As a social media professional, I’ve spent most of my career in the content creation and strategy space, developing thoughtful strategies and creative tactics tailored to my clients’ goals and executing on them. While I’ve always done some degree of community management for my social media clients, six months ago I began working with a client in a role focused solely on community management for a large, highly engaged audience. It has been so much fun and I’ve learned a ton, so I thought I’d share some of the takeaways here.

But first, let’s take a step back. What is social media community management? Simply put, it’s how your business engages with its audience online. It’s all about building a vibrant community around your brand so that your enthusiastic, loyal audience is eager to promote your brand to their networks as well. Great community management can help a brand go from a standard corporate brand to a more human brand, where supporters can tell the voice behind the account cares about them. That’s special--it’s hard for a customer to find, and difficult for a community manager to pull off! So let’s get into it: how can you do community management in a way that is meaningful and impactful? Here are 7 tips:

1) Set ground rules

Whether you’re doing community management solo or are part of a team, you’ll need to lay out some ground rules for how you handle certain behaviors online. Every social media manager has run into a horrible comment from a customer or a shocking image in a DM they wish they never saw--so what will you do when these issues come up?

You’ll need to determine what warrants a comment being hidden, when you’ll delete a comment or ban a user from your page, and when you’ll report them to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. This will vary widely depending on your company and your industry. I can’t tell you a specific set of rules to follow; you’ll need to determine what’s best for your organization. Either way, having a clear action plan makes it easier to deal with these situations when they come up, as they inevitably do.

2) Personalize

As much as possible, personalize your responses to the folks you’re interacting with. Start with “Hi [name]!” Something as simple as showing you know their name does make a difference. If they have a username where their name isn’t clear, and it’s not listed on their profile, a “Hi there” or “Hello!” before getting down to business and answering their question still forms a human connection.

3) Respond in a timely manner

Make sure you’re able to monitor the online conversation and respond in a timely manner. If you’re a team of one and your brand receives a lot of engagement, you may need some backup to ensure things aren’t missed! Getting back to people in a timely manner helps build credibility and trust.

4) Keep it on-brand

There’s a huge spectrum of brand voices out there on the internet, from the ultra-snarky and funny accounts to the corporate accounts that sound like generic robots. For most brands, you’ll want to fall somewhere in between. As a marketing and PR team, you (hopefully) will have already honed your brand voice. You know how you want to sound--and it’s up to the community manager to execute that online.

Anything you can do to help your brand voice shine through in every tweet and Instagram comment truly helps build up the brand and make you memorable. Whether it’s having two or three specific emojis you tend to include in your comments or an on-brand catchphrase you incorporate, these small touches help reinforce the brand in people’s minds.

5) Be authentic

Similar to staying on brand, being authentic is crucial to how your brand interacts online. You don’t want to sound robotic or overly corporate. Personalizing helps, as we discussed before, and utilizing a human tone of voice makes a difference. The goal is to be helpful and caring, making your community members feel valued, rather than just communicating in a promotional manner.

6) Incorporate humor

Again, this will vary depending on your brand and industry, but humor can be a great way to humanize your brand. If you’re answering a sensitive question, you won’t want to reply with a hilarious gif, but if you’re wishing someone happy birthday or replying to a funny comment, definitely infuse some humor into it! Being fun and playful shows that there are real humans behind the brand.

7) Listen to feedback

While you may not always be able to take action on the feedback someone provides, it can truly help them feel heard when you like and respond to their comment or question. Even something as simple as “Thanks for reaching out! We’ll be sure to share that feedback with the team” shows that your brand is listening.

Social media professionals know that we aren’t the ones who make the call on major decisions, but many average social media users don’t realize this. As a community manager, make sure you are able to distance yourself so you don’t take it personally if someone is upset that their feedback wasn’t acted on immediately. You’ll also want to make sure you have a clear line of communication to the appropriate people at your organization who can take action. You’re the advocate for your community on social, so make sure you communicate exactly what products requests, social issues, or other things they care most about.

Before we go, I’ll leave you with a few don’ts as well:

Don’t make promises you can’t keep or make something up if you don’t know the answer. As much as you might want to say the company will do X moving forward, or guess if you think you know the answer but aren’t 100% sure, go slow and be cautious. Take the time to get clarification before replying to the question, or pass the feedback on to the team without making any guarantees. It’s better for everyone in the long run.
Again, don’t take things personally. This is your job, but you are not the brand. I’ve received messages saying “I hope whoever runs this account has a miscarriage” and “kids are trying to emulate this stupid brand, I hope you go out of business.” Social media management, and community management especially, can be tough on your mental health. Remember to put some distance between the brand and yourself, take breaks regularly, and communicate what’s going on with your colleagues so you can get the support you need.

If you enjoyed this blog post, you may want to check out “A Conversation with Jayde Powell: Tips for Building Human Connections Online.” And don’t miss out on more great insights in my unboring email newsletter!

Subscribe to SkyMail

Blog