A Community Manager’s Guide To Success
Social Media Community Managers play an integral role in the success of a brand’s digital presence and facilitation of an online community base. They develop a community by participating in discussions, finding new customers, and listening to the current ones. CM’s are responsible for enhancing brands engagement while also providing support solutions. Additionally, they continuously strategize to find new ways to engage brands online and are often perceived as brand advocates. Overall, community managers make a brand seem more approachable and less salesy.
As the social media landscape transcends, the awareness and demand for community managers’ has begun to rise. As a result, more brands with an online presence are aware of the importance of community managers and their success in establishing a following base. If brands seemingly become more relatable, viewers have more reason and desire to follow them, generating leads, sales, loyal customers, and even additional brand advocates. So what exactly are the best practices to being a well-rounded and successful community manager? Below, you will find a list of the essential best practices and qualities that community managers should embody to promote a brand’s online presence.
1. Quality Writing
This is a no-brainer. Community Managers spend 99% of their work writing to customers. They answer comments and DM’s, partake in conversations, and create postings. Having an ability to write effectively and CREATIVELY in a way that reflects a brand’s voice and essence is key to successfully being a community manager. Additionally, community managers who play the role of a moderator must know how to communicate to audience members to stay on topic, deescalate a situation, and boost engagement. Having good copywriting skills that holds a solid call to action or sparks conversation is one of the best qualities to have as a community manager, being the reason why I made it #1 on the list.
2. Care For Customers
As a community manager, you will face many instances of answering disgruntled customer comments and DM’s. Having a passion for helping people online and deescalating a situation while also keeping the brand in a good light is a skill many community managers need. Other viewers can see these comments and develop their brand perception based on different customer interactions and experiences. Therefore, the community manager must promptly reply to customer questions and concerns while also moving it to a more private means of communication.
3. Social Listening
Caring for customers means you are partaking in social listening. As a community manager, you have to have an excellent ability to read the room…. or the online space, that is. According to HubSpot, “Social listening is the process of monitoring your social media accounts to look for and keep track of all mentions, customer feedback, keywords, and discussions related to your brand, products, services, and customers (even your competitors, too).”
Paying attention to what members are engaging with, their concerns, or what conversations are taking place is key to understanding how you should react to generate additional engagement. If you make posts or comments that have nothing to do with what members are talking about, your post will fall on deaf ears. Instead, dive deep into the brand’s community, ask questions, get a feel for the audience’s demographics from the way they speak.
Example: As a community manager, you use trending Gen-Z terminology with an audience of maybe 40–60 years old. The audience is left confused and feels they cant relate to the brand. Or, a customer voices a concern, but you create posts that make it seem like the brand doesn’t care or ignore the customer’s questions. It is critical to examine and research your audience to make sure you make targeted moves.
4. Ability to Strategize
As a community manager, it’s essential to constantly strategize a brand’s voice and presence online. Social listening is a big part of this, but staying up to date with the trends, social media features, and industry news is the best way to keep the brand refreshed online. Additionally, it’s important to strategize with your specific audience to see what’s working and not. For example, maybe people are enjoying a particular type of discussion or are starting to talk about something that’s trending.
Conducting social listening while adapting the page’s focus and topics shared is the best way to leverage the platform, reach the right audiences, and build better online relationships between the brand and consumer. Try to test out new ways of generating engagment and keep what is successful with your group. Being a community manager is an ongoing learning process.
5. Creativity
My favorite tip is to be creative as a community manager! This is what makes the brand unique and approachable on social media. Taking part in fun conversations and having clever and fun replies will always attract audiences! It’s a form of entertainment for viewers to garner additional interest, exposure, and engagement. Make your CTA’s fun engaging, and ask creative questions. This will get audiences to comment below and talk with the brand. Utilize social media features such as polls or voting to get viewers to participate with the brand’s presence.
When you’re clever or relatable in your posts, you are not only humanizing the brand but creating an opportunity for audiences to relate and share that content. Some of the best creative brand conversations are found on Twitter and the TikTok comment section. Catching trends and leveraging discussions to highlight a brand’s initiative is a fun and strategic way of gaining viewers’ attention. This will earn the brand respect that turns a viewer into a follower and lead.
Overall, community managers have become widely demanded and appreciated for their work in social media marketing. It takes a unique individual to manage online communities and platforms to get viewers to fall in love with a brand. Have you ever wondered why so many people love following accounts like Delta Airlines or Duolingo? It’s because of the community managers who make brands like this desirable to listen to and follow.
