Simple Steps to Great Community Management

Many social media pros believe that having lots of followers is key. Most of the metrics they use to measure success directly link back to the size of their following, but size is not everything. Having a smaller but engaged community can actually prove more valuable.

Monitor Communities

Measurement is essential to any community management plan. Track which tactics work best, then pour more energy into them. Without monitoring analytics and social mentions, optimization is guesswork at most.

Listen to conversations around your brand and uncover the themes your audience talks about, where in the world your community is located, what social networks they prefer to use, who the most engaged members are and more. You should also be doing the same for your competitors as well as tracking wider industry keywords. By being aware of competitive and industry insights, you can ensure your community management strategy isn’t created in a bubble.

I’d recommend creating a document or mind map that includes:

• The most common hashtags in your industry
• Industry themes and trends you’d want to track
• Influencers in your industry
• Content from you and your competitors that has earned notable engagement
• Any topics that have created a highly negative or positive reaction

Join the Conversation
Having a social community is more than just pushing out your own content, no matter how engaging you think it might be. Community management is all about joining conversations. That doesn’t mean only replying to people talking to you. I’m talking about joining conversations about your brand, general industry chatter and introducing community members to each other to spark further discussions.

Optimize content for sharing
Part of a community manager’s job should be to ensure that content is optimized for social media. Consider these questions:

• Are sharing buttons placed on every post or article?
• Are tweets short enough that followers can retweet them with your name?
• Do pages include strong calls to action for sharing content?
• Are headlines powerful and shareable on their own?
  Is content interesting enough to share? 

Many of these initiatives fall upon other departments — developer and writers, for example — to execute. But the community manager should audit and oversee the process.

Reply to Your @ Mentions

This is really important. Whether someone’s complaining, asking a question, or complimenting your content, replying to inbound messages makes your audience feel valued. If possible, aim to respond to complaints and queries within the hour.

Remember: you don’t always have to push your content! If you offer useful advice to someone and link them to third-party content, they may be more receptive to your brand at a later date since you’ve built trust.

Promoting your community’s content is another great way to gain brownie points and overcome the issue of not being able to turn out content as fast as social media fans expect.

So …

Start with your overall objectives, create content for your audience and listen as your community grows. How have you increased community engagement with your brand? Do your tips align with mine? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments