Hot new job title gives employers someone to drive social media strategies — if your company doesn’t have one, it will likely need one soon
Community managers are the social butterflies of a company and its offerings. They are not sales people, customer service reps, Internet marketers or public relations people, per se. They do, however, spread the word about what a company offers — they engage with clients, prospects, the public and the media to talk about your company and how great it is — through social media.
Most companies that use Internet marketing to some degree see the inherent value of having a community manager on the payroll. Over the last five years, social media, including the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, have become more mainstream. So much so, companies of all sizes are using these media to engage with prospects and clients, even to the degree of promoting a company’s Facebook fan page via other traditional advertising efforts.
With more than 15 million users in Canada alone, Facebook is visited more often than Google. Other social sites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Yahoo Answers, are frequently used to learn, explore, connect and discuss with all types of topics and people.
Using social media to engage with your community not only helps build content and get others talking about your company, it also offers ways for people to connect and link to you. This added popularity — not to be confused with authority — helps contribute to search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Social media and networking, in particular, require an individual with a thorough understanding of your offerings — a community manager who can respond quickly and is truly passionate and believes in your company.
No one can talk about your company like one of your employees, which is why it’s best this individual works at your company. Paying an agency or an Internet marketing company to do this might not achieve the same level of results and is often more expensive. Although outside help is useful for providing insight, training, best practices and monitoring assistance, they shouldn’t be the ones interacting with your market.
The ideal candidate
This employee doesn’t need to be a senior marketing manager or a programmer, she just needs to truly believe in what you offer. An ideal candidate would be a social butterfly by nature. A student right out of school who has a marketing background may suffice. Ideally, this person would be responsible for monitoring brand mentions, contributing to online social networks, engaging with prospects, answering questions and even promoting the brand at events, conferences and tradeshows.
The web is a soap box for many people. This calls for a deep understanding of customer response. There is a careful and delicate balance between being friendly, respectable and sincere and knowing when to apologize. The ideal candidate for community manager would work with the Internet marketing team both to understand trends and learn to optimize content for SEO and online reputation management (ORM) benefits. She would also work with your customer service department to understand best practices for handling complaints and forwarding them to the appropriate units.
Hiring a community manager may not be right for all companies today. However, the day will come when it will be a necessity.
Ezra Silverton is founder and president of 9th Sphere, a Toronto-based web design and Internet marketing solutions provider. For more information, visit www.9thsphere.com.
