The Life of a Community Manager at Cookpad
On November 1st, 2016 I joined Cookpad as a Community Manager in Lebanon for the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. I was blown away by the size of our community and the incredible effort that my colleagues had made to grow such an amazing thing. Since then I’ve dived deep into the world of communities, cooking, data and product development.
For those who used to ask me: “Do you cook all the recipes that people share on Cookpad?” or “Hmmm… you must be a great cook then?!”. The answer is no. We certainly enjoy cooking, but we’re not all super chefs (well, at least not me!). We learn a lot from our amazing community, just like everybody else but the role of a Community Manager goes far beyond just cooking. It’s one of the most crucial and essential pillars within Cookpad and I’d like to tell you a little more about it.
The Life of a Community Manager at Cookpad
At Cookpad, there are around 140 community managers around the world who speak more than 30 languages in order to support millions of users from more than 70 different countries!
A Bridge between the Community and the Product
When I say that our community managers are the bridge between our users and the product, that’s for so many reasons. I’ll go into the most important ones below.
The Face of Cookpad
Community Managers are the face of Cookpad. We understand Cookpad’s Mission and ensure that it’s spread far and wide throughout the community through many activities such as online recipe competitions, offline events, newsletters, or social media posts. We are the ones who are in direct contact with the community, keeping that human touch by listening to their needs when they have issues and helping in whatever way that we can. This could be anything from helping with technical issues to providing a bit of much-needed motivation!
The Voice of the Community
In addition to all of the work that we do for our users, Community Managers make sure that their users are heard by the product teams at Cookpad. Like I mentioned earlier, our Global platform is available in over 70 different countries around the world and it’s vital that we are mindful of that.
Since we are the ones on the ground and the closest to our communities, we get to understand how users respond to changes on a personal level. We talk directly with users to gain insights from them and then we feed this insight back to the product teams. This insight is crucial to the product teams since it supplements their existing research in order to be sure that our data analysis is reflecting reality, which helps the company shape the product in a better way that will literally “make everyday cooking fun!”.
The fuel to the Cookpad Community
Another core role of the Community Manager is to retain our community of cooks and authors, making sure they always enjoy cooking, and encourage them to share their recipes with each other in order to feel the value of teaching others how to cook and to spread the joy of home cooking.
In order to keep the community engaged, Community Managers are always up to date by following the latest trends, special events and holidays to come up with new activities that are relevant and fun.
We also give them the support and recognition when needed, to make sure they feel heard and appreciated.
My Key Takeaways
I worked as a Community Manager at Cookpad MENA for 3 years before I moved to Cookpad office in Bristol, UK, to start a new adventure. Over those 3 years I learned so much on both professional and personal levels and I want to share some of what I learned.
I knew nothing
If a person is part of a cooking community it doesn’t mean that all they do in life is cook. That’s what I used to think about our users when I first joined Cookpad, until I really started to get to know our community both online, via offline events and as part of user interviews. I realized that they can be doctors, dancers, athletes, university students from all genders and different backgrounds. Each of these unique backgrounds enables them to bring a different perspective to the community and that’s the best part of it all. The busy parents always have the best time-saving tips while the photographers know how to take the beautiful photos :)
Data is fun
You get familiar with the data even if you’re not a number person! I’ve never imagined myself reading graphs and analyzing numbers but here I am. It was once one of my nightmares but now I find it fun and it’s become a habit to check in on the stats with the help of my colleagues on the great data team who always know how to support us. I now know that numbers are not only useful to the smart analysts and scientists of the world, but in fact they can also be used by us Community Managers to reflect on user behaviour and help us to better understand our communities.
So that is how products are built
One of the most fun and interesting things I’ve learned is witnessing how products are built. Communicating with Product managers, designers, and engineers gives you an idea of what’s cooking behind the scenes and how products and new features are built. At Cookpad we are able to follow along throughout the entire process and this opened my eyes to so many details while using other products. I started to notice new features more and it makes me realize that so much goes into the decision making process.
A few extra pounds
All this talk about food has been making me hungry.
And finally
The most beautiful part of it all is that I’ve become a member of an international family where we all share the same mission and passion to spread the joy of home cooking as well as helping every single person around the globe to share their love for food and cooking with everybody, everywhere! It’s a big goal, but we’re up to the challenge. Are you?
