The Relevance of Community Management

Effective social media community management is just as important as producing good content. The history of social media has repeatedly shown that you ignore your community at your peril, and this is especially relevant for companies launching an ICO or STO.

Ideally, people become united under a common banner and feel embraced in a community that shares their ideals. However, if you fail to engage your community, this idealism can quickly shift to frustration. With this in mind, let’s go through the key aspects of community management.

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Know Your Community

‍First of all, you need to analyse who your community is. Most members are likely to be either customers, fans, interested observers or competitors. Interested observers are people who follow you because they’re interested in the field, but have not necessarily used your product/service before and probably reached your page because of the hashtags you use. Competitors, on the other hand, monitor your page to try to stay ahead of you in the market.

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Complaints

‍There are numerous reasons to engage in community management, which will touch on different areas of your business. By listening to your community and fielding complaints, you can learn about how your product is perceived and gain a deeper insight into user experience. Furthermore, by welcoming constructive criticism, you can adapt to market expectations quicker.

Show human empathy by genuinely apologizing and using your first name, so that the complainant knows that a real person is handling their case. If necessary, arrange a call or move the discussion to a private chat, so that you can deal with the case personally and prevent further public damage to your brand’s reputation.

Ultimately, the customer is king, so by responding well to feedback you can show your community that you care about them and thereby increase your credibility. This leads to a happy, vibrant and discursive community, which is likely to produce loyal fans.

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Influencers

‍This brings us to influencers: the powerful social media army that can make or break a new product. Loyal customers with large social media followings can dramatically amplify your organic social reach. In fact, a mere mention or review of your product/service can boost brand awareness, increase sales, and boost your social channels with new followers.

The web is full of influencers of every kind, so make sure to put your brand in safe hands. There are specialized talent management agencies that can help you ensure that your brand is associated with quality content.

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Brand Collaboration

‍By paying attention to your community, you can identify brands that may wish to collaborate with you. This can help to expand your professional network and expose your brand to complementary markets. Think of the alliance between GoPro and Redbull, for example. They both benefit from it by reaching out to a new, but demographically similar target audience of adventurous, energetic, tech-savvy young people.

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Monitor Performance

‍The final reason to engage with your community is to monitor your performance. While this may sound self-evident, keeping track of everything can be a challenge. For this purpose, there are numerous apps and programs that can help you to monitor relevant traffic.

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‍Automation Can Backfire

‍Advances in language processing mean that many companies increasingly rely on bots to respond to queries. Although this sounds innovative and useful, it can also backfire. Despite tremendous advancements, bots still tend to lack the subtleties of genuine human interaction. Thus, users may feel that their question or comment is not appreciated enough.

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Tone

‍Another important factor to take into consideration is the tone of your answers, which should be consistent across all channels, while adapting to the norms and constraints of each social platform. For example, Instagram and Twitter call for a more personal approach, whereas LinkedIn requires a more professional tone.

When managing a community, you become the public face of your company. Particularly in the case of an ICO or STO, it is important to recognise that you need people to buy in emotionally as well as financially. At THE RELEVANCE HOUSE we understand the importance of communities and are committed to adopting best practice when managing them to help you to grow your brand. Find out more about us.

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Photo credits:

Photo 1 by Matheus Bertell on Pexels
Photo 2 by George Milton on Pexels