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The community manager is vital to the success of any crypto project. From concept to ICO and beyond, this person must harmonize the entire network of investors, speculators, developers, and users. While the core team builds the platform and protocol, they manage the various expectations of the community. As a community manager, you perform a range of key tasks and empower the growth strategy of your blockchain company.

Fortunately, there's a low barrier to entry for this position. No technical skills are required, just an enthusiasm for cryptocurrency and great people skills. Effectively, you’ll be getting paid to learn about crypto and help others do the same. The best community managers are process-oriented and comfortable working on numerous projects with varying communities and expectations.

Thinking about becoming a crypto community manager?

These four steps will help you understand what’s required and position yourself as a quality hire to your favorite crypto project

1. Read about crypto community management
2. Determine what makes a good crypto community
3. Create a list of your favorite crypto communities
4. Find a job in crypto

1. Read Up on Crypto Community Management

A crypto community manager is knowledgeable. Much of your time will be spent answering member questions, but you’ll also need to talk strategy with admins and partners. To be effective, you’ll need a basic understanding of blockchain, the project, and the larger crypto space.

Think of yourself as both a conversation starter and a help desk for the group. The best crypto communities allow their members to learn and communicate seamlessly. As a community manager, your role is to initiate and moderate a meaningful dialogue between members. The more accurate and prompt your interactions, the more valuable you’ll be and the more growth you’ll enable.

Where is your community online? What are the best ways to engage new members? How do you measure community growth? If you can’t answer these questions, start learning now. A crypto project won’t expect you to know everything before you’re hired, but they do expect you to be attentive and motivated.

For a comprehensive overview of what’s required, read The 7 Pillars of Crypto Community Management.

2. Determine What Makes a Great Crypto Community

There is no one-size-fits-all crypto community. Your goal is to create a space that fosters growth by nurturing the curiosity of all members. As your community takes shape, you must be willing to adapt your engagement strategy to find what works.

“Growing any grassroots community is always a bit of ‘throwing paint at the wall and seeing what sticks’,” said Kyle Armour of Hashgraph. Expect to follow best practices for community management and be ready to experiment in order to optimize engagement and growth.

As your community grows, the needs of your members will evolve. The questions they ask, the content you share – this will start to change. However, the community manager is responsible for maintaining a quality experience always. Regardless of the development stage, you’re always expected to:

• Weed out toxicity from trolls
• Identify and block spammers and scammers
• Answer questions about your tech, roadmap, and ICO
• Moderate discussions
• Share content and delete useless/repeat content
• Manage your ambassadors
  

You must also recognize that different users arrive to with different motivations. For example, developers will approach a crypto project with a very different mindset than speculators. The first group is interested in the idea, the second is concerned with money.

Hence, you must engage each subset of users in different ways to create a rewarding experience for them, respectively. To quote Andrew Hyde of Origin Protocol, “You have to be a chameleon and fit into all these different communities.” Expect to wear many hats as you create an open environment that accommodates everyone in your user base.

3. Create a List of Your Favorite Communities

Crypto projects want to hire people who understand their audience. Your crypto community will span multiple platforms, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with the conversation on each channel. To help you identify what’s effective, create a list of successful crypto communities. What do the communities have in common? How do they treat their members? What do you want to emulate? Look to companies with effective management strategies for examples of how to moderate effectively.

You should participate in these communities, not just observe. A user-level perspective will help you to locate your audience, integrate with the culture of each platform, and determine an effective engagement style for each.

“You must first work to be part of the community you represent. You must understand their concerns, anticipate [their] challenges, and be willing to voice your concerns in a professional way to the development team or contact,” says Rory of OAX Foundation. If you approach employers with fresh insights, you’ll appear attentive and motivated, and your value as a candidate will increase dramatically.

The best community managers are savvy and experience with all the relevant crypto communities. Here’s a list of channels to dive into:

• Telegram: This is the cornerstone of crypto community management, most often used by speculators.
• Discord: One of the most active channels and favored by developers.
• Reddit: A knowledgeable but unforgiving group that rewards honesty, transparency and repeat engagement.
• Quora: An ask-and-answer format that lets you identify questions and voice your answers.
• Steemit: Like a smaller Reddit that’s gaining traction with the cryptocurrency community.
• Medium: A blog platform that features lots of crypto content and thought leadership.
• BitcoinTalk: A specialized crypto forum that rewards attention to detail and offers excellent visibility.
• Facebook: Useful for posting to followers and crypto groups, but crypto-related advertising is banned.
• Twitter: Tweet to engage your followers but advertising is banned.
• LinkedIn: Popular with a subset of engaged, professional crypto users.

4. Find a Job as Crypto Community Manager

Once you’re well-informed, you’re ready to seek employment as a crypto community manager. Ideally, you want to be passionate about the community you’re going to be managing. You’ll be more effective if you’re personally invested in the project.

Here are a handful of ways to find a job as a crypto community manager:

• Crypto project websites: Visit the website of projects and contact the community managers about a position. Be sure to read the white paper thoroughly before you apply.
  

• Upwork: This popular online marketplace helps freelancers and employers find each other.
  

• Crypto-specific websites: Sites like crypto.jobs, cryptocurrencyjobs.com, and BitcoinTalk will point you towards jobs in blockchain.
  

You can also submit your application to Chainfuel. We’re currently hiring community managers who are passionate about cryptocurrency and want to join our growing team. The ideal candidate is fluent in English, flexible with their schedule, and enjoys a location-independent lifestyle.