You’ve got your social posting strategy down, but now comments and messages are starting to flood in–what do you do? This is where community management comes in. Community management on social media is just as (if not more) important as the actual content you’re posting on the platform. Let’s dive into the world of community management and tools to help you succeed!
What is Community Management?
The purpose of community management is to connect with your current or prospective customers and make them feel like they’re a part of your brand. This could mean answering their questions, easing concerns, taking their feedback to the larger team, providing customer support, and more. Think of a community manager as a leg of customer service, but one that is more visible and sometimes more crucial in times of crisis or conflict. The term community management itself is very broad and encompasses many things. But at the heart of it, it’s how and where you’re talking to your customers on social media and what initiatives you’re taking to make them feel connected to your company.
Here are a few examples of community management:
Answering a disgruntled customer after their product arrived damaged in the mail
Sharing product feedback to your internal team to improve future performance
Polling your social media followers to see what product they want you to come out with next
Interacting with social media posts your brand is tagged in
Creating a crisis communication plan in the event that a social media scandal occurs regarding your company
These are just a few examples and there are a ton more that community managers take on.
What is Social Listening?
One additional responsibility that many community managers are in charge of is social listening. Social listening is just a term that means finding out what people are talking about across the internet. These conversations could be about your brand specifically, the industry you’re in, a type of product you want to launch, a new country you’re looking to expand to, and more. Social listening is typically done through external tools that aggregate all of the relevant conversations for you from across social media platforms, editorial websites, blogs, forums, and more. A community manager can then take these insights back to their internal team to help influence upcoming product launches, share feedback on the overall sentiment of the brand, and more.
The reason social listening can be included under the term ‘community management’ is because the goal is to monitor a community and see what they’re talking about. This is typically consumers outside of your brand but is still crucial to understand what people are discussing online about various relevant topics.
Tools for Community Management and Social Listening
The good news is there are tons of external tools out there that could help you with community management, social listening, or both! Here are a few of our favorites:
Sprout Social:
Sprout Social is one of the OG social media management platforms. They have several different packages that you can choose from. Their offerings include social listening, comments and private messages inboxes, content scheduling tools, and more. Sprout Social is extremely user-friendly and a great do-it-all tool.
NetBase:
If you’re in an industry that requires a lot of in-depth data, NetBase should be your social listening tool. NetBase is a little less user-friendly than some of the other social listening tools, but they will provide you with all the data you can dream of from across every facet of the internet. They’re also one of the more cost-efficient social listening platforms on the market.
Meltwater:
Like Sprout Social, Meltwater is another jack of all trades. They offer in-depth social listening, comment response tools, traditional PR services, and much more. If you’re in search of a platform that can help you across communications as a whole, you should definitely take a look at Meltwater.
Dash Hudson:
While Dash Hudson is on the pricier end of all of these tools, they are known as the cool kids on the block. The company has connections directly with Meta and other social platforms to get the most accurate and up-to-date features. They’re most known for their content and competitive tools, but over the past two years they’ve started to dive into the world of community management.
Want to learn more about the importance of community management and social listening? Reach out to us here at Inked as we’d love to chat further!