Community Management: A Key to Success

Today establishing and nurturing relationships is imperative for enhancing brand growth and fostering brand allegiance. Community management stands out as a pivotal instrument in realizing these objectives. Effective community management involves interacting with your audience and clientele through dependable, established methods, as well as through innovative and imaginative approaches. The key is to sustain your audience’s interest in your activities and messages.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to formulating a community management strategy, there exist fundamental principles that should guide your efforts. Let’s delve into these guidelines and explore how you can initiate community engagement effectively today.

What is community management?

Community management entails the strategic gathering and nurturing of brand advocates and loyal customers for your business. This practice leverages social platforms to establish a community network for interaction, engagement, and knowledge sharing. It also enables businesses to gather feedback, address customer concerns, and foster brand loyalty.

At its core, community management is about creating a sense of belonging and connection between customers and the business. It involves building relationships, fostering trust, and providing value to the community.

What is the difference between social media management and community management?

To discern between community management and social media marketing, it is crucial to grasp their distinct priorities and objectives.

Social media marketing:

Involves crafting and disseminating social content to attract new customers and engage with existing ones
Focuses on metrics such as reach, engagement, and website traffic

Community management:

Extends beyond social media posting to deliver exceptional customer service and participate in pertinent discussions
Commences on a more intimate scale, prioritizing relationship-building with customers
Aids in enhancing your brand’s visibility across various platforms, not limited to social media

When distinguishing between the two, community management can prove more effective than social media management in fostering and growing a devoted fan base. Concentrating on cultivating close connections with customers, can foster enduring advocacy for your brand.

Why Community Management Is Important?

Establishes brand loyalty and advocacy: By building strong relationships with customers, community management can foster a sense of loyalty and turn customers into advocates for your brand.
Enhances customer satisfaction: With prompt responses and personalized interactions, community management helps to address customer concerns quickly and effectively, leading to higher levels of satisfaction.
Creates a positive brand image: Through active participation and engagement, community management can help shape the perception of your brand positively.
Facilitates valuable feedback: By actively listening and engaging with customers, community management can gather valuable insights and feedback on products or services, helping to improve them for future success.
Fosters authenticity and trust: Community management allows for genuine interactions with customers, showcasing the human side of your brand and building trust with your audience.
Provides a platform for customer support: Community management allows for real-time support and problem-solving, creating a seamless experience for customers and improving overall satisfaction.
Increases brand reach and awareness: By cultivating a dedicated fan base, community management can help expand your brand’s reach through word-of-mouth marketing and social sharing.
Generates user-generated content: Through community management, customers can be encouraged to share their experiences and create user-generated content, which can further promote your brand organically.
Helps to identify and address issues quickly: With a strong online presence and active community management, potential issues or crises can be identified and addressed promptly, mitigating negative impacts on your brand.
Builds a sense of belonging and loyalty: By fostering a strong community, customers can feel a sense of belonging and loyalty to your brand, leading to repeat business and advocacy for your products or services.

C/ management is an essential aspect of modern businesses, as it not only helps to manage and maintain online communities but also plays a crucial role.

Community Management Vs Customer Service

Community management and customer service are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. While both involve interacting with customers, there are key differences between the two. Customer service focuses on addressing individual customer concerns and providing solutions to their problems. It is reactive, responding to specific issues as they arise. On the other hand, community management involves building and maintaining a community of customers who share common interests and values. It is proactive, fostering a positive relationship with the community as a whole.

While customer service may be necessary for handling individual problems, community management goes beyond that by creating a sense of belonging and loyalty among customers. By actively engaging with the community, businesses can gain valuable insights and feedback, improve their products or services, and ultimately build a strong brand reputation.

Customer Service is a very important aspect of modern business, something that cannot be neglected! Read our reviews and recommendations in the Customer Relationship Management section

The Role of Community Managers

Community managers play a crucial role in managing and fostering online communities. They are responsible for creating engaging content, moderating discussions, addressing customer concerns, and building relationships with community members. Community managers also act as the voice of the brand within the community, representing its values and goals. They monitor and analyze community activity, identify trends and issues, and use this information to improve the community experience.

Furthermore, community managers play a vital role in facilitating communication between businesses and their customers. They can act as a liaisons, conveying customer feedback and ideas to the appropriate departments within the company.

The basics of online community management

A community management plan can be outlined in four key aspects: monitoring, engaging, moderating, and measuring.

Monitor

Also known as “social listening,” this entails monitoring online conversations about your brand. The most convenient approach is to utilize a paid tool such as Mention or Sprout Social, or a no-cost tool like Google Alerts. These tools enable you to track mentions of your brand name (including potential misspellings) and the products or services you provide.

Engage

This constitutes the proactive approach: Address comments from individuals and initiate discussions. At a minimum, promptly address grievances and aid in resolving concerns. Additionally, utilize the chance to express gratitude to satisfied customers and engage potential followers. Embrace creativity and showcase personality without hesitation.

Moderate

This section is commonly known as “reputation management.” It is crucial to stay vigilant in addressing any concerns within your online community. Apart from resolving issues, ensure that your profiles remain free from spam. Aim to foster a positive, authentic, and interactive atmosphere.

Measure

Examine your most popular channels and social media platforms. Evaluate the sentiment towards your brand and the level of engagement. Consider if intervention is necessary to guide discussions. Seek feedback through inquiries, polls, surveys, and direct messages.

How to create a community management strategy?

Let’s look at some basic steps to become a good community manager

Step 1: Establish objectives

Your community management plan should be structured around specific, actionable objectives. By taking this approach, you can strategically outline the desired outcomes. Here are several goal suggestions to consider:

Enhance sales and/or subscriptions
Improve customer retention rates
Transform customers into brand advocates
Amplify word-of-mouth marketing
Enhance brand visibility
Collect valuable feedback
Enhance reputation and public perception
Educate on your brand, products, industry, etc.

Ideally, quantify your goals with specific metrics, such as “Increase sales by 10% within the upcoming three months.”

Step 2: Understand your audience

If you’re not effectively engaging with your community members through the appropriate language, your efforts may seem futile. Leading community management professionals understand their audience thoroughly: comprehending their needs, desires, demographics, personal and ethical values, and more. Understanding your customer base serves as a key to establishing meaningful connections with them. For instance, targeting middle-aged customers may be best achieved through a Facebook group. Utilizing Google Analytics to analyze visitor demographics on your website can provide valuable insights. Leveraging the analytical tools within your social media platforms can further enhance your understanding and engagement strategies.

Step 3: Develop high-quality content

As you embark on your community management journey, high-quality content will initially manifest as posts and other materials on your public platforms, such as your social media profiles. However, as your brand expands, the nature of your content may evolve.

This evolution could involve the establishment of distinct groups or forums where your audience can engage directly with one another and with your brand. It may also entail the development of a membership site that fosters such interactions within a dedicated space exclusively owned by you.

For instance, the digital nomad community Nomad List has created a specific Slack workspace to facilitate diverse conversations and connections among its members, fostering engagement with the brand itself.

Step 4: Consider investing in quality tools

As your online community expands, the demand for time and resources to manage it effectively increases. This challenge can become daunting, particularly when manual efforts are the sole strategy. Thankfully, a variety of social listening tools are at your disposal to facilitate understanding of public sentiment. Certain tools offer integrated conversation management features, streamlining engagement across platforms.

HootSuite stands out as a widely used social media management solution for growing businesses seeking to monitor conversations. Additionally, specialized tools like Grytics can enhance Facebook group management, offering a targeted approach to channel oversight.

Step 5: Measure, analyze, optimize

Reflecting on the objectives established in the initial phase, it is now opportune to evaluate the alignment of your current community management strategy with these goals. Focus on pertinent metrics for the set goals within the designated timeframe. For instance, if the aim was to enhance brand awareness, analyze metrics such as website traffic, growth in social media followers, and increased engagement metrics like likes, comments, and mentions across diverse social media channels.

If objectives have been accomplished, well done! For those that remain unmet, extract insights from data to steer you in the right direction and adjust your strategy accordingly. Repeat this process diligently until you have honed your approach.

Step 6: Employing a community manager

A community manager is tasked with implementing your community management strategy and serving as the intermediary between your business and its audience. Their duties involve moderating groups, offering assistance and interaction, and generating content to cultivate a community spirit among members.

Though managing the community independently is feasible, employing a dedicated individual becomes imperative as your business expands and demands increased focus. A community manager guarantees uniformity and rapport with your audience.

Community management best practices

Managing a community takes work, but following these best practices can help you build a strong, engaged audience:

Establish clear community guidelines and rules to ensure members understand what’s expected of them. Create a document outlining how people should behave and make it a requirement for new members to read upon joining.
Include a brief explanation of your brand in the bio of all your online profiles, and link back to your site to make it easy for people to learn more.
Keep your brand’s voice consistent across channels, but adapt your conversation style based on the platform. Don’t be afraid to show some personality, including humor, when appropriate.
Encourage happy customers to share pictures of your product and use a branded hashtag to increase user-generated content.
Proactively engage with your community, not just reactively. Create social media posts that encourage comments, such as contests, challenges, or questions, to increase engagement.

Engaged community supporting a robust business foundation

Every thriving company implements a community management strategy. As your business expands, the significance and relevance of this strategy only increase. Establishing a strong rapport with your community fosters a dedicated following — individuals who genuinely appreciate and trust your brand, ready to champion it. This rapport, in return, enhances your capacity to disseminate information and sustain perpetual growth.

In this sense, community management serves as essential support for a robust business foundation. It is not solely about maintaining customer satisfaction but also about building a loyal and engaged audience that can help propel your brand forward. By implementing the best practices mentioned above, you can cultivate a thriving community that supports your business goals.

Community management FAQ

What is community management, and what are some examples?

Community management involves the strategic development of a dedicated and active audience around a brand’s offerings online. A notable instance is Craftic, a private community providing tutorials, online classes, and exclusive content solely within the group.

What is the role of community management?

The function of community management is to nurture and uphold a brand’s audience, encompassing both digital and physical realms. This includes interacting with community members through diverse platforms like social media, Slack, Discord, and face-to-face gatherings, aiming to forge significant bonds and cultivate enduring connections.

What is included in community management?

Maintaining an authentic and consistent brand image
Creating brand ambassadors
Taking and applying feedback from members
Setting community guidelines and policies
Building brand loyalty

Examples of Community Management Tools

Community management is an ever-evolving field that requires mastering tools to efficiently manage communities with ease. Here are some tools that will help community managers stay updated and successfully engage their members:

Sprout Social: A comprehensive social media management tool that helps community managers monitor their brand’s social presence, schedule posts, and analyze performance.
Discourse: An open-source discussion platform that enables seamless communication between community members, offering features such as polls and private messaging.
Hootsuite: A social media management tool that allows scheduling posts across multiple platforms, monitoring brand mentions, and generating reports.
Slack: A popular team collaboration tool that offers channels for group discussions, direct messaging, file sharing, and app integrations.
Google Analytics: A web analytics service that provides in-depth insights into website traffic, user behavior, and demographics, helping community managers understand their audience better.
Asana: A project management tool that enables teams to collaborate on projects, assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress.