Social Media Community Manager, ​Stephen Banham

Hello here! It’s time!

Our Live Chat guest for today is Social Media Community Manager,​ Stephen'Bern' Banham! 😊

Here’s more from Stephen:

What do I do: I’m a social media manager specialising in story telling and community development. I’ve had a foot in 2 doors all of my life, 1 foot firmly planted in the music industry as a professional musician and the other in the gaming and events industries doing marketing, community management and Social Media. My greatest strengths often lie in utilising emotional marketing, story telling and essentially pushing the boundaries of what companies believe that they can achieve or do with their social media. I’m also currently the only marketer in my company!

My background: This is a complicated story so I’ll try to be brief! I studied opera at Trinity College Of Music in London, during my studies I started working with online radio for the gaming industry after a year of being a part of the same station I had 3–4 shows a week and had become their head of PR. I decided to pursue the radio instead of the music, however I ended up finding that I had a natural talent and drive to grow communities and tell stories. That prompted my move into Social Media. I ended up working as a consultant for 3 years offering advice to online communities and working with them to train their teams, during this time I also worked for a luxury sportscar dealership as their digital marketer.

Others: I love gaming and the eSports industry! I was previously in a signed band and am now looking for a new band to play with. I like to read but don’t have enough time so I end up listening to a lot of audio books. I can’t work in silence, I have to work with music or voice playing in the background.

You can follow Stephen on Twitter here.

Hey, ​Stephen​! Thanks for joining us today! 😊

Social Media

What do you love most about your job as a Social Media Community Manager? — Alfred Lua

I have to say that the best thing about being a Social Media Community Manager is the chance to work with people, tell stories and yet be in a field that is constantly changing whilst still being able to use my creativity! Really it’s the only career I could see myself doing! What’s not to love about such a fast paced, changing, challenging and yet highly creative field 😊

For someone who is just entering the exciting social media management world, do you have any tips or recommendations for learning the advertising aspect and building a solid strategy? — Kristiana Dunn

Thank you so much for this question. The first time I broke out into this was very challenging for me so here’s a few tips I picked up over time.

1. It’s better to have a more specific smaller audience than cast out a huge net and hope to catch as many different audiences individuals. So identify your target group, sit down with sales and work with them to ascertain who they are wanting to sell to but are missing, or if starting up work out your core demographic and push to them. but keep it solidly focused even down to where in the world they are. It will save you money and make your results smaller in reach but far more effective.
2. Be creative, with so much noise at the moment in advertising it’s so hard to stand out so think outside the box and create ads that add value rather than intrude peoples online experience

Thanks! Great info! How should one approach learning the different advertising platforms for social? Jon Loomer has been highly recommended to me to learn how use Facebook advertising (like the basics and how-to)- any thoughts on how to tackle learning these basics? Would those same tips you just mentioned apply to this question? I hope that question makes sense. — Kristiana Dunn

It’s a real challenge, and different sources have different strengths in their teaching styles etc, unfortunately my favourite way to learn is often unpopular in this area, I learn by trying and testing the waters. For me I like to try things before anyone else does, this isn’t great when you’re trying to convince your board that they should give you some extra budget! I would recommend the Social Media Examiner blog, they have some fantastic posts on advertising over social that are geared to new users.

Do you have any social media tools you use to share? — Calum

Obviously Buffer is epic! I’d definitely recommend checking out Respond if you haven’t yet! It’s pretty awesome. One of my super secret curation tools is Trendspottr; it is just simply amazing. I highly recommend it as a great way to find the articles that are trending in real time (ish).

Do you have any tips on how to manage the different channels? There’s a lot of different types of media now: live video on Periscope, images on Instagram/Snapchat, tweets, Facebook and more. Do you have a main channel and let the others just have small(ish) updates? — Diogo Neves

I had the same thought when I first moved into social media, the main thing you need to remember is that just because they exist doesn’t mean you or your business has to be on there. The best thing to do is focus on your goals for your social strategy.

“Who do I need to reach?” “What kind of content resonates the best with my audience?” “Where is my audience?”

We only focus on 3 platforms in my current company and I would argue that this is a good figure for most starting out social media managers. But the great thing about choice shouldn’t be “we can be everywhere” but instead it should be “we can tailor what we do exactly for our needs and the desires of our clients!”

I like to think of butter, you always have the same amount of butter no matter how much bread you have to spread it on, and eventually your butter will be so thinly spread people wont even know it’s there if you aren’t careful!

Which three channels do you concentrate on and why? — Nick Beall

For my current role we run events for the C-Suite around the world so it’s basically B2B (enhanced edition now with more Instagram). We focus on the following:

1. LinkedIn: Easiest way to target specific roles in companies through paid adverts, a great place to affirm your companies authority in your industry by sharing articles that are going directly to your desired audience and a great place to generate leads that you can instantly message and begin the sales process with.
2. Twitter: a place where we can share live information during our events, our attendees can share their favourite moments and we can keep them informed of whats going on during the event.
3. Instagram: No one in B2B said we could do it, achieve ROI from Instagram in a business related business but Iignored them, worked on fostering a P2P plan (Person to Person) focusing on telling stories and nurturing culture behind our company we have gotten speakers, sales leads and we just passed 1,000 followers! So it’s going pretty well!

Marketing

Have you always worked in social media? Or have you had experience in say marketing or communications before you went full time into social? And what value have your past roles provided to your current work in social/community? — Kat Loughrey

Well aside from my first job as a baker (I make the best cakes) I worked as a teacher of singing, a professional opera singer and a head of PR for an online radio station with my own shows. I’d say the greatest impact of these towards my current role are all the same, it’s about telling stories and sharing experiences.

When you teach you are sharing a part of your own story with someone else, when you perform you are sharing information through sung story, radio is all about stories and experiences, etc. What it taught me was how to move people to action through real emotional value instead of wearing them down with sales pitches and adverts, etc.

In building emotional connections with supporters, fans or friends what is one technique you feel is the most vital? — Chris Joyce ⚡

For me storytelling is just so crucial to developing real meaningful emotional relationships, you become more than just a company or an individual. You become a part of their lives, an influence on their decision making in a real life way rather than just sales. That’s how a company becomes a brand and how a community becomes a family.

Do you have a “narrative” that runs across all your content? Almost like the main plot in a TV show; does that even make sense? Do you see your company as a character and develop it? — Diogo Neves

For me, the narrative changes seasonally and to what impacts peoples lives in that moment! For example, we all associate the Coca Cola ad (other drinks ads are available) with Christmas. Creating a story that moves people may be great for one time of year but not for the rest, for me it’s more about running 2 stories at once, the short term stories that impact people during the recent moments after you’ve posted and then the longer underlying story that impacts peoples opinions of you and your company over time, that story is more subtle and often subconscious in nature but the long term impact is developing brand association and trust within your followers / fans etc. It isn’t that way for everyone but that’s how I perceive it!

When do you think mailing lists make sense? — Diogo Neves

Hmm, Diogo, that’s a hard question as since the 80’s mailing lists have been a sales team’s best friend! I would say that “theoretically” they don’t make sense in the current business world. I would much rather see an increased integration between marketing and sales where actual leads generated through social marketing and face to face networking take precedence over cold emailing, etc. if that makes sense. Every year the business world wastes so much time and money on leads that are pointless purely because we would rather spend that time doing what we know than trying something new and reshaping our image of the relationship between marketing and sales. It’s just easier and safer to use the older methods than try to push the boundaries of the sales funnel in social and how the two can impact each other for most companies.

Community

What advice do you have if you get a user who ‘trolls’? Block them? Reply back? Do nothing? — Calum

Very good question, at the radio station we had a lot of trolls they would usually join our IRC (yes that old beast) and try and troll our regular listeners and community members, we had 2 strategies!

Firstly was to let our community speak for itself. We were lucky to have enough listeners that we’d have around 200 people in IRC at any one time, that meant that any trolls were usually shut down by our own community with us having to intervene.

The 2nd approach was for more persistent trolls. Option 2 is really dependant on your industry as well as your companies approach but we’d call them out on air and share banter with them, luckily british sarcasm is a great tool in feeding a troll without giving him power so long as you can maintain your ground without letting your emotions take over. Certainly you have to be a certain kind of community manager to get away with that.

Professional Life

Hey! What’s your greatest achievement in your professional life? — Oren Mukades

I’d say touring europe and performing at the royal albert hall twice!

Video Games

What was the first video game that got you into gaming? — Nick Beall

The very first video game?? Well, Nick, I’d say the very first game was a copy of Pokemon Red on a limited edition Pikachu gameboy haha. That was the first game I played that really hooked me into gaming on a regular (ish) basis.

So, do you still count “gaming“ as part of your day-to-day job? Or do you try to keep gaming out of your daily business? — Daniel Baron

I don’t count it as part of my daily business anymore sadly however I do count it as part of my own personal development and networking. I game with a lot of influencers, eSports players, YouTubers, streamers and industry professionals so for this it’s key to view it as more than just a gaming relaxation experience.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and wisdom with us today, Stephen! You are so so so amazing for joining us from the train! 😊

Thank you all who joined us today too! ❤

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