3 Mistakes Every Community Manager Makes …and how to Avoid Them
by SCOTT BISHOP
The job of a Community Manager is creating, fostering and nourishing your online community of fans, followers and visitors. While community management is often viewed as just ‘posting’ or ‘tweeting’, when you look at them as the person on the front lines of communicating to your potential customers, it becomes a lot more important…and the stakes grow a lot higher. At some point, every community manager will make a mistake, but to avoid a total PR meltdown at your company, here are three of the most typical oversights and how to avoid them.
Missing Consistency: Lack of consistent posts, updates or posting is one of the worst mistakes a community manager can make. Your customers and potential customers count on you to be a constant source of information and thus it’s necessary to treat your communication tactics as importantly as the frequency in which they’re happening. Lack of updates for even two days can cause customers to consider your reputation and reliability. Think about it this way: if you have decided to start using a social channel, you can’t just stop. This is why the job of Community Manager is so important in the first place and why missing posts is a costly mistake. Avoid this particular mistake by having your community manager work with your marketing team or internet marketing professional to develop a content calendar so they have an understanding of what they should be posting and how frequently. This also ensures that they always have something interesting to say!
Using the Same Content Across All of your Social Media Channels: This is one we see often. Different social channels attract different audiences and the same goes for your business’ social platforms: your followers on Twitter will most likely not be the same age, demographic or have the same interests as your followers on Facebook. Recycling the same content word for word isn’t the way to reach your customers. Avoid the recycling, by looking at your Twitter followers, Facebook fans and other social network visitors in an effort to gain an understanding of who is following you so you can tailor the content specifically to that audience. It makes your content more timely and relevant and will most likely lead your content to be shared more often.
Using Automated Posting Services: While automatic posting services certainly have their place and benefits, it’s unnecessary to use them all the time. A good community manager knows that automated posting is good in some cases but not the best strategy in others. Besides, who wants to see automated messages with the same corporate jargon over and over again? Oftentimes, automated content removes the most important element of social media: the real time interaction and engagement. Avoid this community manager pitfall by logging onto Twitter and Facebook to check out conversations that are relevant to your industry and join in, in real time with fun comments and to share your company’s opinion on those relevant issues. This will make your Twitter and Facebook feed more engaging and interesting to clients and potential clients.
Community management is one of the most important jobs if you participate or have any type of social media account. Make sure your community manager is making the most of it and avoiding the above pitfalls for a truly flawless social media execution plan.
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