32 lessons learnt from Social Media Community Management
Whether its a tech startup or a corporate brand, role of community managers is becoming very important for any type of business online. Community manager is the one who amplifies brand's voice and responsible for engaging new and existing customers through social media communities. They are responsible for portraying a brand's image, showcasing value their brand offers, and engaging with potential prospects to valuable feedback that helps out in governing/designing the future business approach.
He/she should be well balanced and responsible for managing brand's reputation on social media communities. Community managers highlight the importance of their brand through different tactics and strategies, bring valuable conversations around their brand's products and are forefront of their marketing activities on social media.
Below are the key guidelines for aspiring community managers or for anyone who wanted to make a difference in their marketing department.
Guidelines for Aspiring Social Media Community Managers:
- Define rules.
- Make it easy for members to care/share.
- Know your super users.
- Key point: You begin with Owned Content. Not Paid.
- Myth busters – does B2B or B2C build better communities? everyone can build a community!
- Your community’s all about your customers & potential customers; keep customer top of mind at all times.
- Constant attention with an emphasis on making each individual feel that they have a voice that can invoke change.
Do’s:
- Diligently curating, tagging, and featuring key content are key when a “content tsunami” hits your community.
- Learn who your users are in your community.
- Community managers are great listeners but they also need to give feedback back to their users
- Always hear the customer out. Decide if you need to take the convo offline!
- Employees should only be rewarded if they exceed expectations, not meet them.
- Make the ‘what’s in it for me’ very obvious to people looking at your brand.
- Value your customers by valuing their time.
- Take a look at where your community wants to hold the convo- website, twitter, etc.
- Put the emphasis on where your audience already is talking.
- Constant attention with an emphasis on making each individual feel that they have a voice that can invoke change.
- Community is an extended family of yours. Take care of them and they’ll Take care of you.
- Communities are very cross functional. Use the input to improve other departments.
What You Shouldn’t Do:
- Keep the feedback loop in motion. Don’t let the community feel like a black hole. Show members you’re listening.
- Outsourcing to an agency? A horrible idea for any company that’s serious about community management.
- Always keep in mind that everything you do online and offline should be about your customers & prospects, not about you.
Reputation Management:
- Angry or friendly, they are your customers & each needs to be respected.
- If there is a complaint on Twitter, respond to the user within an hour even if you don’t have the exact solution.
- Try to convert a negative contributor to be a positive advocate through personalized engagement.
- Bad experiences go viral quickly. Make sure you are monitoring your content regularly.
- On average., customers will tell 15 people about good experiences, and 24 people about bad experiences.
- Big difference between negative and bad content. Community managers need to know the difference & manage appropriately.
- Always hear the customer out. Decide if you need to take the convo offline!
- Rewarding good behaviour- make them a larger part of the convo, send them an offline thank you, comment & RT.
Success Examples:
- Mercedes is a great example of creating and maintaining a community that excels. They received a ton of product reviews.
- Maersk is a great example of how to build a community… focus on a unique aspect of your brand or business.
This post was originally published here.
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I'm specialist in Digital Marketing, B2B Social Media & SEO. I have been working in the digital media for now almost 3 years and have worked for diverse digital projects, I love combining creativity with skills and marketing with technology. You can Follow me at Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn