Community management at the heart of communication strategies
Community management is a discipline that is experiencing an impressive craze worldwide and corporate communication policies are finally integrating this discipline into their strategy. It has become a real strategic axis for companies (large, medium and small). Year after year, it has revolutionized digital marketing and then the world of the web and media. Its practice can be seen as an effective solution in many situations and even an asset to obtain better results.
However, community management requires strategic management and specific technical skills.
What is community management?
Community management is the management of communities on social networks or all the practices that aim to promote engagement between a brand and its community. This activity can be carried out by a social media agency or internally within a company.
It is a new profession that was created with the advent of social networks.
The community manager’s mission is the development and animation of user communities. A community is a group of people united by a common passion. This is the case of your customers, gathered around your products and services. The community manager (or CM) is in charge of animating the community. This is done through social networks by publishing content that interests members: news, photos, videos …
But the community manager goes further than that: he interacts with the members and makes sure they don’t feel abandoned. He participates in conversations, listens to criticisms and brings solutions to problems that may emerge to prevent the community from feeling abandoned. He/she is responsible for ensuring a good atmosphere, the quality of exchanges, the integrity of the group and the respect of the site’s or application’s ethical charter.
In this context, he/she must ensure that the editorial line is consistent with the company’s marketing strategy and objectives. He/she ensures the company’s active presence on social networks by defining a social media strategy adapted to the company’s objectives.
Community management is essential for brands that wish to develop an online presence.
What are the advantages of community management?
You will have understood, community management is now a key to the success of your business. Community management is a specialty of digital marketing. It combines several techniques to promote a brand, a product or a service on social networks and other community platforms. The contributions of community management are multiple:
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Community management allows to establish the link between a brand and its customers.
The goal is to create engagement with its customers by sharing various content (articles, photos, videos, contests …) that are likely to interest them. The community manager builds a strong link with his community. The latter is then reassured about the quality of the service or product.
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Community management allows you to clearly position yourself on a market.
Indeed, it is possible to precisely target the clientele that one wishes to acquire. The added value of a community management strategy is to allow a company to establish its legitimacy in a given sector of activity.
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Community management allows you to develop your visibility on the web.
By managing a community, a site can become known without expensive marketing campaigns. It is one of the most effective and accessible ways to attract more visitors.
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Community management allows you to listen to consumers about the brand and its products and services, in real time.
Online communities are unsupervised discussion areas where consumers can share their opinions and react live. Managing these communities highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the brand, allowing companies to improve their image while identifying consumer expectations.
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The community management allows to put forward its notoriety.
By creating quality content and leveraging word-of-mouth, the community manager can spread the word about their company or brand to a wider audience. The more the community grows, the more useful it can be.
What strategy should I adopt for my communication?
In a context of increasing digitalization, millions of companies have already taken the plunge and are present on social networks. It is therefore essential to identify a communication strategy that will allow you to conquer new customers while retaining those you already have.
Your communication strategy will depend on your business sector and the objectives you want to achieve. BtoC brands will find it an effective way to communicate with a wider audience, while BtoB companies will be able to focus on relationships with their existing customers in order to build loyalty.
The first step is to perform a social media audit to know how your community perceives your brand and how you can improve your image. This will allow you to prioritize the points of improvement and therefore the actions to be implemented.
Then, you have to think about the personality you want to give to your brand on social networks (humorous, serious, fun,…). You can then define the content you want to publish according to this personality.
Finally, it is important to always stay active. You must not abandon your communities and show that you are always there to meet their needs.
Discover our digital expertise
Our digital agency Habefast helps you to optimize your community management and your advertising campaigns on social networks. Our team, composed of experts in communication and digital marketing, will be happy to help you create or develop your online presence in order to create a unique image and gain visibility.
