I suppose that if you are reading this, it is very likely that you have heard the term community manager before .
Perhaps you have ever wondered, should I hire a Community Manager for my business? What would it bring me? How to choose the most suitable social media manager ? I imagine that you have also heard of Internet remarketing ads , on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google Plus …
For this reason, today I want to talk about why you should hire a community manager for your company or personal project ; It is not essential, far from it, but when you see everything it could do for you, you will change your mind.
What is a community manager?
The million dollar question.
You probably have a vague idea that it is someone who is dedicated to posting on Facebook and Twitter on behalf of a company. Not entirely true, because the other 98% of your tasks are missing.
Do I need to hire a Community Manager or a Social Media Manager?
The difference is mainly based on one aspect:
The Social Media Managers are more oriented to the strategic part , to the more macro part of planning and control of the social presence of a company.
Community Managers are more focused on the operational part . Let’s say that the Community Managers are the hands that implement the Social Network strategy defined by the Social Media Managers.
As you can see, the figure of the Community Manager is closely related to that of the Social Media Manager, being immediately below it. In large companies, both roles are usually defined and separated. In small and medium-sized companies, usually the Social Media Manager himself becomes a Community Manager.
In any case, in a large or small company, for practical purposes, the community is the one that manages the image of the company with the public . It is the one that moderates its tone, the one that expresses itself through it, the one that gives it a voice and the one that gives users an opinion about it.
Therefore, today you have to be very careful when hiring one.
Can you imagine the damage that hiring a non-professional Community could do? To a person who thought that he only had to update the only social network used by the company…
Disaster!
You would leave money and you would not be getting anything of benefit, without counting the possible blunders and sometimes catastrophes to which you would be exposing yourself. We are going to see the tasks of a community manager in more depth, and you will see the importance of hiring one and what you should look for when hiring one.
Functions of a community manager
The tasks that a good community manager must carry out are related to the company in its entirety, that is, he must be a person who knows the company, its philosophy, work method, products and services that it performs because if not, It will be impossible for you to transmit it on Social Networks.
The functions of the Community Manager are several:
1.- Manage the image of the Company on a social level
That there are more and more social networks is not a secret, and that small mistakes can go viral and dust the image of a brand, either.
A community is directly responsible for the content generated by a company in the online community and manages the brand’s reputation and customer comments on the network.
What if a customer writes on the Facebook wall complaining that their pasta dish was not al dente? Well, the professional community, displaying all its art and know-how, answers and leaves the image of the company intact while leaving the “uncomfortable moment”.
What if there is a “Troll” trying to make a fool of the company? Well, the community takes the chestnuts out of the fire by turning the situation around and, in addition, taking advantage of it to do branding. Respond to comments, give likes, create contests, tweet… It will be the image and voice of your company on the network. As it is.
2.- Manage the company blog
I could include this section in the previous one, but I have decided to separate it because it has a bit of a crumb. A blog is a very powerful tool in a company that wants to have an online presence. The quality of its content will dictate the amount and type of audience it will have.
Factors such as publication frequency, novelty, originality and usefulness for the reader will be the ones that end up generating more or less traffic , without forgetting, of course, the SEO positioning of the articles . Curling the loop, I would be an SEO Community Manager 😉
Well, selecting the content to publish, scheduling the dates, moving it through social networks and trying to generate interest and interaction with those who read it are intrinsic tasks of any self-respecting community.
3.- Grow the brand image
The best way to do branding is with social networks. Know you for what you do or say. The community manager is the main person in charge of making the online community of a company happy and, with it, gradually increasing its size . If there are more users who follow it, there will be more chances that they will become a conversion at a given moment , the ultimate goal of any business.
4.- Analysis of actions: monitoring
Stealing the quote from web positioning, if you don’t monitor everything you do, it won’t have done you any good .
How much interaction have I generated with this piece of post that I have written? Has any blog visitor entered the web ? Have any targets been converted ?
Defining these objectives is not the task of the community manager, but of the Social Media Manager. But to see if they are fulfilled or not and try to make it so, it is the task of the Community.
The community will be responsible for generating periodic reports to its superior, the Social Media .
It will transform the numbers and actions into a visual product that is clear and definitive. Once it has it, it will be passed on to the superior, who will decide if the line followed is being successful or if, on the contrary, the ideal would be to change course. And if you decide to change, there is the community: to be your enforcement arm .
What qualities should a community manager have?
When hiring a community manager you should make sure that they meet the following premises:
1.- Empathetic :
Knowing how to put yourself in the place of others is essential to maintain an intact reputation on the Internet. If you are able to empathize and try to understand the incomprehensible, it will be much – very much – easier for you to deal with any incident and reach the user, regardless of the channel .
2.- Observer:
I could also tell you the term curious . No one is born knowing.
The online world stopped being a novelty many years ago, so it is full of gurus from all fields from whom you can learn a lot .
As there is no official Community Manager qualification yet, these are only as good as the depth of your experience, as long as it is combined with a keen eye and some technical knowledge. The community has to be fixed well. See what is done wrong, what is not, what content is a success, what a failure, what provokes criticism, what the competition does, how it generates interactions… Arrive, see and win.
Sometimes it will be a fundamental part when considering Growth Hacking strategies
3.- With a great capacity for reaction:
Do not panic! If it spreads, the community is worthless.
Keep in mind that something will always, always, always, always happen to put your reputation on the line. Either the competition that is looking to tickle you, or someone’s mistake, or a job that the client doesn’t like very much…
And if it turns out that this client gives him to complain, catastrophe!
Unless you have hired a community manager with the ability to get out of trouble in a short time , with style and a lot of art. Silence when the alarm has gone off is a terrible symptom; Just as good is the fact of reacting well when you are put to the test. A good community never sinks.
4.- With a lot of patience:
Imagine that you hire an impatient community manager, who interacts more than necessary with users and the image of the company begins to lose seriousness. Or that you want to solve a problem quickly and badly.
Here, as in life, you have to think twice about things before saying them . It is very possible that the message reaches thousands of users, and if it contains errors –whether they are semantic or of reason for being-, good bye.
A professional community manager meditates once, twice and as many times as any message is needed before making it public in the community. Patience is a virtue that many communities that call themselves professionals lack.
5.- Organized:
If you only have the idea of having sporadic appearances on Facebook, then this quality would not be essential.
But… What if you want to generate visibility? What if you want your community to grow? What if for this you need to move content of all kinds at all hours? Your own, from others that you consider useful…
If you hire a community manager, he will use tools together with his organizational skills to have the content shared by the company in its online community perfectly programmed .
When do I post this? At eleven in the morning or at six in the evening? Can I publish two things in a short time? What am I posting tomorrow? These things have to be planned in advance, and knowing how to do it and carry it out is the task of the community manager.
6.-Professional:
It will seem that it was not necessary to say it, but believe me that it is not like that. There are communities that take user interactions personally, whether positive or negative. When they are positive, he thinks that the users agree with him, and when they are negative, that they are taking it out on himself. Wrong! Typical community mistake.
The community are the company . They are hers, hers, her executing arm: they speak for her, they come for her, they write for her and they show themselves for her. Taking a matter to the personal field denotes a tremendous lack of professionalism.
When a community manager is hired, he must always be clear that it is not going to be him, but the company he represents. Careful with this.
The figure of the community today
Unfortunately, the best-known community managers on the web are more famous for their mistakes – viralized – than for their successes. He is a figure that goes unnoticed when he does his job well, but if he makes a mistake it is tremendously visible. All large companies and organizations, absolutely all, have a community manager on their payroll or hired externally.
Four or five years ago he was a very unknown figure, but with the brutal growth in the use of social networks, their use has been completely standardized. It is a mistake not to have a professional community . All the opportunities offered by being always on top of everything on the Internet are lost, and your reputation can fade very quickly.
I know that it is difficult to give “powers” to someone other than yourself, but if you clearly establish your preferences, it will be a success that a good percentage of companies with an online presence have already had.
My advice: don’t take a second to hire a Community Manager.
Put yourself in the hands of a professional NOW. Start taking advantage of the opportunities that the online environment has. Don’t let anything tarnish your name. Create your own personality on the network and attract people’s attention.
Check what works, what doesn’t and discover new ways to reach the user, so that this translates into business success. By hiring a professional community manager you will be the first beneficiary; you will not regret.
What do you think? Do you have experience hiring a Community Manager? Can you tell me? Leave a comment below with your opinion.