Community management in 2024 has been reconfigured around a central tension: brands are publishing more than ever on social media, but the organic reach of their content continues to decline on most platforms. This erosion pushes strategies towards new trade-offs, particularly the question of where to build their community.
Owned Community or Social Audience: The Strategic Choice Few Brands Formalize
The majority of community management guides treat Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn as mandatory stops. They are for visibility. But an underlying trend is gradually shifting the center of gravity of community strategies towards closed spaces like Discord, Circle, or proprietary platforms.
The logic is simple: on a traditional social network, the algorithm decides who sees what. On a Discord server or a Circle space, every registered member receives the messages. The read rate and depth of exchanges there are incomparable to an Instagram feed.
Organic Growth Studio emphasizes that strategies prioritizing direct engagement on dedicated community platforms achieve better retention and conversion results than mass social media campaigns. Specialized resources like mycommunitymanager.be regularly document these hybrid approaches, balancing social presence and management of owned communities.
Formalizing this choice – broad audience on social media or tight-knit community in a dedicated space – constitutes the first structuring decision of a community management strategy. The two do not exclude each other, but the resources allocated to each must be explicitly balanced.
AI and Community Management: Beyond Content Generation
The integration of artificial intelligence into the community manager’s work goes far beyond the automatic writing of posts. The emerging uses touch on three distinct dimensions.
- Segmenting community members: AI tools allow for mapping active profiles, silent contributors, and disengaged members to adapt the tone and frequency of interactions.
- Early detection of weak signals: before a reputation crisis erupts, automated semantic analysis detects sentiment variations in comments and private messages.
- Personalizing responses at scale: rather than generic replies, AI offers contextualized drafts that the community manager adjusts before publication.
These uses raise an open question: how far to automate without degrading the perceived quality of the relationship with the community. Field feedback varies on this point. Some brands report significant time savings without loss of engagement. Others find that their members quickly identify automated responses and turn away from them.
The balance depends on the type of community. A technical support group tolerates automation better than a lifestyle brand community where personal tone makes a difference.
Content Strategy on Social Media: Short Video is No Longer Enough
Short video (Reels, TikTok, Shorts) remains the format that generates the most organic reach. But building a content strategy solely around short video is a common trap.
The problem lies in the nature of the engagement produced. A viral video attracts views, not necessarily engaged members. The community manager who churns out Reels without linking this content to deeper formats (detailed carousels, interactive lives, discussion threads) generates volatile traffic.
Linking Short Formats and Long Formats
The short video serves as a hook. It captures attention in a saturated feed. Long content (live, article, community newsletter) serves as conversion: it transforms a passive viewer into an active community member.
This linking requires a editorial line that plans both levels simultaneously. Publishing three Reels a week without knowing where they direct the audience is like filling a leaky funnel.
In practice, community managers who achieve sustainable results dedicate a significant portion of their time to managing conversations generated by content, not just to its production.
Measuring Community Engagement: The Indicators That Really Matter
The number of followers and overall engagement rate remain the most cited metrics. They are also the most misleading when taken in isolation.
A high-audience account with a low engagement rate weighs less than a small community where each post sparks conversations. The comments/likes ratio better reveals the health of a community than the gross engagement rate.
Other indicators deserve a place in reporting:
- The retention rate of active members month after month, which measures the community’s ability to retain beyond the novelty effect.
- The number of user-generated content (UGC), a sign that the community produces value without constant prompting from the community manager.
- The average response time to messages and comments, correlated with perceived satisfaction by members.
The available data do not allow for setting universal thresholds for these indicators. They vary by sector, community size, and platform used. The most relevant remains tracking their evolution over time rather than aiming for an absolute figure.
Training and Skill Development for Community Managers
The role of community manager now requires a combination of skills rarely found together: video production, data analysis, crisis management, mastery of AI tools, and writing ability across various formats.
Médina Koné, a delegated professor at IIM Digital School, observes that the post-Covid period has accelerated companies’ awareness of the importance of social channels. This acceleration has mechanically raised the level of expectations for the profiles recruited.
Continuous monitoring of platform developments constitutes a skill in its own right. The algorithms of Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn change several times a year, sometimes radically. A community manager who does not dedicate structured time to this monitoring sees their performance degrade within months, even with quality content.
The most robust community management strategy in 2024 relies less on a choice of platform or a miracle format than on this continuous adaptability, supported by reliable indicators and a clear distribution between social audience and owned community.