Category Archives: community

Community Management by Kate Kendall

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I attended a community management workshop by the lovely Kate Kendall last night. I have worked properly in community management the last 2.5 years, and spent the three years before that dipping my toes in the water and experimenting with various projects I was working on, both on and offline. I’ve learnt all that I know while on the job, through self-initiated research and by getting in touch with some very clever people. Last night was a good way for me to get a bit of grounding on the subject, and listen to the difficulties and obstacles that other community managers have come across in their work.

I definitely got a lot out of the session. Kate and some of the other participants brought up some really interesting thoughts and ideas that helped me think about different and more interesting ways to approach some of the projects that I’m working on at the moment.

Some points that I managed to scribble down between frantic coffee guzzling, nodding and mm-hmming:

  • I always find myself going on about this, and I’m glad that Kate brought it up at the start of her presentation. Social is a medium. It facilitates. The reason behind using social as a medium? Building a rich, and organic community.
  • Understand why people should care about your brand in a cluttered market. What is their motivation?
  • Online vs. offline communities. Working with them as separate entities will hinder a smooth and, again, organic communication flow.
  • Is community management a junior role? A lot of fresh graduates are getting into the scene, but does it take more than owning an active Twitter and Facebook account to do the job well? The consensus was yes: one needs to have a solid foundation in marketing communications and branding to be able to execute effectively.
  • We talked a lot about content curation. In an environment where people are craving quality and rich content amidst so much clutter, it is being exceedingly important to be able to weed out the best stuff. The focus is taken away from creating great content, and from trying to outdo each other. Instead, try paying more attention to opinion leaders and existing ideas and then evaluating, analysing and sharing. Kate’s The Fetch is a fantastic example that I highly recommend.
  • How relevant is your 6 month, 12 month, or 5 year plan in today’s climate? Community managers, and everyone working in the tech industry need to be extremely reactive and adaptive to change.
  • The importance of storytelling. Create a story for your brand, stick to it, and let it grow.

It was definitely an interesting workshop that got me thinking about a couple of things. At the moment, I am managing/developing strategy for three communities: in grassroots sport, music and fashion retail. All three are extremely different in terms of content and communication structure. However, the framework is always the same.

I’m always looking to get involved in anything exciting, creative and innovative. If you think we can do something good together, email or @ me. I’ve got some ideas in the pipeline that I’d love to bring to life (thanks Kate, for inspiring me to get off my bum and get things going!), so if you’re a developer/designer looking to partner up with a strategy dude (read: me) to do something fun, also get in touch.

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Bringing email back

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Five years ago:
If you were anything like me, I would have classed any email that had any inkling of commercial content “spam”. I was strict with my spam filters, and rarely signed up to newsletters, preferring to get my news direct from the source website, rather than have it delivered to me. I had hundreds of important emails to go through a day/week/month and really didn’t want to waste time opening emails about special offers that didn’t really apply to me anyway.

Fast forward to 2011:
Email marketing has come full circle. With progressions in technology and basic email management systems, we consume commercial messaging in a whole different way. Now we want immediate news updates, that is personalised based on our specific likes and dislikes. we embrace targeted messaging, and appreciate when organisations make the effort to analyse their audience in order to deliver the right news to the right people.

Now, I actively sign up to email newsletters, and am a little more open to receiving commercial messaging. I’d blame this on two major factors:

An improvement in email management systems
Email as a technology has been improving slowly through the years. I personally use Google Apps Mail for my personal and work email, and Outlook or Mac Mail as a back-up. Today, I am able to set filters on all incoming mail, and put labels on them. My basic labels are “News” (HuffPost, NYT, TechCrunch), “MarComms” (B&T, CampaignBrief, NorthSocial), and “Shopping” (eBay, Etsy, ASOS). These filtered messages are automatically marked as “read” as they come through my inbox, as they are not priority mail. I can easily check these labels for news updates when I get a spare moment. Unlike five years ago, I am able to customise how I manage my inbox, a far cry from having to delete 30/40/50 unwanted emails a day.

Better segmenting and targeting
Email marketing has had an overhaul in the last few years, with marketers finding new and exciting ways to deliver a message to an audience. The “generic” message doesn’t work any more. Not everyone likes the same things, and not everyone wants to read the same news. I am a 24 year old digital strategist, interested about new media, marketing, food, fashion, music and film, and I receive news that a 24 year old digital strategist, interested about new media, marketing, food, fashion, music and film would be interested to read about.

Especially given the rise of group buying and daily offer type websites (Catchoftheday, GroupOn, Spreets), consumers are wanting latest news and offers delivered to them instantaneously, so that they can check them on their smart phones and purchase on the go. Email marketing does exactly this, with these retailers taking care to segment their user databases based on buying trends and preferences, in order to deliver useful and quality content for each individual.

Do you have an email marketing plan you’d like to share?

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A day in a life of a community manager

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At the moment, I manage three online communities for three different brands. My job is to be the bridge between brand and community. I need to understand these communities; understand what that they like/dislike, understand how they like to consume information, and most importantly, understand how I can engage them in an ongoing conversation. Sure, it gets a little messy sometimes, managing three (and I was up to five a month ago), but with a solid work process, one can easily work community management around his or her day without worrying about having to spend 5, 6 or even 12 hours on the computer running searches, tweeting and Facebooking daily.

There are three basic steps in my day that is key to any community manager role: social listening, engagement and scheduling.

Social listening

I spend half-an-hour at the start and end of every working day on social listening. I use tools like Hootsuite and Social Mention to track what people around the world are saying about the brand, as well as look up related news that I can possibly share with the community. I run a search through social networks and blogs and keep an eye on trending news in that specific area. In some cases, I check for any negative feedback a brand may be receiving and action it efficiently.

Engagement

I use Sprout Social and Edgerank Checker to track engagement. These tools give me stats on how well my posts are doing. It tells me whether it’s effective, and gives valuable suggestions on how I can improve, in terms of timing, and content. I spend a fair amount of time going through newsfeeds, and responding to @s, RTs and FFs. The “Human Touch” is key, here.

Scheduling

If you’re reading this blog, you will not be a stranger to the idea of scheduling content. It’s a very basic and effective tool that should be at the fingertips of any community manager. After a few hours of social listening and engagement, I spend the rest of the day creating relevant and quality content for the audience. This all goes into a post-dated scheduling system. Hootsuite works beautifully for me. This way, I don’t need to be sitting at my computer at all hours, posting content. Through Sprout Social, I would have a list of the best times in the day and week that my audience is reading my content (usually at around midday and midweek). This goes right into my schedule. In hours, I would have developed and post-dated content for the entire week.

I’ve found that structuring my working day around these three basic steps has thoroughly improved my time management. I actually have time to have a day job, now! Imagine. What are some of your tricks of the community managing trade?

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What is a social strategy?

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Social is a buzz word that has been tossed around a lot in recent years. Clients are starting to understand that social is something that is worth getting into and investing in. Lines of communication are evolving and social is increasingly proving itself to be an extremely effective method of delivering a message.

So, now everyone wants a social strategy. Fair enough. But do we actually understand what social means?

Social tools

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Tumblr et al. are nothing more than platforms; a medium for the message, a tool that we use to facilitate a flow of communication. These networks modify the way that we deliver a message. From restricting the message to only 140 characters, to offering you the option to customise how you consume information about your friends, family and colleagues.

However, it is easy to forget that these networks are just tools. In no way do or should they define your content, who receives it and how it is received. These social tools are there for you to manipulate to create the best environment through which your message will be delivered.

What is a social strategy?

The manipulation of these social tools is what you would call a social strategy. This involves studying audience behaviour and trends, to completely understand their likes, dislikes, and how they like to receive information. The second step is matching this data with your social tools. Find out the most effective combination. Think big and think broad. Don’t be afraid to colour outside the lines and integrate different tools in order to create a smooth-flowing, cohesive strategy.

Too many businesses are focussing their efforts on the tools and not strategy – creating static accounts and not making the effort to integrate the content. Campaigns like these tend to have very short life spans, with a low brand value in the long term. A carefully and intricately designed social strategy will do quite the opposite, offering long-term brand recognition and the potential to expand from an existing campaign into something bigger and better in the future.

How would you succinctly define a social strategy?

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