Originally Published March 1, 2010 on Michael Stelzner’s Social Media Examiner
Are you trying to build a community for your company or brand? Are you looking to go beyond just big numbers of Facebook fans or Twitter followers?
This article reveals three important tips you need to know to help build and manage communities.
What Is Community Management?
Previously I wrote examined the different roles for those who work with social media in business. Among the many roles, the community manager is by far the most important because he or she is on the front lines of communication. Here’s how I define community manager:
A community manager usually manages an editorial calendar for a blog/community, a Twitter account and various third-party social media channels like a Facebook fan page or a YouTube account.
A community manager may also be responsible for managing a social listening platform like Radian6 and filtering/assigning conversations to others in the business unit for a proper response. He or she may even organize in-person events (or town halls) to get feedback from the community. The community manager is the face of the brand. Conversations are at the core of the job responsibility.
Over the years, I have worked for several big brands and have learned some valuable lessons about community. When I refer to community, it’s not just a “social networking” site where users are required to login and create profiles. Communities can be built on Twitter, YouTube and even on a blog where the conversations are happening within the comments.
Read the complete article here.
Mike Dickman 