Social Media Community Management

When talking about social media marketing and strategy, there is one thing most marketers and clients of ours forget to consider and that is community management. When looking for social media help, our clients think they need to be everywhere and anywhere they can have a social media profile. This could not be further from the truth.

Just like any marketing planning process, there is a lot of be considered before choosing social media marketing channels. Once you have identified your target audience and determined the best channels for reaching them it is time to develop killer content marketing strategy and implement! Then you’re good to go, right? Nope! That is just one piece of the social media management puzzle. After implementing your strategy, managing your social media community is vital.

Community management takes way more than just posting and observing. Depending on the platform you are active on, you will need to monitor the conversation, respond to comments, and engage with other accounts content, and you will need to do this almost daily if possible. Yup, you will need to connect with potential consumers and interact with them online. It is no longer enough to post and expect your audience to engage. Social media is a two-way street.

What does community management look like for you?

Every platform and strategy will be different, however there are some platform-specific management activities you can put into action now.

Facebook Community Management Tips:

• Ask employees to share your page’s content
• Respond to comments on posts, photos and videos
• Respond to all direct messages (DMs)
• When people like or react to a post, you can “invite” them to follow your page, if they aren’t already.

Twitter Community Management Tips:

• Login to TweetDeck and track industry or competing related hashtags
• Retweet all mentions and comment on all tweets that mentions are in!
• Find people talking about your industry or product and comment on their tweets
• Actively look for people or companies to follow who might find your content useful

Pinterest Community Management Tips:

• Respond to comments on your posts
• Share relevant content with your followers
• Collaborate on boards with other professionals and individuals
• Actively provide “pinable” graphics on your website content
• Ask your employees to re-pin your content to their boards

Instagram community management tips:

• Share user generated content (UGC) on your feed and tag the user
• Respond to all feed comments
• Respond to story comments
• Share any stories you are tagged in with your following
• Comment on UGC and other content your followers are sharing
• Be genuine in all responses and like and comment on other users’ content

LinkedIn community management tips:

• Respond to all post comments
• Ask employees to share company page posts
• Make a list of all people who have reacted to a post and engage/connect with them and their content
• Respond to all direct messages
• Find industry related groups and be active in them

Social media marketing is a long-game strategy, but when done right the return on investment is more than sales. It is engaged stakeholders, activated consumers, and long-lasting loyalty built on social media relationships and community management.

Learn more about creating content that turns into engaging electronic word of mouth (eWOM).

Not sure where to start? Schedule a free consultation call with us today. LHM Strategic is dedicated to helping our clients not only get a return on their investment, but a return on engagement—a vital component for social media marketing in today’s digital world.