Job Title: Community Manager
Company: WPP Media South Africa
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Reports To: Strategic Account Manager: Social & Influencer

About  the Role  

As the Community Manager, you will be the strategic architect of our clients’ online presence, brand advocacy, and community engagement.  You will not only advocate for the client’s brand but will actively architect and embody bespoke social personas to connect with prospects, build brand awareness, and turn cold audiences into brand evangelists. You will define the community strategy, manage high-level client relationships, and execute campaigns to drive meaningful, measurable business outcomes.  

Objectives of the Role 

• Persona Development & Advocacy: Define, build, and embody distinct social personas representing the client brand to proactively engage online communities and reach new target audiences. 

• Strategic Growth: Drive top-of-funnel brand awareness by actively seeking out and engaging potential customers who are not yet familiar with the client’s business. 

• Community Drive: Set the vision for community engagement, turning passive audiences into highly active, loyal brand advocates. 

• Client Advisory: Serve as the key strategic partner and primary day-to-day contact for key client stakeholders. 

Key Areas of Responsibility and Accountability 

1. Strategic Community & Persona Management

• Brand Persona Creation: Craft, refine, and deploy unique, highly engaging social personas tailored to the client's brand voice to humanize the brand and drive proactive outbound engagement. 

• Campaign & Editorial Strategy: Drive the short- and long-term social media community strategy. Direct real-time editorial content management, community development, conversation monitoring, and trend tracking. 

• Content Curation & Creation: Oversee and curate high-quality daily content experiences (including thought leadership, video, infographics, blogs, and interactive media) designed to engage professional audiences. 

• Risk & Crisis Management: Act as the senior escalation point for community issues. Navigate complex, sensitive conversations with diplomacy, adhering to socially accepted protocols of various digital platforms. 

1. Client Account & Stakeholder Management

• Strategic Advisor: Serve as the primary point of contact for client stakeholders. Act as a trusted business advisor by translating community metrics into actionable business insights. 

• Relationship Management: Build and maintain sustainable, positive relationships with key client stakeholders, ensuring expectations are aligned, managed, and exceeded. 

• SLA & Performance Compliance: Track and ensure adherence to client Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs). 

• Reporting & Insights: Deliver high-quality, data-driven reports that tie community engagement directly to brand sentiment, audience growth, and business KPIs. 

• Client Retention & Growth: Proactively identify opportunities to expand the scope of work through strategic recommendations, new platform adoption, or community initiatives. 

1. Operational & Technical Expertise

• Ecosystem Experience: Demonstrate deep experience working within developer/partner ecosystems and professional networks. 

• Audience Acquisition: Utilize a deep understanding of owned, earned, and paid media strategies to drive sustainable community growth and webinar/content attendance. 

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Synthesize complex data from multiple sources to analyze community health, identify emerging trends, and quickly pivot strategies as needed. 

• SOP Development: Establish and follow client-specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure zero-error execution of campaigns, moderation, and publishing.