A day in a life of a community manager

Posted on September 6, 2011 by ElliotOwl

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?

Prominence of social networking in Australia

Posted on October 9, 2010 by ElliotOwl

A recent 2010 Nielsen study Social Networks/Blogs Now Account for One in Every Four and a Half Minutes Online found that globally, we spend about 110 billion minutes on social networks and blogs, which accounts for one in every four and a half minutes spent online. The average amount of time spent on these sites has gone up from about three and a half hours, to about six hours per month in 2010 (at the time the study was conducted in April 2010).

Another study Australia Getting More Social Online as Facebook Leads and Twitter Grows tells us:

“Nearly four in five (78%) of Australia’s nine million social media users sent or shared a photo in the past year and nearly three quarters (74%) sent or shared a link. The biggest increases in social media usage were reading and posting on Twitter, reading wikis and engaging with brands and organizations via social media.”

It is interesting to note that about two in every five Australians online is actively interacting with companies and brands via various social networks, telling us that Australians are becoming more receptive to social media marketing efforts. Almost nine in ten Australians online look to their peers for feedback and recommendations; engaging in a conversation with and/or about the company or brand.

In the same report, it is also stated that about 43% of Australians online own a smartphone. Mobile social networking has also become drastically popular in the last year with major telcos like Optus and Three offering unlimited Facebook and Twitter access. The top four social networks visited via smartphones are Facebook (92%), YouTube (18%), Twitter (18%) and MySpace (9%).

Web of the future

Posted on June 11, 2010 by ElliotOwl

Cade Metz’s article gives us a very comprehensive idea of the Web experience of the future, and the various directions that the Web and new media in general can (and probably will) be moving into. From the “sharing and collaborating” nature of Web 2.0, future Web promises a more immersive experience, where the web does the work for us and the online space is redefined. I would pause at this point and remind myself that Web 2.0 is still developing and evolving as we speak, but that doesn’t mean that future Web hasn’t begun to rear it’s mysterious head. Metaphorically speaking, Web 2.0 is like the hip young yuppie who is trendy and stylish and goes out every weekend to socialise and party (these two may or may not be mutually exclusive). Future Web is like the three-year-old prodigal son who can already play the piano, guitar and drums and makes little colour-coordinated Lego cities complete with an extensive theme park (underwater roller coasters included) and an impressive physical infrastructure to withstand Haitian-sized earthquakes.

Metz talks about the different areas that the Web is developing. There is the Semantic Web, where machines are taught and programmed to think multi-directionally, much like human thought. Essentially, it will produce search results that are most relevant to us (weighing results against our personal preferences, calendars, buying habits etc.). Then there is the proposed 3D Web that allows us to physically be immersed in a virtual world, much like Second Life. The Media-Centric Web proposes to let us search for media with media, rather than keywords. The Pervasive Web is a full integration of the Web and real-life. An example given was how your windows at home could be programmed to respond to weather changes, opening and closing as directed by the Web.

All these Web systems encourage us to think about different modes of using the Web, and of inputting data that can in turn be translated to fit into these new systems. How quickly can this catch on? More importantly, what does this tell us about the state of social media marketing? I think it is safe to say that we can expect the Web experience to be much more personal and intimate, and I should expect that it would come to a point where a brand can literally talk directly to their consumers, as one would with a best gal pal. These new Web systems are already under development and there’s no telling what new technology we are going to be privy to next month, next week, or even tomorrow. New media marketers must therefore allow themselves to imagine the impossible and think laterally. Understand that information is no longer being consumed in a linear top-down fashion, but instead, is a fluid, organic system of give-and-take between media consumers and producers.

The Real World: virtual communities vs real communities

Posted on June 7, 2010 by ElliotOwl

Here’s a project I’ve been working on in recent months:

The Real World is an exploratory documentary project about the validity of virtual communities as “real communities”. This project focuses on flash-mob communities in Melbourne, Australia that are based online. It features two communities that have been very active in recent years planning and executing annual activities that are attended by hundreds, sometimes even thousands of participants.

While these communities are based online (in both cases, on Facebook), they have also managed to project physical presence in real life. The question is: does this make them a “real community” in the traditional sense?

Zombie Shuffle

The Melbourne Zombie Shuffle is an annual organised event that sees hundreds and thousands of the undead shuffling/crawling/lurching through Melbourne city streets. What began as a (relatively) small gathering of zombies in 2006, has exploded into an unstoppable force in recent years. 2010 brought about highest number of zombie participants, with a reported 4,000 – 6,000 zombies wreaking havoc throughout the city. The community exists on Facebook and all interaction leading up to each event, as well as photo and video dissemination occurs almost exclusively online. See: Melbourne Zombie Shuffle 2010

Pillow Fight

The Melbourne Pillow Fight is an extension of the annual International Pillow Fight Day, held in cities around the world like New York City, Toronto, Barcelona, Seoul, Paris and of course, Melbourne. 2010 marked the third anniversary of Melbourne Pillow Fight and saw about 400 deadly serious pillow fighters participating, fully armed with their feather pillows and flannel . This community also exists online and all communication is made via Facebook and word-of-mouth. See: Melbourne Pillow Fight 2010

Find out more on The Real World.