Ever since it entered gaming parlance, “community manager” has been a nebulous title. Every company worth its salt seems to have one. We follow them on Twitter and see them in video interviews. To most people, a community manager is the face that uses Twitter and Facebook to post screens and video and generally spread the word about the company.

The job has a lot more to it, however, and much of it isn’t talked about outside of industry panels. To find out more about the life of a community manager, I spoke to Jared Rea, former Ziff Davis intern and community manager with Android and iOS developer ngmoco.

Read on as he reveals exactly what a community manager does, how to go about becoming one, and the realities that prospective applicants need to keep in mind.

Let’s start with this: What is a community manager?

Jared Rea: As a job title, "community manager" doesn't quite do many people in this industry justice. We're firewalls and spokespeople, conduits of creative energy and voices of reason. We're writers and producers, social-media wizards and communication specialists. The overall feeling I get is that people think a community manager is just some dude that posts on forums and maybe has a Twitter, but at any studio worth talking about, there's infinitely more to it than that.

A community manager is someone who can be a champion for the players and ensure that they're getting an experience far closer to the vision of a product they want than they would otherwise. Processing feedback and offering customer support go hand in hand with identifying what it is that your players need and doing so early enough to make a noticeable difference to the overall product. You also have to be able to translate the efforts of auxiliary teams such as public relations and marketing into something easily digestible across a wide variety of formats.

In my experience, internally, community managers are Jacks and Jills of all trades who are skilled in a wide variety of disciplines and can fill gaps among teams, while at the same time trying to utilize these moments to benefit players. Did someone drop the ball on some in-game promotions? Fire up Photoshop, and do it yourself. Not enough in the budget to hire someone to make a totally sweet behind-the-scenes video? Grab a camera and a copy of Adobe Premiere.

This is the primary reason why I believe it's so difficult for people to pin down exactly what it is that makes someone a community manager and what they do. We have the capacity to become the glue that can keep an operation together, and we can never pass up an opportunity to do something creative.

How did you land your first community manager gig?

JR: Officially, my first community manager role was with Turner Broadcasting on their GameTap service. I was still with Joystiq at the time, and while I really enjoyed working with all those guys, I didn't feel like my career was advancing in any meaningful way. After only a few years in the press, I'd accomplished just about everything I had set out to do and didn't feel the desire to climb any further. I had seen the top, and I knew it wasn't for me.

The entire process of falling in with GameTap was actually very informal. I bumped into [former 1UPer] Giancarlo Varanini at a private showing of the original Rock Band. We talked a bit about it, and he was very familiar with my background in competitive gaming and knew I dabbled a bit in social media (which was a new buzzword at the time). A few weeks later I came into their office, interviewed with [former GameTap Editorial Director] Doug Perry and his baby (no joke), and that was about all it took. They didn't really need to do a lot of convincing at the time. I was a fan of the service and appreciated its worth, and they needed someone who could dig in and reach out. For the whopping eight months or so they kept us in business, it was a total blast.

This is probably not the answer that most people want to hear as it was very much a right-place-right-time situation. The truth is, my first CM gig wasn't formal, and it wasn't even called "community management." I got my start in my local arcades, working with my friends and other folks in our regional gaming community, organizing events and tournaments, and figuring out new and innovative ways to reach out and expand our community. That I can do these kinds of things for a living is a happy coincidence because even if being a CM wasn't a viable career path like it is at the moment, I'd still be doing all these things and more for free, with iPlayWinner or whatever other outfit I'm passionate about.

So it is a viable career path? What would you say makes a good community manager?

JR: The problem with community management as a career path is that no two people ever seem to get there the same way. I may be one of many former writers who have made the transition (everyone has to graduate sometime), but that tends to be just one piece of the puzzle. There's really no point in going to school and saying "I want to be a community manager when I grow up." That's just being realistic. Who actually knows if this will be viable five to ten years down the line? If you think it's something you want to do, I'd say look into marketing, mass communication, and public relations, and take it from there. I think when it comes to wanting to get into the games industry, people's overall focus is always too narrow. There are hundreds of different kinds of positions that fall outside of “make games” and "write about games."

As for what makes a good community manager, selflessness is the first thing that comes to mind. At the end of the day, a community manager's goal is to channel the company's message into a humanizing voice, but also to know when to get out of its way. There are some people that don't know how to do this, and so we have these "rock star" types who use the company as a platform, instead of the other way around. It starts to look like the brand they're marketing is themselves, not the people who are paying them money.

Temperament is also very important because anytime anything goes wrong, the first thing people tend to do is call you the most awful name they can think of. You need to be able to roll with the punches and not let your emotions bubble to the surface...ever. You need some real thick skin if you're going to survive because no one else is going to protect you, even when 99 percent of things people hate you for are out of your hands. That's not to say you have to be a robot, of course. At the same time, you must retain the capacity to be empathetic and connect with people. This is the type of stuff you can't teach and why it makes it difficult to actually strive for the job. 

Finally, you need to be a genuinely creative person. Everyone thinks they're a social-media wizard these days, so you need to be able to shake things up. I constantly find myself in new situations and predicaments on a regular basis -- no matter where I've been -- and almost all of them require quick and creative solutions. You need to have that sort of ingenious spark come naturally, and you also have to be able to act on it instantaneously.