Community management is among the most important tasks for companies that depend on social media to contribute to their sales and marketing cycles. It is commonplace for people to mistake social media marketing for community management, however they are two distinct fields.
We examined the ways you can succeed with your community management strategies and why these methods are vital for customer retention and acquisition.
What is the social management of community in the media?
Community management for social media refers to the process through which your company engages its customers through social media. This is primarily a matter of your social media pages however it could also refer to other profiles you’re following, like influential people or pages related to your industry.
Effective community management usually requires the use of social media marketing tools that let you easily review, organize, and prioritize all communications and the conversations that surround your brand.
The management of communities on social media starts at the beginning of the customer’s journey as soon as the brand and customer relationship is established.
The method of growing and connecting with any audience in owned by the brand’s social network is used to reach out to new customers and generate conversions.
Actively managing your social media community to nurture and grow existing relationships can increase your chances of winning over customers and increasing your business’s return on investment.
Five key factors to develop an effective community management plan
To assist you in establishing the most effective strategy for managing your community It is essential to have a clearly defined objective. We will go over the five main steps of community management on social media and assist you in developing the right strategies for each stage.
Acquisition
Marketers are often not thinking about community management as an element of their acquisition plan and sometimes, the team responsible for community management can be separated from the other aspects of marketing that drive the business model. This shouldn’t be the situation.
Consider your existing customer base as the core of your marketing efforts and most likely to be the first to become converts. The most loyal fans of your community will help increase awareness of your company, as well as earn more media exposure.
From branding awareness and consideration through conversions, marketing professionals should have a plan to make sure that they connect with their communities throughout the buying process. In addition, their community manager must be involved in the acquisition strategy.
Best practices
Here are some steps to boost your efforts to attract customers in your community management plan:
Make sure you have an effective strategy to manage your social media communities when campaigns begin to unfold be sure to label your customers’ inquiries to reflect each funnel step.
Create custom queries and levels of expertise according to the customer journey stage and use feedback from the community on content and campaigns.
When you look at performance metrics, they paint a picture of efficiency it is also possible to prove your marketing’s effectiveness by leveraging the involvement of your community.
Did one aspect of your marketing campaign have the public talking more than other parts? Be sure to take note of what your communities have to have to say.
Social customer service
More than ever before, businesses are realizing the benefits of social media channels to facilitate brand interactions.
Now, we can monitor, listen, and analyze the behavior of our audience as well as gather feedback from customers and enhance existing relationships.
Customers’ expectations have changed as well. The social media community of today is expecting lightning-fast responses. Emplifi research shows that 52% of people anticipate receiving a response to their queries within an hour, while 32% of them expect to receive a response after 30 minutes. But around 20% of people say that they must wait at the very least 24 hours for the response.
Best practices
Here are some tips to increase social customer care initiatives around your community management strategy
To ensure that you won’t be left out of any crucial conversation or mention, keep track of any relevant inquiries mentions, and hashtags, as well as posts from followers and fans on your profiles, and respond promptly. Unanswered questions or complaints could harm the reputation of your company and boost the voice of dissatisfied customers.
Your community includes people who are at various levels of the customer journey. It is therefore important to be aware that social customer service isn’t just for existing customers. The level of customer service you offer today could influence whether a potential buyer will purchase from you in the future.
Record every interaction in the most detail in your customer service database – date, time date social platform, response time, contact with the agent, and the nature of the interaction, etc. So that next time the same person calls your brand, for whatever reason, you’ll be able to go back to the conversation you had previously had and access the entire history instantly.
Incorporate chatbots into your community engagement processes. AI chatbots are increasingly used as consumers turn to social media for fast brand interaction.
This technology will assist overwhelmed customer service teams respond to similar inquiries from the public and boost the speed of response while taking care of conversations all hours of the day that is precisely what customers expect from modern social customer support.
Related: What Is Community Management to Social Media?
Brand new example
Customers today are expecting the whole brand experience to happen in the channels they’re familiar with. The times of switching from one platform to platform to communicate with a specific business are quickly disappearing.
Through Emplifi, the Dine Brands Guest Relations team has been able to cut down their average time of handling social media.
Crisis management
Another aspect that is part of management for communities and requires a strategic plan before time is the management of crises.
If a situation arises that becomes publicized on social networks, it could create massive damage to the reputation of a company when it isn’t dealt with promptly and in a strategic way. The cause of the problem could be anything from promotions in stores to TV campaigns, and unanswered social mentions to delivery problems. Teams should have a strategy and tools that allow them to recognize crises in a hurry and respond immediately.
Best practices
Here are some steps to improve crisis management in the community’s social Management strategy:
Team coordination, product expertise, and leadership are essential. Find out the person your social media team members can connect to should they have questions that are difficult to address.
Be proactive and have a crisis management plan that has clearly defined responsibilities and tasks If an emergency occurs you’re prepared.
The internal team structure for customer service should assist in the process of responding to negative feedback. They must be able also to see the crisis as a promotion opportunity. A lot of negative complaints can be resolved by the brand if they and their social media team are prepared and can act quickly.
In any situation of crisis, it is essential to keep track of brand perception. The aim of the people who are handling the crisis is to ensure that the negative reaction doesn’t get into a tidal wave. The community manager must deal with complaints as swiftly as they can, and the overall mood must be tracked in tandem.
Retention
As social media communities expand as they do, companies are faced with new challenges to create content that will keep their fans active. In addition, there’s a lot of competing for attention in social feeds. an entire community could lose interest and, with time, become disengaged from the content of a brand.
How do you keep them engaged in your brand long after they have purchased?
Best practices
Here are a few steps to boost the retention of the community management strategy you have in place:
Be aware of the topics and themes you’ve explored in the past year to be sure that you’re not wasting time. Make every piece of content that you think your customers will enjoy into a collection of content it will allow you to review the content with your team members as well as coming up with new ideas much simpler.
Another strategy is to focus your community according to where they are on their journey as a customer. Develop targeted campaigns that provide rewards to people you think might be on the verge of disengagement or vice versa. you can focus on those who have been engaged the most recently.
We’ve mentioned it before and it’s important not to consider your loyal supporters when you are creating new marketing campaigns. You can ask them to test the new product before you introduce them to larger audiences or offer them early access or a high-end version of your product.
Give discounts, rewards, or special products to express your gratitude. This is a fantastic opportunity to turn your fans into brand ambassadors! This leads us to the next step.
Advocacy
The final stage of managing the community is to discover and connect with brand supporters. This process validates the work done by the brand from creation to community support.
Social media allows you to discover people who are super fans, potential micro-influencers, or brand ambassadors within your community. This is particularly easy when you’re employing social media analytics tools which can assist you in identifying those who interact with your content most and leave the most positive reviews of your brand.
Best practices
Here are some steps to increase advocacy efforts for your community management strategy
Be aware of every mention and recently utilized hashtag that is associated with your products and brand to create a table view in which everyone on your team can quickly identify the most popular users who create content for your product.
Find out which users are producing amazing content. Then, incorporate UGC (UGC) into your marketing strategy. This way, you will be able to incorporate this real feedback and grow your strategy for content while at the same time.
Engage brand ambassadors in product design, concept, and marketing campaigns. they will be able to contribute to your design process. This will allow you to maintain positive relationships with your supporters and will also earn them exclusive recognition from your company.
The takeaway
In each stage of managing social media communities, it is important to keep an eye on the way your followers react to your efforts, and also learn from mistakes made in the past. A great general best way to manage a community is to have a of the successful things – and what didn’t and can be used as a training tool for the new team members on the social media side.
It should contain the details of interactions with customers on social platforms, including the date, time, platform, the issue that was addressed by the social user who made contact with the issue, and his name and the client and CRM identification code with a hyperlink to their profile. Finally, it should include details of how the issue was solved.
Tag every “ticket” and categorize it as negative, positive, or crisis. Then, if possible, advocate and, if possibly, include the article in which the issue started, whether it’s an advertisement, a link, or a service. Tags will help new team members comprehend what was said in the past, concerning particular issues. Likewise, management will have the ability to be aware of where their problems stem from.
When new social features are made available on every platform Make sure that your company is ready to adopt the new features. Ensure that the features fit into your social strategy and the goals you can achieve by using these features. Engage people from your Social Media team in defining the guidelines to manage the community using every feature. Be prepared to respond to any kind of crisis across all platforms.
Read more: