Community Engagement Manager

Bells of Steel; Calgary; Hybrid; CAD 55,000 - 65,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Spending Account

Hybrid schedule (Calgary office)

Employee discounts on gear

Staff gym access

Every other Friday off

Job summary

Bells of Steel seeks a community-focused role in Calgary to grow grassroots fitness engagement and strengthen brand presence locally and beyond. You will engage with the strength community, manage comments, and help turn objections into trust while aligning with showroom goals in Calgary, Toronto and Indy.

You’ll work across social platforms, build relationships with gyms, events, and ambassadors, and travel ~10% to expand in UK, Australia and EU markets from our Calgary base.

Qualifications

• You are part of the fitness community and live the lifestyle.
• Experience in sales or customer support (retail, gym front desk, etc.).
• Comfortable showing up at gyms, events, on camera, DMs, and Reddit threads.
• Strong written communicator; write Reddit comments that don’t read as marketing.
• Organized enough to juggle many relationships without dropping the ball.
• Willing to travel ~10% (events, showrooms, occasional EU).

Responsibilities

• Reply to all comments on paid ads and organic posts across platforms; maintain brand voice and trust.
• Escalate to CS for order/shipping/returns issues via proper tagging and context.
• Engage in communities (Reddit, Facebook groups) and build relationships with fitness voices.
• Engage with creators beyond our own content and nurture ambassador relationships.
• Launch and grow a dedicated Facebook group and participate in gym communities.
• Coordinate with cross-functional teams to feed community insights back into product and marketing.

Skills

Fitness community

Sales experience

Customer support

Event presence

Written communication

Travel readiness

Job description

Bells of Steel grew in Canada by becoming endemic to the strength community — showing up in online conversations, at gyms, and events, until the brand was trusted by name.

We're now scaling in Australia and the UK, while still growing in Canada and the USA, and expanding into Germany, France, and the broader EU. We can't get to scale on ads alone. We need a human face in those communities — someone who builds trust the same way we built it here, in parallel with paid spend, so every dollar behind ads lands on a foundation of real awareness. This role owns that work.
This role also owns the execution of our 3-year vision to transform our showrooms in Calgary, Toronto, and Indianapolis into community hubs — places where the local strength community gathers, not just shops.

What you'll do

• Reply to all comments on paid ad posts and organic social content across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube — maintaining brand voice, engaging authentically, and turning objections into trust-building moments
• Escalation to CS: Route support-related comments/DMs (order issues, shipping, returns, defects) to CS via Gorgias with appropriate tagging and context. This role handles engagement and community; CS handles support resolution.
• Be active and known in r/homegym, r/powerlifting, r/CrossFit, FB groups, and niche forums — useful, never salesy. Daily Reddit/community scraping with claude and replying with useful info
• Engage on creator content beyond our own; build relationships with strength community voices we admire
• Launch/grow a dedicated Facebook group, participate in home gym Facebook groups from personal account (we can’t use a business account to join)

Grass-roots community building (NA + international)

• Run gym seeding programs across priority UK, Australia and EU launch markets
• Build community ecosystem maps (gyms, podcasts, creators, events, charities) for every market we are in, and every market we expand into
• Show up at events - powerlifting meets, CrossFit comps, strongman events, garage gym gatherings
• Build and run our local ambassador program — 5–10 passionate customers per priority market with discount codes, early access, and a direct line to the team
• Own community-level sponsorships (events, podcasts, local fitness orgs) and our charity giving (equipment donations to youth strength programs, adaptive athletics, community gym builds)
• Coordinate with the Affiliate/Influencer Manager to ensure ambassador and sponsorship work feeds into the broader content pipeline

Brand localization & cross-functional support

• Partner with brand and email teams to localize content per market - copy, photography, regional references
• Build and grow pipeline of local community content to paid ads and all other marketing channels
• Surface community signal back to product, paid, brand, and merchandising (what people want, what's missing, what's working)

Develop Showrooms into Community Hubs

• Work with retail teams in Calgary, Toronto and Indy to build towards our 3-year goal of each showroom being a community hub
• Set up a regular calendar of community moments: lifting competitions, launch events, charity partnerships, open gym nights, meetups
• Track showroom event attendance, community engagement, and contribution to local brand awareness

Who you are

• You're part of the fitness community — powerlifting, CrossFit, garage gym, strongman, weightlifting, bodybuilding — and you live it, not just post about it
• You've got some experience in sales or customer support — retail floor, call center, gym front desk, wherever — you know how to talk to people and actually listen
• Comfortable showing up at gyms, events, on camera, in DMs, and on Reddit threads
• A strong written communicator — you can write a Reddit comment that doesn't read like marketing
• Organized enough to juggle a bunch of relationships without dropping the ball
• Willing to travel ~10% (events, gyms, showrooms, occasional EU)

Nice to Have:

• Content creation experience, existing creator/ambassador relationships, German fluency, prior DTC or fitness-brand experience
• Some experience in community management, brand partnerships, grass-roots marketing, retail/event marketing, or athlete management

You're not: a social media manager, a PR person, or an agency-style account manager. We don't run scripts from Canada — we want a human face in the field.

Nobody's 100% ready for a job like this — if they were, it wouldn't be worth doing. If you've got 70% of what we're looking for and the drive to figure out the rest, that's enough.

What’s In It For You

• $55,000–$65,000 base salary, depending on experience
• Health Spending Account
• Hybrid schedule based out of a Calgary office you’ll actually want to come into
• Employee discounts on all our gear
• Access to our staff gym
• Every other Friday off during our non-peak season (February to October)

About Bells of Steel Inc.

At Bells of Steel, our mission is to make fitness and strength training approachable, affordable, and fun. We design and manufacture high-quality strength and exercise equipment for home gym owners and fitness professionals, helping people of all experience levels achieve their goals.

We’re not your typical fitness equipment brand. We’re down-to-earth, a little cheeky, and focused on making fitness more rewarding and less intimidating. If you enjoy a fast-paced, no-BS environment and want to help shape the future of strength training, you’ll fit right in.

Our Core Values: A.C.T.

Adaptability – Raise the Bar
We challenge the status quo, learn quickly, and continuously improve. We embrace change, seek better ways of working, and take initiative to drive results.

Customer Centricity – Always Spot the Customer
Everything we do is focused on helping our customers succeed. We lead with empathy, build trust through action, and create value for both external and internal customers.

Teamwork – We Win Together
We operate with honesty, transparency, trust, and respect. We collaborate openly, take shared ownership of outcomes, and succeed as a team.