Community management
Community management is one of the major roles in advertising agencies, but it is sometimes overlooked in the digital field because other positions could be louder or busier. In this article, we will explore the hidden gems of community management and how you can explore the world of your target audience and walk in their shoes with ease.
Here are the top 4 community management tools we use day in and day out at Remark. Give them a read and find out what you can customise and utilize according to your brand:
1. Give your users the steering wheel
One of the top benefits of good community management is that you can give your consumers the steering wheel and have them create content for your brand. Yes, you read that right, user generated content can be sparked through simple community management tricks; identify what type of content creates the most engagement on your social media, create a campaign that sparks interest and ask your target audience to participate and post about the campaign using your hashtag. The role of community management is key in starting up and maintaining the success of such campaigns through reposting, responding and keeping the engagement going.
User-generated content will help your current consumers remain engaged with the brand, instead of falling into the trap of focusing too much on acquiring new customers and forgetting about those that already exist. Sparking individual interest will also add more value to your brand, which will increase consumer satisfaction, brand loyalty and advocacy.
2. Create your own community
If your brand targets a niche group of consumers, you can always use that to your advantage because creating a community out of your target audience will almost always work in your favor. In addition to empowering your target audience, making them feel heard and prioritized, creating a community will also help humanize your brand.
Humanizing your brand will help you greatly when you need to change negative perceptions, address concerns, or even simply reinforcing your brand personality and tone of voice.
Another major benefit of creating a community of loyal customers is that it allows for creating a personal connection with your brand, helping your target audience link together through you, giving you higher brand resonance.
Creating a community can be achieved through a lot of ways, but our favorite is creating a closed group on social media where they could share stories, interact with and respond to each other and the brand. This creates an immediate sense of belonging and opens a door for your brand to listen in and gather more target audience insights (which is also a key role of community management).
3. Listen, respond and use the right words
This may seem like a common community management role. Which is true, but there are so many tips and tricks you can use to maximize the benefit of what may seem like a simple response.
For example, many brands have addressed legitimate concerns and used them to their advantage; handling customer anger in a way that will reflect positively on the brand.
In addition to addressing concerns, smart brands also take every opportunity they get to toot their own horn and highlight positive feedback and use it to create engagement.
The comments people leave you are essentially what helps you understand how your communication is affecting your target audience, what you need to say and what you need to stop doing. Giving you the greatest tool that brings your brand personality to life.
4. Look out for insights
Listening to your target audience is also very important, you never know when an insight will come to your rescue.
The most successful campaigns are the ones that come from something someone noticed. As a community manager, you need to always keep your eyes opened for the little details that will end up creating remarkably effective campaigns!
In addition to giving you the “wow” factor that creates your campaigns, reporting regularly with results and insights will help you maintain your success or make the necessary adjustments you need to perfect your campaigns (or completely abort missions).
Which is why we believe objectives come from insights. Reporting on-going campaigns will help you greatly when determining what your audience needs to see from you next. When you know what your audience expects, you design messages that are tailored to them, which will get you desired results depending on how good you are at listening to your target audience.
Community management is full of hidden gems that can bring any business closer to its target audience, giving them a sense that they are part of something bigger. We are always looking for ways to understand, relate to, and address our audience in ways that make sense to brands we manage. Never losing sight of our objectives.
