Community Management 101: Summation

The discussion around community management, moderated and facilitated by Meg Canada, covered a range of ways community management benefits an overall marketing strategy. From responding to complaints and giving immediate reassurance to advocating a brand or product, community management is key to new media.

A community manager becomes the human face to an organization, answering questions, making suggestions and generally letting customers/users/anyone know someone’s listening. Specifically, the library immersed itself into social media through Facebook and Myspace, creating applications for catalog search and cultivating relationships online.

An example mentioned came from Sprint. Their Instinct phones were advertised incredibly well, better than expected and phone delivery/activation was delayed for months as Sprint caught up. Many forums and sites were established to vent about frustrations.

Sprint implanted users into these forums. The Sprint representatives tried to clear up interpretations, contradicted false information and reassured those frustrated. Their community managers realized these forums were appearing before the Sprint site and addressed the issues within them.

Community managers monitor, through multiple channels, a brand’s image. They should be professional and approachable. They gather input for products and other forms of consumer research. Their voice should reflect that of the brand because they are advocates for their products or services.

Established advertisement strategies or marketing won’t be replaced by community management but enhanced by it.

Other points or questions posed by Community Management 101:

• What defines a good community? Can the communities themselves take on a life beyond the brand? (Comments on book items within the library’s online catalog becoming a new-age book club)
• When the library needed more images of people reading they used Flickr, Facebook and Twitter to ask for submissions.
• Will a bottom-up, transparent system reduce the shock of scandalous information? Are brands so insulated they don’t have feedback?
• Call-based support services are frustrating. Will an online support system add a level of savvy intrinsic to working from the web? Can the support person do more answering questions online than over the phone?

About the author:  To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box.