Case context
A quick read on hiring a marketer who turns your social channels into a real community.
Earlier this year we hired a Community Lead at Yandex Games. The brief: grow the platform brand inside the developer community. We introduced the team to the future hire in 5 days.
Who is a community manager?
A Community Manager is a marketer who pulls people into conversation and grows brand love on one or several channels — Telegram, Discord, Reddit, even YouTube.
Their job: build a place where loyal users discuss news, praise the product, help each other and pull in new customers.
How do you find a community lead who knows how to start the engine and keep it running?
When we look for this person we want to read them on three axes: community-building mechanics, strategic thinking, and metrics.
1. Mechanics
A community needs a core of active members. Start with a small group and motivate it. The candidate should know Dunbar’s number and other social-graph nuances.
- Working with contributors
- Reward systems for active members
- Activities, contests, gifts
- Negativity moderation
2. Platform fit
Each industry has its own venues. They shift with geography and openness.
Interviewing for crypto, we expect to hear about scaling a Discord server and its structure. The candidate should know that news lives on Twitter, and that Telegram fits Russian-speaking communities.
But for a fishing club — WhatsApp is probably better.
A community lead from your industry simply knows where the audience hangs out.
Marketlead learns your task, defines who you need, and runs the search across our database and other sources. You meet 5–7 candidates and pick the best.
3. Content strategy
A good community manager is always a bit of a marketer. They know that gathering people on a platform is a funnel — every step has its conversion. For example, from an email blast roughly 15% click into the community.
The more senior the hire, the more reach mechanics they should know.
- Email blasts to the existing base
- Contest mechanics
- Influencer integrations
- Content with top community players
- UGC stimulation
- Paid: TgAds, targeted ads, paid search
For gaming we wanted someone who could already contribute to game blogs, talk to industry leaders and grow the brand.
To grow conversions, the Community Lead works on motivation: why should people be in this community? What do they get — fame, money, a seat in Valhalla?
They also need discussion-ignition mechanics. Ask any chat “in-house or freelance?” and watch the room split into two camps.
4. Metrics
Engagement Rate is the community’s pulse: the share of active members vs. dormant ones. You also need to know the share of reactions per post views — and that there are tools and bots that measure it.
We packed all these nuances into a checklist with dozens of points — filled out during the candidate interview. It covers platforms, key bloggers, acquisition mechanics, work with reach channels.
We also use case questions: build a small strategy live on the call.
A strong signal: a candidate who not only names channels, networks and influencers, but explains their logic and shares stories of how their mechanics played out.
Outcome
From the first scoping call to introducing the first future Community Lead to Yandex Games — 5 days.
You do not always hit the brief that fast, but a precise role definition and pre-screening shorten the process a lot.
Need a Community Manager?
Tell us about the role — we will source candidates from your niche and pre-screen them.