Why is community management so important?

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Community management offers a company the opportunity to build long-term customer relationships and uncover optimization potential in its own products and processes. Furthermore, as a community manager, you receive extremely valuable first-hand customer feedback and can act on it. With community management, you can uncover trends; you know what the target audience feels, thinks, and wants, and you have your finger on the pulse. If done correctly, community management can help your company significantly advance in terms of sales figures and market share.

What are the tasks of a community manager?
A community manager combines many tasks into one. The position not only serves as the interface between the social media department, which publishes marketing campaigns, and the PR department, but also serves as a central element in customer support, answering direct inquiries from the target audience. A community manager is also responsible for monitoring individual developments and managing social media channels. Furthermore, a manager must attract new followers through attractive marketing and provide a high level of interaction to increase the important engagement rate.

But I don't want to beat around the bush any longer and will start directly with the 9 tips for sustainable community management:

1. Be quick to respond to fan posts.
Communication is key in social media. And social media, in particular, is characterized by a fast-paced world. The media thrives on current trends, and yesterday's news no longer interests anyone. It's therefore not surprising that social media users are extremely impatient. Therefore, companies must have a short response time to be successful in social media marketing. Those who wait a long time for a response feel like they're not being taken seriously and become increasingly dissatisfied with the company. The worst consequence: The customer ends their relationship with the company and switches to a competitor.

Fans want help quickly. So respond promptly to incoming messages – even if they're trivial – and take every request seriously. However, please don't send a copy-paste or standard message that you send to the entire community; instead, netherlands phone number data respond to each message individually. This will make users feel sufficiently valued and encourage them to recommend your company.

Facebook, for example, always informs its users about the response time of companies:


Response time of companies on Facebook



2. Stay professional in times of crisis.
The great advantage of social media marketing, that content spreads quickly and goes viral, can also quickly become a disadvantage. Especially on the internet, the inhibition threshold is very low due to the anonymity of an individual. This means that comments can easily be below the belt and shitstorms can reach unknown and unpredictable proportions. The community has the power to destroy entire large companies – quite simply by customers refusing to shop there. All it takes is a single dissatisfied user who is unhappy about the company's new direction or current development to post about it on social media. These posts can also go viral and significantly damage a company's image.

Then professional crisis management is required to contain shitstorms as best as possible. The skills of a community manager are invaluable in times like these. Remain authentic during shitstorms, respond to constructive criticism and feedback from your fans, and ignore haters as best you can. Comments containing legally prohibited statements such as discrimination, hate speech, or statements glorifying violence should be deleted immediately. Deleting a post is a last resort, however, as this measure only adds fuel to the fire and makes users feel overwhelmed.

In the past, companies have often reconsidered their decisions to appease the community. A recent example is Adidas. During the coronavirus crisis, the corporation wanted to take advantage of a recently passed federal law and stop paying rent for its retail spaces, even though Adidas has substantial financial reserves. Due to the resulting backlash, Adidas backtracked and now only wants to stop paying rent to a few large landlords.