Essential Points in Improving Community Management

As brands enter the world of social business, community management is becoming one of the most used buzzwords. Marketers now view the Internet as a market where they can increase brand awareness and promote products by leveraging social media networks. Facebook has become a destination-location for both merchants and consumers as well. In fact, some business owners think that Facebook pages are the new websites (SEO specialists will disagree!), but the way Facebook has paved the way for enhanced communication and portable medium for brand information made it more than a website. Facebook fan pages offer more than what a regular website can do to establish a business' online presence.

A brand's Facebook page puts a premium on user engagement and community management. Both are essential aspects when it comes to marketing. Community management is one of the essentials in today’s public relations. It elegantly combines customer relations management and brand development in many ways. Veteran community managers know that every comment, suggestion, or rant of a customer is valuable and can help a brand improve in a significant way. Multi-national brands like Dell and Gatorade are two companies that augmented their social media outreach. Dell launched the IdeaStorm blog after the controversial Dell Hell, and then came up with its Social Media Listening Command Center to serve its billions of customers who talk about Dell online.


Photo via Brian Solis

Today, more organizations and local businesses are realizing the sheer importance of enhanced community management using their social media accounts. Obviously, Facebook consumes most of the time of users who go online. One of my colleagues at Squareberry even mentioned that for most people - Facebook is the Internet. I bet most of you will agree. Without a doubt, people are flocking the Web to log in on their Facebook accounts. And whenever a user logs in on his Facebook, it's always an opportunity for every brand to catch a potential customer's attention. Community managers are the bridge of between brands and customers. It's not enough that you use a monitoring tool like Radian6 or Squareberry. The community manager is the linchpin in improving Facebook Page Management.

Here are some essential points in supercharging your social media account whether it's your Facebook page or Twitter account:

Encourage Thought-Sharing

Content has always been the fuel of the Internet. Without content, the Web will be a desolate place. As user-generated content or UGC becomes valuable to brands, community managers should entice fans and followers to increase brand mentions by sharing photos, videos, and most importantly, thoughts.

Humanize your Page

People always want something to discuss about. Feed them relevant content and they will easily respond with substantial feedbacks. The more they feel that a brand interacts with them, the more user engagement is increased.

Think like a Publisher

Feed your followers with "branded content", this will pave the way for their contacts to notice what they're Liking or Sharing. Thus, extending brand awareness outside of your followers' network. Branded content begets user-generated content as well!

Offer your Fans "Control"

Restrictions on Facebook pages is censoring user-generated content. You have to understand that your Facebook page is like a customer service center where every suggestion or rant should be attended to and approached in an objective manner.