields such as
technology, public safety and human rights.
In particular, Community Standards apply
to the content you post on Facebook
platforms. So, to review, Facebook Terms of
Service govern your use of Facebook apps
and technologies, and Facebook Community
Standards detail what is and isn’t allowed
on Facebook.
• Privacy. We are committed to protecting
personal privacy and information.
Privacy gives people the freedom to be
themselves, and to choose how and when
to share on Facebook and to connect
more easily. Some examples of prohibited
behavior include content that identifies
individuals by name and conveys their
personal information or facilitates identity
theft by posting or soliciting personally
identifiable information.
• Dignity. We believe that all people are
equal in dignity and rights. We expect that
people will not harass or degrade others
and respect their dignity. Content that
violates the dignity value might include,
but is not limited to, hate speech as a
direct attack on people based on what we
call protected characteristics.
• Authenticity. We want to make sure that
the content people are seeing on Facebook
is genuine. We believe that authenticity
creates a better environment for sharing,
and we don’t want people using Facebook to
misrepresent who they are or what they’re
doing. Content that doesn’t adhere to the
authenticity principle might include, but is
not limited to, inauthentic behavior, using
multiple accounts, sharing false news and
misinformation.
• Safety. We are committed to making
Facebook a safe place. Any expression
that threatens people has the potential to
intimidate, exclude or silence others and
isn’t allowed on Facebook. Examples of
content that violates the safety value may
include, but is not limited to, messages that
promote bullying, harassment or self-injury.

What are the Community Standards?
Here is an overview of the Community Standards and how they treat each of the following categories:
•
Violence and criminal behavior. We aim to
prevent potential online and offline harm
that may be related to content on Facebook.
Our violence and criminal behavior standards
prohibit content about violence and
incitement, content by dangerous individuals
and organizations, content that coordinates
harm or publicizing crime, content about the
sale of regulated goods, and content about
fraud and deception.
• Safety. We are dedicated to promoting a safe
environment for everyone on Facebook, and
will remove content that encourages harm
or jeopardizes safety. Our safety standards
prohibit content about suicide and self-injury,
child nudity and the sexual exploitation of
children or adults, bullying and harassment,
human exploitation, and content that violates
privacy or image privacy rights.
• Objectionable content. Hate speech,
cruel and insensitive remarks, and violent
and graphic content are all prohibited on
Facebook. So, too, is content about adult
nudity, sexual activity and sexual solicitation.
•
Integrity and authenticity. These policies
are intended to create a safe environment
where people can trust and hold one
another accountable. This policy
prohibits misrepresentation, spam,
inauthentic behavior, false news and
manipulated media.
•
Respecting intellectual property.
Facebook takes intellectual property rights
seriously and believes they are important
for promoting expression, creativity and
innovation in our community. People own
all of the content and information that
they post on Facebook. However, this
standard prohibits people from posting
content that violates someone else’s
intellectual property rights, including
copyright and trademark.
What should you do if the Community Standards are being violated in your community?
As a community manager, you should be
aware of the core values that support
Facebook Terms, Policies and Community
Standards so you know what kind of
content is and isn’t allowed. You can also
use Facebook Community Standards as
a guide when you create rules for your
own communities.
If you think that your community might have
content or members that are not adhering
to Facebook guidelines, you should report it.
You can report profiles, individual content
and comments as well as other Pages and
groups. You can use moderation tools in
Groups or Pages, or the Group Quality and
Page Quality tools, to identify possible
violations and the steps you should take
to keep your community safe.

How can I use Facebook Community
Standards in my community?
You can use Facebook Community
Standards as a reference for what is
expected from your members. For example,
you can design your community guidelines
to complement the four values that
support Facebook Community Standards:
Authenticity, safety, privacy and dignity.
We will further explore moderation tactics
that can help your members adhere to
your community guidelines and Facebook
Community Standards in the next section.
Key takeaways
•
The Terms of Service and Community
Standards detail what is and isn’t allowed
on Facebook platforms.
•
Facebook Community Standards are
frequently updated policies that change
over time and are built around the values
of authenticity, safety, privacy and dignity.
•
Community managers should ensure that
their communities are safe spaces for
people to connect through moderating
and reporting content that may go against
Facebook Community Standards.

4.4. Crises and Conflicts
At some point, it is inevitable that a
conflict will come up in your community.
A conflict is a clash of interests between
two or more people that could range from a
difference of opinion to an argument or more
harmful communication. It’s not unusual
for community members to engage in a
conversation where differences of opinions
may arise. However, when those differences
become serious, negative or turn into a
significant conflict, community managers
should intervene.
In this section, we will review what
conflict moderation looks like in an online
community, how you can prevent it from
happening, and which strategies can address
and resolve crises and disputes.

What does conflict look like in an online community?
People can engage in debates or conversations
online that are controversial. That is part of
normal community interaction. However, when
a discussion escalates and participants become
deliberately aggressive or insulting, this is a
conflict and it’s important to take action.
Conflicts usually arise when two or more people
disagree, and, despite their best attempts,
aren’t able to achieve a mutual understanding.
This can happen because of differing
values, opinions or perspectives, and often
occurs when someone’s feelings are hurt in
response to a conflicting view.
In online communities, conflict can range
from negative posts, rude comments
and inappropriate language to bullying
or harassment.
How can you minimize conflicts in your community?
As a community manager, you want to make your community a safe place for open and respectful
debate. You may not be able to eradicate conflict completely, but you can follow these strategies
to keep debates civil:
• Write clear community guidelines. Community
guidelines reflect how you plan to uphold
your mission and values and show the kind
of behavior you want to encourage in your
community. Your guidelines should state the
consequences of not following the rules.
• Share your community guidelines regularly.
Repost your community guidelines often to
remind your members about them. You can
share your guidelines to your whole community
with a post, comment on specific discussions
where you think conversation is becoming
negative or send private messages to members
who are engaging in heated conversation. If
you are using Pages, make a pinned public
post to share your guidelines. If you are using
Groups, make an announcement, which you can
refer to when needed, or use the rules section.
• Train your team to spot early signs of conflict.
You will not always be available to track
content and conversations in your community.
Empower your team to recognize early signs
in heated conversations about controversial
topics. Delegate the responsibility to moderate
discussions and take action to enforce your
community guidelines.
• Encourage your members to report
conflict. Members should be able to report
posts or tag admins in the comments of
heated conversations. When a member
reports a post, community managers will
receive a notification. This enables you
or someone on your team to address the
situation. Members can report content to
the community manager or to Facebook.
• Use keyword alerts to track potential
negative comments. Turn on keyword
alerts to stay ahead of disagreements. If
you know that certain language is banned
or indicative of conflict, you can flag those
keywords and receive an alert when they
are used in your community.
• Curate all published content. In
communities like groups where members
can post their own content, consider
using post approvals. This way, you can
approve posts before they appear in
your community.
These strategies may not prevent conflict
in your community completely, but they
can help you to take action before negative
conversations escalate.

How to manage conflict in your community?
Act quickly in a conflict to minimize its impact and keep your community safe.
Here are some actions you can take:
• Always step in. Leave no conflict
unmanaged. Moderate or comment
on a conversation that you think may
escalate to a conflict and is moving
away from your community guidelines.
Show members that you care about the
way they speak to one another and that
your community doesn’t tolerate rude
behavior. If needed, you can reach out
to members privately to understand the
source of conflict and remind them of
the rules.
• Close conversations. If intervening
and moderating the discussion doesn’t
solve the conflict, consider turning off
comments or removing the posts. Before
closing a post or a post’s comments, it’s
important to be transparent and state
why you decided to do so, providing
feedback for the involved members.
For instance, you can say that the
conversation was not productive to the
community anymore and it was moving
too far away from an appropriate context,
or refer to the community rule the post
was not adhering to.
• Mute, remove or ban members from your
community. If intervening or closing the
conversation doesn’t work, you will have
to consider other approaches. The options
you have to moderate your community will
look different based on the product you
are using. In Groups, you can temporarily
mute or block members, and in Pages, you
can hide or delete member comments or
ban people from your community. When
you take actions like these, it’s important
to be upfront and open about why you
took them.
• Report content that violates Community
Standards. Use the Find Support or Report
link to report Pages, Groups, Events,
members or content that goes against
Facebook Community Standards.
• Resolve any issues and keep track of
conflict. Keep a record of conflicts
and crises that have occurred in your
community. Count how many conflicts
have been solved and how many are active.
Try to bring this latter number to zero.
Your record will help you measure your
community health.
Key takeaways
•
Conflicts happen when two or more people have a disagreement that escalates. In an
online community, conflict is unavoidable and it will happen eventually.
•
Be proactive in taking actions to prevent conflict, such as writing and sharing clear
community guidelines to maintain respectful conversation that you, your team and your
community members can enforce.
•
When conflicts arise, act quickly. Join the conversation to moderate it, and mute,
remove, ban or report members if necessary.
56

4.5. Community Operations
Community operations are the set of tasks,
based on your community strategies, that
keep your community running on a daily
basis. In previous sections, we reviewed:
• Operational documents and workflows
that can help you manage your
community.
• How to create and implement a content
strategy.
• Tactics to engage members.
• Strategies to build a team.
Community managers combine all these
elements and strategies to manage their
communities effectively and efficiently on a
daily basis.
In this section, we will look in depth at
how community operations tasks can
help you manage and run your day-to-day
community tasks.
Community tasks
As a community manager, you will take
actions to maintain your community
operations on a daily basis. Each of these
actions should align with your overall
community strategy. Community operation
tasks will vary from one community to
another. Overall, community operation tasks
will revolve around four elements:
01
02
03
04
CREATING AND
MONITORING CONTENT
ENGAGING AND
MODERATING MEMBERS
COLLABORATING WITH YOUR TEAM
TRACKING YOUR LONG-TERM
COMMUNITY STRATEGY

Compare this list with your community core tasks and define your community
operations strategy based on what’s important to achieve in your day-to-day work.
Let’s break down each of these processes:
01 CREATING AND
MONITORING CONTENT
• Create or curate relevant content and
use valuable trends to update your
community content library.
• Schedule posts for publication using
a content calendar. You can use the
scheduling tool in Groups or Pages to
implement a content calendar.
• Track content engagement and
performance, measuring reach,
engagement and conversion metrics
using Group or Page Insights.
ENGAGING AND
MODERATING MEMBERS
• Onboard and welcome new members.
You don’t have to commit time to
welcome new members every day,
but it’s a good practice to check your
member base regularly using Group or
Page Insights.
• Participate in conversations with your
members, foster member-to-member
connections and make moderating
crises and conflicts a priority if they
occur. Follow your established flow
charts protocols on how to escalate
conflict.
• Answer member questions or direct
them to your community FAQs
(frequently asked questions).
COLLABORATING WITH YOUR TEAM
• Onboard new team members. If you
run a group, you can use units to
develop an onboarding program.
• Use your operational workflow
documents to delegate tasks to your
team members.
• Commit time to training and
communicating with your team
members. You can use this time
to organize work and develop a
community playbook with tips and
best practices.
• Empower your teammates and share
responsibilities. Use a RACI chart to
clarify your expectations and team
members’ unique roles.
TRACKING YOUR LONG-TERM
COMMUNITY STRATEGY
• Assess how you are doing at
achieving the community objectives
defined in your community strategy
and determine whether you have
accomplished them or not. If needed,
evaluate your community’s long-term
milestones using your gantt chart.
• Schedule your daily activities to cover
all the elements of your community
operations protocol. Remember that
not all communities are the same.
Adjust this protocol to suit your
community’s needs.
02
03
04

Key takeaways
•
Community operations are a set of tasks that keep your community
running on a daily basis.
• As you manage your online community each day, you will create and
monitor content, engage and moderate members, work together with
your team and keep an eye on your long-term community strategy.
59

Measure and Analyze
Community Success
5

REACH
is defined as how many people see your
content. For instance, if you post something
in a Facebook Group, the reach will refer to
how many members saw your post. Members
may not interact with the post, but as long
they have seen it, their view will count
toward its reach.
ENGAGEMENT
is defined as how many interactions the
content receives, such as Likes, comments
and shares. Measure the engagement
of a piece of content when you want to
gauge how many people interacted with
it. For instance, if you post a photo to a
Page, engagement refers to the number
of interactions on the photo. Interactions
include things like reactions (Like, Love, Care,
Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry ), comments and
the clicks on the photo to open it in gallery
view.
CONVERSION
is defined as member interactions that turn
into valuable actions, such as website visits,
sign-ups and purchases. For instance, if you
create an ad campaign for a Page in hopes of
increasing sales, conversion will be measured
as the number of people who were exposed
to the ad and bought something. A high
conversion rate means that an ad campaign
was successful in making the audience take a
desired action.
ADD PHOTO HERE
01
5.1. Content Performance
Community managers measure the
performance of the content they create and
curate to understand how it performs, how
people are engaging, and how they may need
to revise or adjust their strategy.
In this section, you will learn about how to
measure content performance with Facebook
apps and services.
Understanding content performance
In content metrics, there are three key
elements to define performance: reach,
engagement and conversion.
02
03
Community managers review data and analyze insights on an ongoing basis to determine the
success of their community strategy. In this chapter, you will learn how to assess the performance
of your content, collect insights from your community and evaluate your monetization options.

How can you track content performance?
The simplest way to track the performance
of content in your community is to use a
content engagement tracker. Let’s build a
simple content tracker with an example post.
• The example post has a reach of 122,
because that is the number of people who
saw the post.
• The example post engagement includes
how many people reacted to the post and
how many people commented on the post.
The example post has 4 reactions and 9
comments.
•
The example post contains a poll, so
conversion here refers to how many people
answered the poll question. The poll
received 108 answers.
Apply this counting method to all your posts and build a table to track content performance and historical
data. You can also build your analytics tracker within your content calendar template so you can keep track
of how scheduled content performs. Your tracker might look similar to this:
Date Time
Day of
Week
Campaign Description Reach Engagement Conversion
5/4 12pm Mon Feelings
Poll: How are you
feeling today?
122
Reactions: 4
Comments: 9
108 answers
4/29 10am Wed Feelings
Post:
Understanding
our feelings
160
Reactions: 4
Comments: 4
...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

A content engagement tracker provides
a useful overview of how your content is
performing. However, it can be challenging
to keep a manual tracker up-to-date with all
the real-time interactions that may happen
in your community. Facebook apps and
services have specific tools that enable you
to review and keep track of your content
performance with data that is always
up-to-date.
Track content performance using Insights
Insights provide information about your
community, including demographic data
about your audience and how your members
are responding to your content. Your access
to and capabilities within Insights will vary
depending on the product you are using to
build your online community. For example,
Pages provides data through the last two
years, and you need 100 or more members
to see aggregated demographic data, like
age, gender and location. In Groups, you
need 250 members to see aggregated data,
like top countries, cities, age and gender. In
Instagram Insights, you can find aggregated
data about your followers and the people
interacting with your organization, including
gender, age range and location. You can
also determine the posts and stories that
your audience sees and engages with the most.The
example post has a reach of 122, because that is the
number of people who saw the post.
•
To track content performance in Groups, go to
Insights and click on the Engagement tab. In this
section, you will see a graph of your engagement
metrics for a specific date range. In Group Insights,
under the Engagement tab, you can also track the
posts with the most comments and reactions.
Download details to see a comprehensive table
that specifies the performance metrics for each
post in your group.
• To track content performance in Pages, go to
Insights and click on the Post tab. Here, you will
see a list of all your published posts with the reach
and engagement numbers for each one. In the
Overview tab, you can download details to see a
comprehensive table with the performance metrics
for each post on your Page. You can also track the
performance of your ad campaigns from your Page.
Go to the Page’s Ad Center to find a summary of
your latest campaigns.
Tracking the metrics of your posts and analyzing their
performance will help you understand what kinds
of content work best to engage your community
members. For example, you may notice that posts
published at certain times receive more attention
and positively affect your reach numbers, or that
content with photos and animations receives more

reactions than text-only posts. Explore
different approaches and optimize your
posts for reach, engagement and conversion
as needed. Eventually, you will see
performance trends that may help you set
goals for your metrics, determine specific
content objectives and redefine your
engagement tactics.
ALT PHOTO LAYOUT --
ADD PHOTO HERE
Key takeaways
• Community managers measure the
performance of the content they
create to understand what resonates
most with their community.
• Content performance is measured
by tracking reach, engagement and
conversion.
• You can use Insights to analyze the
performance of your content.
64

5.2. Feedback Collection
Your community strategy acts as a foundation
for building, scaling and sustaining a
meaningful community. But your strategy
will change over time to meet the evolving
needs of your community. You can learn what
needs to be updated and when by collecting
data and feedback.
In this section, you will learn how to implement
feedback channels and collect data that can help
you make changes to your strategy as needed.
Data, information and insights
Any strategy changes you make should be based
on evidence: data, information and insights. To
collect this evidence, assess what works, focus
on the goals and outcomes that matter to your
community and use the insights you learn to
inform any changes to your strategy. Let’s break
down these different kinds of evidence:
INFORMATION
The context that data needs in order to be
categorized or organized in specific ways. For
example, post reaction data can be organized
by type of post (text only, photos, videos)
and you can look at the number of members
in your community by gender or age range.
INSIGHTS
Findings based on data and information
that can help you plan and improve your
community strategies. For example,
historical data and information from your
community posts can help you determine
that video content usually gets higher
levels of engagement, or that most of the
community members who engage with your
posts are women between the ages of 25
and 34. You can use these insights to plan
future content that may include video and is
designed to appeal to your audience.
ADD PHOTO HERE
02
03
DATA
Raw numbers, facts and figures. Some
examples of data are the number of
reactions that each post has or the
number of members in your community
desired action.
01

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