Online communities play an important role in boosting brand awareness and helping companies properly leverage their online PR campaigns. Community management provide companies a channel to directly access to their target audience. Communication channels must be open, honest, transparent, engaging and innovative. Community management overlaps with online PR and social media management in several ways, but it is distinct enough that it’s one of the fastest growing jobs in the digital marketing mix.
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PR professionals have a lot on their plate. They have to manage clients’ presence on all manners of media. They have to ensure clients have their best foot forward at all times, or at least that they appear to. And most importantly they have to be prepared for any crisis that may arise.
Social media managers create and monitor clients’ presence on social media platforms; they have to respond to comments and queries, and they have to implement and oversee various strategies, like competitions and events.
Community managers nurture relationships with brand loyalists and try to grow online communities. Their primary task is communication, through which they give brands a human face.
Community managers spend a lot of time looking for ways to grow online communities, this means finding and following relevant people on social media and engaging them in conversation. They also need to find and participate in relevant online forums, discussions and events.
To be effective, community managers must be aware of what people are saying about brands all the time. This means they need to set up various online key term alerts, not only for brand mentions but also for industry relevant mentions. For example, a community manager for an online gadget store will need alerts for terms like “Apple iPhone”, “Seagate hard drive”, “external hard drive”, “wireless mouse”, and “cheap 19 inch monitor.”
The main role of a community managers surrounds the growth of a brand. This means that they have to share interesting (relevant) articles and images. People like memes, so community managers need to tweak viral phenomena to suit their brand’s persona. They ensure that all content that goes out to the public has some value; it should add something to people’s day, whether it’s a smile, a knowing nod or a gee-whiz, I didn’t know that.
Given the overlap between PR and community management, many PR agencies are expanding their services by hiring specialist community managers.
The position might not have been a common job five years ago, but these days many companies (especially the larger kind) find that a community manager’s skills are indispensable.
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The Rise Of Community Managers
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on
I’m a member of an online community that is from a virtual world, and the community managers that have overseen the forum, blogs, and feeds there are wholly inept. I suspect it’s because the actual work is outsourced to people who aren’t members of the virtual world, and don’t really understand the issues. So, there’s a constant state of ill will, being generated by the moderators, and then the management team has to spend time running interference to smooth things over.
But, if there was proper training being done by the community mangers for moderators and staff, and if they actually knew what their product was, it would be vastly improved.
on
These tips are great! I wish I had this article months ago to show my friend’s game dev team… they didn’t have a community manager or anyone doing half of the stuff you’ve suggested. And then they wondered why they weren’t garnering any interest. I definitely put a lot of work into managing my community but it’s totally worth it when the fans bond with you and love your product and persona!
on
Communication and interaction between the company and its clients/customers can server as a factor that could make or break your company. Even if you’re an advocate of communication, you should still be careful with your words. Hire an unprofessional community manager, and get ready to see your business in shambles due to negative publicity. Community managers are important but it’s very hard to find a competent and polite one.
on
This makes so much sense it got me really interested in community managers
on
I agree, there will be a rise of Community Managers. For any organization or firm, the quickest way to reach the target audience is through social networking sites. By simply making the most appropriate statement about their brand over these social networking sites,they can easily attract potential clients, as well as ensuring their current customers are satisfied. Hence, there will be an impending need for Community Managers!
on
Community managers are very important in today’s online atmosphere!