Have you ever felt the need to comment on your favourite brand's page to tell them something? Whether it was a compliment, complaint, or just interacting with a brand, you felt the need to be heard. Picture what it would feel like if you received a response from the brand.
Pretty special, right?
Imagine finding a way to incorporate that into all public-facing aspects of your brand. That's where community management comes in!
If you are looking for a way to humanise your brand and reach an entirely new audience, this article is for you.
Here's what we'll cover:
- What is community management?
- Why is online community management important in social media?
- What are the benefits of online community management software?
- Why use both community management and social media community management?
- How does community management influence customer feedback?
- What is community management in social media?
- What are community management tools for social media?
Let's dive right in.
What is community management?
Being a community manager is a relatively new but essential social media position. Learning how to be a community manager is key to your brand's success, so understanding community management should be the first step in your search.
The process of creating, expanding, and maintaining a community around a specific brand, item, business, or hobby is known as community management. It involves developing relationships, promoting dialogue, and assisting community members.
Besides interacting with community members and monitoring conversations, community managers are in charge of planning events and activities and ensuring the community stays lively, engaged, and committed to its goals and core values.
Essential parts of community management include:
- Engagement
- Moderation
- Content Creation
- Events and Activities
- Feedback and Insights
- Community Growth
Why is online community management important in social media?
Managing a community is vital on social media. This is because these platforms are huge and have great influence in today's digital world. With more than 5 billion social media users worldwide, the competition for attention and engagement is fierce.
Here are 4 key reasons why effective online community management is essential:
#1 Understanding your audience
Social media platforms provide a lot of data and insights about users' behaviour and demographics. Community managers leverage this information to understand their target audience better.
You can tailor your content and engagement strategies to resonate better with your audience. How? By knowing what your audience needs and wants. If you consistently produce content that generates zero engagement, then analysing your audience to understand what they like best is a quick and easy way to boost your engagement. This can certainly increase the likelihood of capturing attention amidst the noise that comes with so many social media users.
#2 Engagement with your target audience
Social media is inherently interactive, allowing brands to engage directly with their audience in real-time. Community managers play a key role in this. They generate meaningful interactions and respond quickly to comments, messages, and mentions. In other words, a community manager is able to add a human touch to a brand and its voice.
By engaging authentically and building relationships with followers, brands can cultivate loyalty and trust. They can do this within their online community.
#3 Optimisation and curated content
Rather than simply broadcasting information, effective community management involves curating content specifically tailored to each social media platform.
Community managers understand each platform's unique traits and audience preferences. They adapt their content for each one. So, different messages may have the same goal, but they may look a bit different from each other when curated for Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. This approach maximises engagement, and it ensures the brand's message resonates with its audience on different channels.
#4 Data-driven insights and strategy
Community managers gather valuable feedback and insights from social media conversations. These can inform broader marketing, product development, and business decisions. Community managers also provide useful insights which drive improvement and innovation. They do this by analysing metrics. These include engagement rates, sentiment analysis, and audience demographics.
What are the benefits of online community management software?
As we saw in the points above, community management is a lot of work and requires a lot from an individual. That's why good community management software can help a community manager. There will still be much for a community manager to do. But, it will let them focus their time and efforts on specific areas.
If you need help in knowing how community management software can be helpful, check out these 5 benefits below.
#1 Scalability
A good community management software is designed to scale with the growth of your social media community. This means that community management software should be able to handle a smaller social media following. But, it should also accommodate the increasing numbers of users, content, and interactions. It must do this without losing performance or functionality.
So, if your goal as a community manager is to bring your brand growth, you should go ahead and set yourself up for success for when your brand does grow and you see significant increases in your followers, comments, and engagement.
#2 Automated workflows
In 2024, automation is the answer to practically everything. Many community management platforms offer automation features to streamline repetitive tasks such as content scheduling, member onboarding, and user segmentation, which saves time and boosts efficiency.
A good online community management software will prioritise features that allow you to streamline processes.
#3 Member engagement
Community management software often includes features that boost engagement. These features include gamification, polls, surveys, and events tools. Customers and prospects love to engage and answer questions, so finding a unique way to do this with your brand is key. In a way that fits your brand voice, incorporate these engaging features into your community management efforts. This can help foster a vibrant and active online community that will help grow your brand and brand reach.
#4 Analytics and reporting
Community managers can track key metrics. These metrics include engagement, demographics, and content performance. They can do this with the help of analytics and reporting tools. These data can empower you as a community manager to help guide decision-making and optimisation tactics.
#5 Content moderation
Community management software often includes strong content moderation tools. They let managers track and regulate user-generated content. The goal is to ensure it complies with platform and community rules. Plus, it can help community managers know what people are saying about their brand so they can gather feedback to analyse further.
If you're looking for community management software and need a recommendation, we can assure you that Sendible is an excellent and thriving option for community managers. And why's that? You may ask.
Well, we have everything you're looking for above, plus…
We're affordable. And scalable. And best of all… we have actual humans on the other side of the screen. Our community management software can help you optimise your time. When you're ready to reach out to us, we're here, ready and waiting!
Beyond Clicks and Likes: The Agency Community Manager's Handbook
Why use both community management and social media community management?
Community management and social media management are both methods that should be done alongside each other. The efforts work well together. They add to each other and make your brand's community better.
Understandably, it might be a little confusing about what the difference is between the two. The main difference is how they interact with their audiences. Social media managers and community managers are different. A social media manager creates public campaigns and plans to grow engagement and a brand. A community manager's goal is to focus on nurturing relationships with the brand.
So, a social media manager may be the one elaborating a campaign, posting it, and setting up a boost on it. But, a community manager will be the person who answers the comments, starts conversations and grows brand relationships by being the interactive voice of the brand.
Combining both community management and social media community management approaches allows brands to leverage the strengths of each method, reach a broader audience, cater to diverse engagement preferences, gather comprehensive feedback, mitigate risks, and create a more holistic community experience.
How does community management influence customer feedback?
Community management plays a significant role in influencing customer feedback. A few years ago, community management software or community managers didn't track social media posts and forums. With the right tools and people in place, community managers act as the direct channel for customers to share their feedback.
A recent study shows that 80% of surveyed community respondents felt that community management positively affected the business. That should come as no surprise since community managers are the brand's public-facing voice that meets customers where they are and provides an outlet that facilitates communication channels.
A community manager can advocate for customers by giving prompt responses and feedback to them. This will grow trust in the brand and drive participation. When customers see that the brand actively responds to their queries, they are more prone to ask questions they have been wondering themselves.
If there was ever such a win-win situation, then this is it.
Managing a community is vital to shaping customer feedback. It provides channels for communication and for gathering feedback. It involves advocating for customers within the organisation. It also means driving engagement and building trust and credibility with customers.
What is community management in social media?
Research shows that 77% of consumers with retail subscriptions buy more products from brands they have relationships with than those they do not. That goes to show how meaningful relationships are, especially in brands.
Imagine that you are going to buy a new lipstick from your favourite brand. It's been on your mind for a while. You see on their Facebook or Instagram that some of their original colours would be for sale again. How delighted would you be if you commented on the post and asked if your favourite colour would be back and got a response? Pretty ecstatic, for certain. That's why community management on social media is so important. It brings back the human touch and interaction that consumers simply long for nowadays.
What are community management tools for social media?
Being a community manager is not an easy job. Actually, it's probably one of the hardest ones out there. You must have an ear out for your brand. You must consistently watch comments so you can respond on many social media platforms. Among many other duties, this is a LOT to expect from one community manager.
That's why empowering yourself for success by having a strong community management tool for social media is so important.
An almost infinite number of community management tools for social media are available on the World Wide Web. That's why you should answer these questions when you start your search for the right one for you:
- What are my primary goals for managing social media communities?
- Which social media platforms do I need to manage, and does the tool support integration with these platforms?
- What features and functionalities are essential for my community management efforts? (For example, scheduling posts, monitoring conversations, analysing performance metrics)
- How user-friendly is the tool's interface, and is it easy to navigate and use effectively?
- Does the tool do all of the following? Can it track brand mentions, keywords, and relevant conversations on social media?
- How scalable is the tool, and can it accommodate the growth of my social media communities over time?
Once you have the answer to those questions, you should be able to define which community management tool is best for you.
We don't mean to boast. But, if you want a tool to help you reach your goals and with all the above features, you should strongly consider Sendible. Our community management tool is key to helping community managers track important messages and comments through Priority Inbox and Social Feeds.
Although equally important, both features are key to your brand's community management. Our Priority Inbox can streamline the response process by allowing you to assign a message as a task to the right person for the best possible answer to messages your brand receives.
Our Social Feeds feature allows you to see a real-time view of your social media profiles without opening each profile in a separate tab. Although the two features have several differences, both are highly beneficial to your brand's community management.
Also, if you're prepping content that is still being prepared to be launched, your social media manager can easily add it to the content library. They can save it for when the information is ready to go out.
As you can see, the more features a tool offers, the better it is for community and social media management.
Final thoughts on community management
If you are looking for a way to make your brand more personable, relatable and human, then community management is the answer you have been looking for.
By tapping into this easy-to-implement activity and setting yourself up for success with the right community management tools, you can help your brand reach new levels of success.
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