Are you one of those people who think that anyone with a smart phone could do it? Or do you find them overrated?
Community managers may seem like a market failure at times, mainly because their functions are usually misunderstood and poorly assessed or implemented.
Let’s understand how they appeared in the picture and why they have become essential or useless, depending on your experience and perspective.
When businesses started to go “social”, they assigned people who could tend to their communities; but also content and strategy.With lack of a better name, they became community managers. Social media was so unknown that those in charge of this process hired people that they assumed would know how they worked (young people). So they basically became translators of whatever the Marketing Department decided had to be done. However, most of the time, they couldn’t be properly assessed, guided or supervised. There was a huge gap between: young community managers with no knowledge of the real needs of brands; and companies, who couldn’t understand the language and trends in social media.
Luckily, trends evolved, and companies understood the true importance of this work, and some developed Digital Marketing Departments or areas; which included the newly developed titles of content manager, social media manager, and content producer, to go along with community managers. Some of these operating completely aside from the Marketing Department; responding to the needs of digital media and communities alone.
This was yet another big win and mistake in the process of introducing businesses into digital platforms and social media.
It was a win to acknowledge that social media did follow traditional business practices. Mistake, because it still shows an underestimation of the true reach and power of digital communities and media. As many professionals have understood, it became so senseless to talk about Digital Marketing, as it would be to create a new area in the company every time technology developed a new system or gadget.
Social media is much more than just a sales channel. Users don’t always use them to buy products of find about promotions; they use them to interact with the brand in many different ways. Thus, community managers, under the original expectations of his or her role, would only have to guarantee that the community would remain engaged and captive to the brand’s message. However, users also do other things on social media, they complain, share their habits, user experience, preferences, etc.
From this, evolved companies understood that they could get data and trends; becoming less worried about their “rating” (likes, trending topics, engagement), and more focused on metrics that gave them user profiles, habits, trends, tendencies, and figures that they could use to target their customers and improve their presence (social listening).
So now who could perform this functions? A community manager? The young kid who spends all day on the phone? Interns? Someone who knows little about the company and may not have true interest in its growth and image?
That makes it complex. It is as bad as giving your marketing secrets, PR campaign, and power to someone who’s fresh out of college, and newly entered your company. Would you?
And yet, social listening can be done by software or by these newly graduated professionals; but would you give them the responsibility of becoming your voice. Or would you just have the Marketing department handle issues regarding Customer Service, Sales, Tech Support, and PR? That’s why social media in business is evolving into a multi-area and multi-disciplinary scheme. One in which all areas have a role, and where everyone should be involved in educating, supervising, assessing, and informing the community managers and their functions.
Same rules apply to content generation. The company must ensure that social media contents match conventional campaigns, products, and services offered by the company, as well as their values and identity. And finally, understanding that the success or failure of a digital campaign or account, falls not only in the hands of the Digital Marketing area, but the company as a whole.
So… what happens with small business where you can’t have such labor specificity? That’s where we find the All-Inclusive Social Media Manager.
An All-Inclusive Social Media Manager is one who has to produce contents, edit, create strategies, and manage communities providing social listening and insights so that the company can have some decent and constant feedback to make the most out of social media. Many times, these stars come from agencies or they are just the owner or manager of the company. Who could be better at being the voice of the company? Right?
If you are a community manager (or you just perform those duties) you need to know or learn the following:
(If your boss doesn’t know this, do share this article with him or her so they can better appreciate what you’re bringing to their business)
- Company’s identity, values, products, services, internal organization, including communication rules or guidelines and other internal organization standards.
- Client’s profile, marketing strategies, and sales goals or strategies.
- Monitor changes in structure, systems and trends in social media and apps.
- Technical requirements to use digital devices ( tablets, phones, cameras, computers, and other gadgets) as well as basic programming, for apps, software, and social media accounts. With some knowledge of media editing.
- Emotional Intelligence. High knowledge and skills to manage their own emotions, as well as those generated within digital communities. Everything in social media becomes bigger, faster, and much closer and it is always in the hands of people.
- Excelent communication skills (grammar, spelling, written, and verbal communications) all of this with the ability to use different language styles. Your own voice is lost, you are now the voice of the brand. You talk, think, and react on behalf of the brand, and in the terms you need to do so to connect to your community.
If any of these points is missing or weak, all work is pointless, it could actually do more harm than good to your business.
So whoever your “social media person” is, their work is titanic. Give it value, pay attention to it, not just in terms of how much you’re paying them, but in the relevance of their work. Don’t put all that weight in the hands (literally) of just one person. Engage, communicate, supervise, and add value to their work.
Make a community manager smile, and share this article to let them know now you understand what they do all day long in a computer (or their phones).
