The last few years have seen the rise of the ‘community manager’ as a role at companies – both large and small. But what is their role exactly? Community managers are cross-functional employees that need the skills of a social media manager, a PR specialist, a customer service representative, and that’s just scratching the surface.

Community managers are responsible for creating a brand experience in every interaction. Branding used to be just about logos, colours, and typefaces – now it’s about people, conversations, and of course – community.

Here’s how a handy Notion tool makes community management easier, fun, and systematic.

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Hi, I'm Pramod Rao, the CEO and co-founder of Threado, the command centre for community builders.

Previously, I was one of the founding members at Zomato, which began in India as a restaurant directory and is now a public company with a $5.4 billion market cap.

I helped build the Zomato marketing team from the ground up and led many projects across India and as the VP of Marketing I overlooked growth, communities, partnerships, content, and brand.

It was tremendously challenging and exciting to carry out operations from scratch and play a key role in making Zomato what it is today.

Growing to love community-building

My love for communities was inspired by my work at Zomato.

During my professional break, I experimented, learned how to code, and eventually started Threado, which has pretty much been my life for the last 2 years. I'm fascinated with communities and firmly believe that they're the future.

After conversations with 100+ community builders, I learned that there's a lack of resources to help them really do their job well. And they deserve more. This is what inspired me to start building Threado.

Looking out for community managers

We're really proud of our work in building Community OS. It's a workbook designed to help community managers create engaging communities, add value to every member in those communities, and eventually grow.

The workbook is an actionable dashboard with checklists that allows community builders to break down their efforts into strategies, keep a track of their progress, get invaluable battle-tested strategies, and observe what’s working in the community and what isn’t.

Each stage of the community building process is divided into journeys. Each journey is divided into checklists, and each checklist is divided into steps that can be followed.

Each of these steps includes tips, resources, advice from some of the best community leaders in the industry, and working templates.

Altogether, there are 39 steps or checklists to follow.

Getting the most out of Community OS

There are two main ways to get immense value:

1. If you're overwhelmed or unsure where in your community journey you need to start, you should navigate your way through the entire journey. It guides you step by step with relevant tips, templates, and strategies.

2. The second way is to dive right into the resource and index sorted alphabetically. Other than that, in order to make the workbook actionable, you can duplicate the entire workspace and take it from there.

Apart from the workbook on community building, it features 818 more resources including blogs, newsletters, tweets, apps, podcasts, books, and community experts.

#1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

We launched it on Product Hunt and it ended up becoming the #1 Product of the Day and the #2 Product of the Week! That was certainly very validating of our efforts.

I think the reason this product resonated with people is for the simple reason that community building is hard. There are so many little details that need to be addressed, and so many tasks to take care of.

Fundamentally, you might not see the bigger picture but when you start pulling back, it can get overwhelming. It's easy to get stuck in spirals and this is why there needs to be a guide that lets you navigate the entire process through even the smallest of attempts, without losing sight of what's important.

Community OS does just that. It breaks down the community-building process from scratch to finish, while offering the right advice, actionable insights, and most importantly, a checklist workbook that lets you keep track of your progress.

Using Notion to build Community OS

This entire workbook has been built on Notion. Community OS stretches the limits of Notion because of how packed it is with resources.

When we started building Threado, we hadn't then realized the power of no-code tools. Notion was the first, and it gradually became our internal wiki.

As we explored the corners of Notion, we realized how intricately involved the tool was. There wasn't anything you couldn't do with it when it came to creating content.

It only made sense for us to build our first-ever project on Notion because of how deeply rooted it was in our day-to-day activities.

When we say that we stretched the limits of Notion, of course, it didn't happen overnight. The obstacle itself was the process of figuring out how we can leverage every bit of Notion to give out the best possible resource.

It took some time and a lot of ideas that didn't really pan out, but eventually, we made it. Special mention: We collaborated with Michael Novotny to bring this idea to life and the success of Community OS wouldn't have been possible without him.

What’s the worst that can happen?

To anyone who has been on and off with the idea of building something – do it, take that leap of faith. It’s not that scary. The worst that could happen is that it might not work, but guess what, the second time, that leap of faith will turn into a leap of confidence.

Now, isn’t that reassuring?

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Thanks for sharing your story with us, Pramod! You can follow his journey on Twitter here.