Tired of Having an Unengaged Community? Now is the perfect time to think about how you can improve your relationship with your audience.
If you run a community of any size, then you know that one of the top responsibilities is to build an engaged and active community. What makes it difficult is that there are still many people who think of community management as a passive role. As a community manager, your role is not just to take orders and promote products, but rather to build relationships between your company's brand and the actual users.
Your community should be able to provide ongoing development and support for your brand and business, while also providing a great place for fun, entertainment, and social interaction. If you have invested in building a community around your brand, you should be utilizing all the tools available to make this as seamless as possible.
It’s a tough job and here are the 10 community manager skills you should have to be great at it.
1. An understanding of social media
You need to understand social media and how it can be used to build a community. This includes understanding the importance of your presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as other platforms such as LinkedIn or TikTok. You should also know how to use these platforms effectively for engagement purposes. For example:
● Using hashtags will help you reach more people in your target audience who may not follow your brand because they do not know about you yet.
● Creating a business account on every platform where your followers can interact with your brand’s personality. This makes it easier for the followers to trust you.
Read also: How brands can enhance perfect social media customer service.
2. Know how to create content that matters to your community
Content is king, and it’s important for you as a community manager to be able to create engaging and useful content for your audience. There are many ways you can approach this task:
● Write blog posts on topics relevant to your audience
● Make videos about topics that interest them (such as web development, tech news, etc.)
● Create infographics about important details or trends in the industry
● Share images of helpful resources with a call-to-action (CTA) on them so users can download them.
However, content creation is just the easy part.
3. Be skilful at content management
Content management is more than just uploading content to your online community. It’s also about understanding the type of content that will succeed within it, and knowing how to structure, categorize, and promote that content in a way that will get people talking. This is why it is one of the most important, must-have community manager skills.
The first step in content management is to understand what type of content will be most effective for your audience and how they engage with it. For example, if you are running an educational blog about cooking healthy meals, then you might have different types of posts (recipes or meal plans) that are more likely to attract readers than general tips on cooking or kitchen tools.
Read also: What does it take to become a successful content creator today?
To create engaging and shareable pieces, you must know how best to structure them so people can find what they're looking for quickly when searching through your site's archives. You also need to know how often these types of posts should be released so as not to overwhelm subscribers who only want updates on specific topics like recipe development—or just keep their eyes peeled each time there's something new.
Once created promote these pieces regularly through social media channels like Twitter/Facebook/Instagram etc., as well as newsletters sent out periodically throughout the year so people don't forget about them either.
4. Know when and how to use marketing automation tools
Automation is an essential community manager skill, but it doesn't have to be complicated. It simply means automating routine tasks that you do every day, such as sending thank-you emails after a customer service experience or posting announcements on social media when your brand launches a new product.
This makes it easy for a community manager to stay up-to-date with his or her customers and reach out whenever necessary without having to manually create messages every time something happens (like when someone signs up). This also helps you understand customers better by sending personalized emails based on specific actions like converting leads into actual sales.
Marketing automation tools are designed to help simplify the process of keeping your community engaged over long periods. The best way to use them is as an extension of your existing marketing strategy, not as a replacement for it.
5. Have moderating skills
Moderating a community is a vital role for the community manager. As the community grows, you’ll need to step in and moderate or host webinars on topics related to your products or services, or even host Q&As with technical support staff. So make sure this is on your list of vital community manager skills.
6. To do this effectively, it helps to be a product-oriented community manager
A product-oriented community manager understands every facet of their company’s services and knows how to leverage this information to build an engaged community around it. This can mean knowing the history of your brand and what makes it unique compared to competitors.
It could also mean having a strong understanding of how customers use your products/services/platforms, so that when someone asks you questions about them like, “how do I continue my subscription?” you know exactly what to say.
7. Customer service
Customer service is a must-have skill for community managers looking to succeed in marketing campaigns. As a Community Manager or Director of Community Relations, knowing how to effectively interact with customers can help increase engagement levels and build lasting relationships between brands and consumers. Building such relationships requires you to be human and empathetic, and listen to your community.
8. Be able to analyze data and create reports
It's no secret that data is the lifeblood of any business, and it's also important to consider how you can use it to improve your community. While there are many different types of reports you can create, here are some key ones:
● How many users have viewed your posts?
● Which posts were most popular?
● Which pages do people visit most often?
In this Fuzu article, Kelvin describes how to use data-driven insights to boost customer relationships. This knowledge will help you with future decisions about what to write and when, as well as provide insights into which areas need more attention from moderators or other staff members.
9. Be authentic
When you're moderating a community, it's important to be authentic. People like to work with people they can relate to, so bring your full personality when moderating a community. You want the experience of interacting with others daily and sharing their experiences in real time; that’s why we all love Twitter and Facebook comment sections.
When you become more human through your interactions with others on social media, they will feel closer to you as well because they know there’s no filter between them and what you say or post publicly on those platforms.
10. Consistency
Be open and honest, be consistent in your communication style, and always be approachable. It's important to give back to your community by providing value that helps them grow their business or brand (and vice versa).
Conclusion
Whether you’re brand new to the world of community management or have been working in it for years, there’s no denying that this field is constantly changing. With each passing year, new tools are being developed and old ones improve upon themselves. To stay current with all these changes, you must be willing to learn new skills on the fly (or at least be willing to look up how). The good news is that most of these community manager skills don’t take long to learn either, they just require a little more effort.
Check out community manager jobs here.
