Social Media Community Management – The Ultimate Guide
On social media platforms, engagement is right there alongside entertainment. Active communities on social media build hype around their brands. They help brands with organic social media amplification for product launches and promotional activities. How do they do that? Via social media community management.
We have created this post as your ultimate guide to managing your community on social media. In this post, we shall talk about the following:
- Community Management on Social Media
- Why Is Community Management on Social Media So Important?
- Best Practices for Managing Your Social Media Community
Community Management on Social Media
Community management on social media refers to the process of engaging target audiences across social media platforms. Its purpose is to increase brand loyalty and grow authentic connections on social media.
Besides social media community management superintends 1-to-1 or 1-to-few interactions that strengthen customer-brand relationships and brand advocacy on social media. Almost every social platform, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and others has features to create and support communities.
However, not all communities on social media platforms are equal. So, brands need to refine their tactics to yield the best results with community management across different social media platforms.
Why Is Community Management on Social Media So Important?
Community management on social media is the job of a social media community manager. On a higher scale, it falls under the responsibility of social media managers. Still, both of the aforementioned managers have to play separate roles. However, the question still stands: Why is community management on social media so important? There are benefits for brands for doing that, which we have briefly summarized below:
❖It strengthens custom-brand relationships.
❖In addition, it helps brands increase their visibility.
❖It promotes brand authenticity.
Best Practices for Managing Your Social Media Community
There are best practices that brands follow to make the most out of social media community management. You can follow them, too, to exploit your community management strategy on social media. We have talked about them for you below:
Stay Prepared to Answer Difficult Questions
Managing a community on social media means you have to engage with all types of audiences. That is to say, you have to manage audiences, ranging from good to bad. Still, it does not mean difficult questions that bad audiences on social media ask are difficult for brands to answer.
You should try to remain responsive on social media to answer difficult questions related to your brand. In fact, your social media community manager should have the resources to answer such questions. Leveraging those resources and answering difficult questions ensures your community remains vibrant & ideally harmonious.
Reward Super Fans
As your community grows on social media over time, you will start noticing some friendly faces. These super fans (people) can become advocates for your brand, provided that you engage with them in the right way. So how should you engage with your super fans to ensure your social media community thrives?
Firstly, identify super fans in your community who drive your community conversations forward via engagement with your content on social media. They may tag themselves first at your location on Instagram and help you with your Instagram community management. Or they may first comment on your posts on your Facebook. You can reward your super fans with stickers, coupons, etc., to eventually build a strong relationship with them.
Prioritize Proactive Marketing
Staying responsive is one of the ways of effectively managing your social media community. Further, remaining proactive is another, which lets you actively connect and communicate with your customers. You should come up with a proactive marketing strategy to leverage your Social Media Marketing efforts.
As an example, you can create social content indirectly promoting your offerings on social media. It will encourage your audience to engage with your brand on social media. So, proactive marketing is one of the social media community engagement strategies that you can use to your advantage.
Establish a Content Creation Feedback Loop
Content creation is not the job of social media community managers. However, both content creators and the social media community closely work together to constantly create content for social media.
As an example, community managers on social media pass on information about content creators to their social team. That is to say, content creators they find as fans of brands. It helps brands kick off relationships with those fans as content creators for brands. Most importantly, it establishes a content creation feedback loop for brands with creators and social media community managers working together.
Establishing a content creation feedback look as mentioned above will help you provide your fans with a consistent brand experience. So, this is another best practice you can follow for social media community management.
Strengthen Your Team with the Right Tools
Social media is constantly expanding with time. For this reason, conversations about your brand or industry can pop up anywhere on social media platforms. In order to keep up with the competition, you will need to provide your team with community management tools. Social listening tools and Social customer service tools, to mention a few. So, you should exploit the aforementioned tools to meet the evolving needs of your social media community management team.
Encourage UGC (User-Generated Content) from Followers
A community management strategy on social media seems incomplete without user-generated content. You should encourage the creation of UGC that followers of your brand create as organic posts on social media. It will help promote the authenticity of your brand with more people talking about it.
In fact, 66% of consumers purchase from a brand when they see others sharing information about it on social media. Based on this fact, you can comprehend what value user-generated content offers that followers create for brands. So, you should exploit such content for community management on social media.
Conclusion
Active communities on social media build hype around their brands on social media platforms. And social media community management benefits brands with improved brand-customer relationships, increased viability, and better brand advocacy. There are practices regarding it that social media community managers follow, and you should too, for your brand. Answering difficult questions, rewarding super fans, prioritizing proactive marketing, and encouraging UGC from followers are crucial in this regard.
