SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

What is a Social Community?

When it comes to defining the business function of a social community and why it’s essential for today’s brands, the essence exists in customer relations management. Building a social community requires engaging with fans throughout the consumer lifecycle, from the initial brand awareness phase through the final purchase and beyond. Think of social communities as support mechanisms for improving a brand’s communications efforts.

The idea behind building a social community is to create value for anyone who interacts with a brand’s social media channels, driving purchase behavior, consumer loyalty and retention. This can be achieved by focusing on six core areas:

• Relationships — At the heart of any thriving social community is a robust and varied assortment of different types of relationships. Whether between brand to consumer, consumer to consumer or even business to business, relationships are the fuel that keeps social communities active and growing. Relationship-building is a long-term investment and is never truly complete no matter how much effort and strategy goes into it.

• Conversation — For many consumers, engaging in meaningful conversation is central to visiting a brand’s social page in the first place. Conversation can arise organically as a result of consumer participation, but social media management can go a long way in terms of producing a conversation that is engaging, memorable and worth seeking out.

• Discussion — Though broadly similar to conversation, discussion serves a unique role in the socialsphere. It can be used to glean insights on how consumers feel about a brand’s image/values, as well as its product offerings. Developing targeted discussion topics and implementing these strategies into a social media management process can significantly help boost brand perception and sentiment.

• Information — While many people are active on social media because they enjoy interacting with their friends and family, others visit for information about products or services they’re interested in purchasing. Supporting these audiences is essential, which is why social media management services should encompass a strategy for providing valuable information to consumers about new product offerings and corporate communications. For many brands, their social media program can be an extremely useful customer support channel.

• Reputation — Social media is one of the best platforms for assisting in shifting consumer opinions. Whether it be a need for crisis management, or daily efforts towards building positive brand connotations across a variety of channels, social media can be an excellent tool for enhancing a brand’s online reputation.

• Connections — Connections are the lifeblood of any community and must be focused on in order to build authentic relationships with a brand’s target audience. A combination of organic and paid connection building tactics should be leveraged to maximize fan growth and reach.

Increasing engagement across a brand's social media channels is one of the fundamental elements of implementing successful social media management services. Focusing on positive and personalized communication will develop a community of active participants vs. passive viewers. Brands who provide a real-time response to their social media fans are more likely to breed advocacy, and community managers are the ones responsible for steering conversations in the right direction. As one might expect, there are best practices that can be followed to ensure that discussions occurring on social are to the maximum benefit of the brand.

Here are some examples of the types of personalized social communications we employ, all of which can work together to increase engagement and brand loyalty:

• Thoughtful Questions — The most effective way to get the conversation moving on any social platform is to ask thoughtful questions of your audience. Questions should be relevant to the brand but don’t necessarily need to focus on products or services, and they should always be written in a way that welcomes opinions from two contrasting viewpoints. This way, you can prompt a debate without influencing the conversation yourself— an instrumental technique that can repeatedly be used to engage social fans in different capacities.

• Appreciation Statements — Making a point to show appreciation to social media fans for their valuable time and feedback should not be overlooked. Whether it be product giveaways, direct correspondence with advocates, or unique content that showcases a brand’s appreciation for its fans, these types of activities serve to develop strong relationships with consumers.

• Conversation Starters — While asking blanket questions can be a great way to get the conversation going, there are other “starters” to consider, too. Take the “fill in the blank” approach, for example, where gaps in posts such as “Today is a great day to ______” allow fans to inject their own personality into the brand and have a little bit of fun with it.

• Connection to Helpful Resources — For audience members who are directly looking for specific tidbits of information from a social channel, there’s no better way to assert your brand’s customer support abilities than to connect them to helpful resources that can assist in answering their queries.