The daily task of maintaining a growing community and finding newcomers to join your following, involves hard work, 24/7 supervising, creativity, and motivation.
These are the responsibilities of the Community Manager, who is in charge of a huge portion of the marketing strategy. With the growing power of social media marketing, it is crucial that every brand, startup, and SMB rise to the task of managing their community.
Are you managing your community? Are you hiring someone for this role? How is their day structured?
Here is a list of 4 tasks that every community manager should be doing daily:
1. Write a blog post
This is an absolute must, and the basis of any content marketing strategy for brands on social media. Your audience expects you to entertain them with your experiences, case studies, and opinions, centering around either your brand and products, or any other interesting topic.
Writing a daily blog post is a great way to give yourself an online identity outside of your brand. I recommend trying to accomplish each of the following once a week.
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Write at least one blog post about your market or niche – Let your audience know that you are familiar with your industry, and position yourself as a tastemaker.
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Write a weekly post about your company – What you’ve been doing lately, new things you’ve learned, new releases of the product etc.
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What inspires you – Write stories about how you got to where you are now and the methods you used in your process.
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Guest post – This is an extremely important part of hustling (which will be discussed in a bit) and reaching out to a new audience. Get your name out there (preferably still within your niche) by writing an interesting story, and offer other bloggers to host you on their blog.
2. Interact with customers
In my opinion, this is the most fun part when managing a community, but it can also be the hardest. Every customer deserves your full attention, at all times.
Make sure to have at least one person ready to answer anything that pops up on your social outlets and email. It’s important to keep in mind that your company might be handling customers all over the world, all in different time zones.
Your customers will appreciate fast and respectful answers, regardless of the nature of their communications.
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BUGS – Bugs are obviously related to software, but every business has its problems. It is crucial that your customers get your full attention when they approach you with a problem they have, even if they’re not paying. Operating a business means that customer care and quality of service must always be a high priority.
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Suggestions – There are so many active users (more than you can imagine) who are interested in the potential services your product can provide, and they will share it with you. Make sure to answer, keep notes, and brainstorm about each of their suggestions.
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Questions & Inquiries – You will inevitably face questions related to the function of your product and its features. The community manager should be a savvy user of the product, and be able to easily field usage questions.
Remember: ANY answer is always better than keeping your customer waiting. Don’t hesitate to answer with “Thanks! We’ll get back to you ASAP” if that’s all you have at the moment. In addition, the community manager should know the core customers, and keep in regular contact with the most loyal.
3. Share interesting content from your realm
Throughout the day, your social pages must stay active, and drive content to your follower’s social feeds. Most industries are saturated with content, and you must keep up. Introducing it to your audience positions you as a thought-leader and a tastemaker. Your audience is thirsty for great content, so try to find the things that will speak to them the most.
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Curate from many sources – Find the best articles, blogs, videos, and more by using a web-based content tool.
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Schedule shares – Post your updates throughout the day, and don’t overwhelm your audience with too many posts at the same time.
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Share interesting or funny photos, alongside questions to engage and connect with you your community.
4. Hustle With bloggers
For a long-standing, healthy base of followers, the community manager (along with the other marketing forces of the team) should engage with relevant people in the industry, such as other
marketers, community managers, and influencers.
These tasks should be done as much as possible:
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Follow and read articles on famous blogs from your industry
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Comment and react on relevant posts
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Share these posts, add your opinion, and mention the author to get their attention and start a conversation.
The more you react to posts from other bloggers in your world, the more you can expose your name and therefore promote yourself and your brand. In addition, you get the opportunity to know important figures in your industry, which can benefit your marketing strategy in the future.
I would love to hear about who is managing your community, and what their daily routine is – comment here or chat with me on Twitter
Image credit: placbo