What A Community Manager Really Does All Day
A Community Manager role is to contribute positively to the company bottom line revenue.
Last night, I had the honour and privilege of presenting on the #CMXLondon panel with some distinguished colleagues to discuss The Rules of Engagement.
We talked about content and community, engagement and action, user-generated content (and how to get it) and influencer marketing.
My esteemed co-panellists, Stacey Malvery and Jamie Johnston, gave us some insight into a true consumer community as they both work in B2C environments. Stacey manages social media and community in the fashion industry, whilst Jamie has just made the switch from Sky TV to Tesco Bank to manage their community.
In the midst of our discussion, I thought it important to clarify a well-known but overlooked fact:
I cannot stress the importance of this concept enough!
Yes, you manage the Community. That’s your job. That’s what you get paid to do. But make no mistake: the reason the company pays you to do that job is to somehow ’contribute positively to their bottom line revenue’.
If you can’t do that, you’ll be seen as irrelevant in the organisation. And most importantly, your Community will be seen as irrelevant.
Whence comes irrelevance comes redundancy.
Think on it, act on it, believe in it. Champion your Community every day in every way. If your organisation hasn’t given you any metrics to measure of the Community, decide what you think is important and start measuring it any way you can.
Is the point of your Community self-support? Pick 20 members and measure how many times within a 5-day period they’re answering questions on your support forum.
Is the point of your Community raising awareness? Give 50 of them a Twitter tag, Facebook post or other social media trackable link and measure it over a 3-day period.
Then, put all of those figures into a pretty PowerPoint slide or a database or infographic and share it around the organisation. Talk about those results in the kitchen at the coffee machine, casually drop it into conversation during a meeting with a manager, and book 1:1s with the exec team and actually share these figures.
Execs love metrics and figures. The more you give them, the more they’ll want. The more they want, the more interest they’re taking of the Community. The more interest they take of the Community, the more safeguarded the Community will be for the future.
It’s The Perfect Circle, get it?
So start measuring and evangelising. They’re your people. Protect them.
Original Article
Find out more on the future of Content Marketing at our DLUK - Trends briefing on the 24th September 2015