Dealing with customer complaints. And doing it in a timely manner.
The "annoying" part of social media management. And the task that is typically given to the most junior person on the social team - be it in-house or agency side.
That was how community management was looked at within organisations (and unfortunately, still is for brands that have yet to clock on).
But brand communities and fans aren’t built and fostered from transactional community management. It takes more than that.Smart brands are waking up to this and giving community interaction and fan building the time, value and senior support they so rightly deserve.
It’s simple really. Meet your existing community where they are, and find unique ways to bring them on your journey. By doing so, they’ll connect with you, your story, and be more inclined to grow with you. And if it’s not already apparent, their loyalty and engagement is what enables that growth to supercharge your brand and amplify commercial opportunities.
Celebrities, artists and influencers have understood this for a long time, which is why we’re now seeing a rise in celebrity/influencer-founded brands doing so well. They’re capitalising on the engaged communities that they’ve built through tried and trusted engagement across platforms.
Brands should be doing the same, as ultimately, loyal brand lovers unlock new commerce opportunities. So, how are you going to do it?
Don’t limit yourself to managing complaints
Traditionally, customer bases and target markets form a community for brands to manage. Community management is purely reactive, and very structured… while necessary, it’s become a bit boring. For both audiences and brand managers alike.
It involves routine checking owned channels, and responding to inbound queries (often from customers). It’s used as a way to minimise public complaints, gather brand and product feedback, analyse competitors, and feed insights back to the business.
But it only considers existing customers and how you hold onto their loyalty, rather than growing it. While a vital function on its own, this approach lacks creative thought, which can have a direct impact on how people perceive and connect with your brand. Community has the potential to be so much more.
…Reframe the function to engage communities
In contrast, Community Engagement is dynamic. It encourages a two-way exchange between your brand and your audience and encourages creativity. It invites new and exciting customers in and gives them a clear value exchange and sense of belonging. It enhances brand loyalty through relevant conversations and sharing. It gives audiences something worth having and rewards community members for their contributions.
It’s much more than the stock standard comment replies. Community engagement opens the door to less structured online interactions. By utilising social media functions like comments, direct messages, shares, stitches, duets and reposts brands can create more valuable engagements with current and potential audiences.
It means you need to look outside of your feed for the interesting conversations that are happening on Facebook Groups, Reddit forums, Instagram topics or the TikTok comments section. Think about these channels as the top end of the funnel, where as you nurture your existing customer base and target market in a public capacity, your visibility to like-minded audiences grows.
There have been some great examples of brands stepping up lately, including Stanley Cup giving a brand lover a new car or Drake and Kendrick’s feud sparking fan-generated content online.
Brands need to step outside of their lane and meet their community where they are. Once these foundations are set, and you’ve bedded down the community function, the opportunities to commercialise your offering grow.
Don’t be boring
Gone are the days of robotic responses from brands and companies on social media. It’s so important for brands to entrust their social media teams to represent their brand's tone of voice and values.
This, of course, takes time and resources to juggle all channels at once. To stay relevant, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of the online conversations, to spot trends and competitor activity across categories. Then respond quickly.
Automated responses and stale content get called out quickly. It’s the lazy approach and means you can’t reap the benefits of your community if you don’t invest time and engagement that adds real value to them. Rather than asking yourself, what’s in it for me? Think, what’s in it for the community? instead. It takes more thought, but is oftentimes less polished.
The best, most authentic interactions are unscripted, timely, and don’t fit in a content planner. This is proactive community engagement at its core. It enables new opportunities to build and monetise brand communities in diverse and evolutionary ways.
The payoff?
The future of social media is community-driven.
Smart brands are investing resources into growing and fostering communities, allowing them to capitalise on it by introducing new commercial opportunities.
Connection with brand lovers equals emotional investment, rich word of mouth, and ultimately, new communities to engage with.
So throw out the copy-and-paste responses and make your comment section just as, if not even better than the post itself.
Mary Proulx is Co-Founder, Bread Agency