Valdez Onanina is a journalist, digital communications coordinator, and community manager for Africa Check, Africa's leading fact-checking organization. What are your main responsibilities?
My second role—since that's what we're interested in here—can be likened to that of a "community manager." My responsibilities include managing the social media platforms we use by posting various content (articles, images, and audio) and encouraging interaction with users, with a view to promoting our organization's work and directing our social media followers to our website. The other tools and platforms I use to do this are the newsletter and the WhatsApp messaging app.
In 2020, it is difficult to carry out an activity that is not related to the internet and social media, but the other major task of my role is to bring together a physical community to increase the visibility and awareness of our organization
. What skills need to be developed for this job?
There are certainly a number of skills that need to be developed, but three immediately come to mind:
- A good general knowledge and a good command of the language and linguistic codes of your target audience are fundamental requirements.
- A good knowledge of digital tools and the specific features of each platform on which you are present. For example, content published on Facebook will not have the same relevance or necessarily provide the same results on Twitter if it is published there as is, as the targets and formats required are not always the same.
- As digital tools are constantly evolving, it is important to keep up to date and regularly train yourself on digital tools and social media; when it comes to social media, it is important to keep up to date even on those you do not use in your work.
What academic or non-academic path did you follow to get here?
I am a journalist. I graduated in 2013, at a time when online media was in its infancy (perhaps it still is, for that matter). I consider myself to be part of the first generation of African journalists trained in digital tools.
I then obtained a Master's degree in media and communications, and my thesis for this degree focused on the relevance of a digital strategy for the Senegalese Press Agency, for which I was a reporter and which, in my opinion, had failed to adapt to the digital age.
I then recently obtained an MBA in political communication and influence strategies. However, I would not say that this last stage of my training was decisive in my role as Community Manager.
Do you work with a team? Do you collaborate with other departments?
For the time being, I work alone in this role. But I am looking to bring in a content creator to help me with the work, as creating content is a very time-consuming task. The Community Manager is not just the person who tweets or posts on Facebook. All of the creative work, among other things, is very important.
What are the best aspects of your job? The main difficulties?
The best aspect for me is interacting with internet users about an article, explaining a process to them, responding to a verification request (which is very specific to the nature of the work of the organization I work for).
The main difficulty is the rigor it requires. Managing or moderating online communities requires foresight, organization, and planning, and given the constant changes in digital tools and the diversity of targets, it is a task that requires great consistency and a constant sense of innovation, as it is not easy to engage and attract attention on social media, where everything is fleeting and moves quickly.
Do you have any advice or anecdotes to share with us?
More like advice: always keep your cool in this job, which is a useful quality when dealing with rude internet users…and there are plenty of those.
Read also: The job of Community Manager as seen by Yann Armel Djiproh, CM at Côte Ouest