What is community management?
Have you ever wondered, how a simple term like Community Management can be a game-changer for your brand? The term can be hard to define, but it can be called as an art to build relationships and how a business grabs the opportunities while interacting with the communities at the public spaces.
Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit forums are some of the popular social media networks, where you can find communities. If you look closely, you can even find a community in the comments section of a post. So it is all about the perspective of where you can find a community.
In this highly digital and an interconnected society and you have to be guarded that you could still end up being disconnected from people. Make sure you keep your eyes open as these are the people, who actually matter for your brand and business. This is where your role in community management comes in.
You might be surprised that many times even the brands fail to connect with their customers or even their own employees. Have you ever imagined, what makes them disconnected? Lack of community can be named as the culprit. A community is a network of people with similar goals, who come together and share interests. These interests are picked up by the businesses and brands. And this is where the role of community management begins.
There is a reason why a number of companies have started to invest in the creation of communities that have customers, employees and followers and this process is called as the community management. Investing in community management has its own advantages. For instance, try imagining yourself as a brand, who is just making a product and selling it in the market with the full-proof marketing strategy.
You could endeavor investing in community management and make yourself a human brand. Here you can individualize the difference between being just a company and being a human brand that actually cares about people’s thoughts, feedback and interacts with them on a regular basis.
How to create a community management strategy
1. Set your goals and objectives — The first step to take is to set realistic goals along with a few stretch goals. These are important as it will show a graph of your growth and give a scale to measure your success. In case you are having a fresh strategy or do not have a goal for the social media community management, then the task might become a little difficult. You could begin by running a few experiments after you have decided on how to plan or measure your success.
Make sure that you keep a record of the engagements that are related to the content that you produce and is shared on a number of social media platforms for a specific time. Keep collecting data, as long term data will be helpful to you to have a bigger picture of what your brand feeds on.
2. Understand your audience — Make sure you know what your audience needs. Apart from just identifying what they need also ask them what they would like to see that would encourage you as a brand to create. Churn out content that makes sense to them.
Also make sure that you ask for a feedback, especially when you have come up with a new product. This way you would know more about their opinions and what they have to say about it. It will also help to improve your brand loyalty.
3. Create engaging content — Here you will need to show some consistency in terms of frequency of the posts. Determine how often you would be posting some engaging content for the audience. Stick to the plan and pattern, so the pattern would be engraved in the minds of your audience. Remember, by this point you will have an audience, who keeps an eye or expects updates from you on a regular basis.
The social media platform is a great way to make close relationships with the audience. Also make them feel that they are not just a part of some statistics, but are actually heard by the company and employees.
4. Invest in the right tools — For an effective way to grow and manage your online community, you will need to have a few community management tools that will help you to remain updated. It will also make the management of the statistics and figures easier. To measure the results there are a few methods that would work the best towards the needs of the company, goals and needs. First you need the best tools in terms of content creation. Make sure you have good graphics, videos, images and more.
Then you need to make sure that you have the right and trustworthy resource for your content. For instance, if you are mentioning about a figure for your audience, make sure that it is not fiction but from an actual and reliable source. The next tool would be to merge proper communication with project management and automation. Another important factor is to select tools that allow a proper communication with the community.
Next you need to keep in mind to select the right tools for scheduling content and tasks. You can have a system for posting content on a regular basis, even if you forget. Assign tasks within the community for encouraging participation. The final point is to also engage in email marketing, which might be an old method, but still an effective method followed to interact with the audience. Here are a few tools that are recommended -
- Aroound.com — This is the apt space where you can find the latest information about different things from across the globe. It is a good source to find content that you need including videos, podcasts and articles. The website has covered different topics that you might have thought about learning.
- Eventbrite.com — Are you one of those who loves the adrenaline from the live experiences? Eventbrite is the space that brings together and represents itself as a global ticketing platform. It is not just about buying, but also allows you to create, attend and find the events that you are interested in.
- Twitter.com — This space is all about what is happening right now. What are aware of? What do you want to express? Find out what people are talking about. It is more of an expressive space where you can have healthy conversations.
5. Measure your success — This is an important step taken quite after a while you have formed an online community. Here you will have to decide on which method works for you the best in terms of your goals, needs and company. Here we will be showing a few ways you could do it.
a. Monitor your social media accounts — and make sure that you keep a track on the feedbacks from customers, discussions about the brands and services. Also keep a track about any discussions about your competitors as well.
b. Select your analytics — This will depend on the social platform that you have selected for your community management strategy. It will help you to have an analytics tool that will show your success in variables that are specific to that platform. Some of the promising instances include Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics and Facebook Analytics.
c. Analytics tools — There could be chances that you might not be satisfied with the analytics tool, which has been included so you can look for deeper analysis that will help to include another tool or a platform that will measure your success. Some of the instances include Sprout Social, HubSpot and Google Analytics.
Build up your community to build up your business
Taking your business towards making it a brand is the next big step and it includes making some memorable logos and slogans that would be easy for the end user to remember and relate the product with. Building a community is a more important step for any business and could be called as a common place, online forum or a shared platform, where people can share their experiences. The internet is flooded on ways to build a community, but here, to make things simple and easy, we have brought four simple yet effective steps to build a community for your business.
1. Generate emotions or beliefs — Try associating your business with the feels and emotions. For instance, it could be like, how people follow their favorite YouTubers and take inspiration from. It could be rational in nature and has more to do with emotions and experiences. Make sure it is a positive feeling that is somehow associated to your business. It could be related to health, relationship, excitement or anything else that relates to your product.
2. Provide more chances of interaction — The social media is one of the most powerful networks on the internet. Communities can be built with the help of videos, surveys, contests, images and more methods that are interactive in nature. Make people participate in online forums or it could also be an existing online community. This could be a good option as building one could be a lengthy process than making the most of an already existing one.
3. Begin at home — Yes you might be enthusiastic about growing your business, but you also need to be practical and patient. Begin on a local level and the best way to do it is by sponsoring some of the local fundraisers. You could do this by co-sponsoring a big event. Connecting the brand name with a team that local people support is a great way to build a community.
4. Send newsletters — Now this might sound old school but believe it or not, this is an effective way to build a community and makes it more than just a promotional source for the business. Make sure that your newsletter is not boring. It should be entertaining, helpful and if possible lucrative as well. Make it interactive and allow the readers to answer questions and make comments.
Effective Community Management, Happy Community.
Now that you have a thriving community, but do you think you have completed your responsibility as a brand? No! Because this is where effective management of the community comes to action. This part is mostly neglected by businesses and is as important as the content that is being created for social media. This is also a great way to build the brand and expand your audience by connecting with potential customers. Here are the steps you could follow for an effective community management.
1. Identify your target — One of the most critical part is to identify your target. It makes no sense if you have a large audience but are not converted in to customers.
2. Engage your community on a regular basis — Activeness is the key and regular communication could keep your community engaged. Make a schedule and work on how regularly you need to interact. Potential customers love consistency and make them aware that you are available and are listening.
3. Be personal — Do not sound like an automated service or a bot. Make sure that you also show the human side of the business. An automated response does not impress the potential customers and makes them feel like they are being taken care by robots.
4. Respond as quickly as possible — Make sure that you respond to the comments and questions as quickly as possible. Days of silence could mean loss of potential customers or it could also lead to negative marketing.
5. Do not ignore negative comments — Learn to absorb negative comments. They need extra care and giving them an automated response could be the worst. Find an acceptable solution for the customer and make them feel heard.
6. Make proper use of hashtags — By doing so, it allows people to find you. People, who are interested in your products and services might find you because of the hashtags in your posts. Once you find them, engage them with your content.
7. Do not view everything as an opportunity for business — This might be your end goal, but do not try to turn every possible opportunity in to a business. Make sure that you stay on the topic and provide a solution.
Examples of Real Communities Thriving online.
With reference to the discussion about the online communities, it might seem like a complex process. But there are people, who have actually excelled in it. Here we will be looking in to some of the successful online communities, which are currently thriving and have made a mark.
1. Mom365 community — This community talks about subjects from pregnancy, birth to development of the baby and even topics like raising children. There are parents here, who involve in helping each other with their questions. The company specializes in baby portraits and it is a smart move by the brand to begin and maintain an online community where the potential customers get everything that they are looking for. It has managed to excel in its community management skills.
2. Lego Ideas — it is a creative online community that is specifically made for the Lego lovers and enthusiasts. The users here are able to submit creative and new ideas. The community promotes sharing of ideas and inculcates a competitive spirit amidst the fans, who also involve in voting and offering feedback.
3. Made Unboxed — Made is a furniture retailer that had started an online community which helps to connect the buyers with the earlier customers. The actual goal of the community is to show the customers what products from ‘Made’ look in real life. The online community also allows people to share ideas and inspiration.
4. PlayStation Community — It can be said that COVID worked as a trigger towards the flourishing of the PlayStation community in recent times. The gamers here talk to each other with the help of dedicated channels for different games. The community also has a competitive side known as Trophies that helps to recognize gaming accomplishments.
5. Beauty Talk — As the name suggests it is exclusively for the beauty enthusiasts and was created in response to a number of comments and queries that were left on Sephora.com. One of the reasons, the community is successful, is the fact that it answers queries related to different products in the market. The users just enter a query about a product and you receive a number of answers from experienced people and allow the user to decide if they should buy the product or not.
