In my experience I have had to perform this role on several occasions (that of Community Manager), moderating forums and chat, creating content, removing sections or products that do not have good demand rates in the sale or applying reengineering for Customer Service processes.. The difference is that now more than an initiative of its own it is a latent need that can no longer be avoided by the company.
It is true that there are still some executives who prefer to play the ostrich role and hide their heads for fear that the digital world will overwhelm them, but that attitude can only go against the interests of any company. You can no longer not communicate, you can no longer ignore what is said about you online. Now we are all digital.
Who is the Community Manager?
With the advent of 2.0 tools, there is a topic that little or nothing has been discussed. Who is in charge of maintaining the social relationship of the company or product?
The first step to get into the digital social community is to be clear about what you want to achieve by using these channels, to whom you are going to communicate and in what way. In other words, have a strategy that includes not only the basic questions, but also that indicates which products or brands will be chosen, how many and which tools.
Creating a blog or Facebook page is strictly simple, if the steps provided by each of the tools are followed, in a few minutes we can be the owners of a 'little land in universe 2.0'.
The point is: who will be in charge of maintaining the land?
This is when the figure of the Community Manager begins to gain strength and importance, first because the task of maintaining the content must fall on someone, but more importantly, that person will be responsible for sustaining, increasing and, in a certain way, defending the Company relations with its clients in the digital sphere. Because as in any relationship, those who are sympathetic to the brand who are attracted to digital strategy must be constantly attended to. It will then be the link that will convey to the company the concerns and needs of its supporters (which may also need to be resolved in both the real and digital worlds).
In Web Strategy and WebWorkerDialy there is already talk about what would be the essence of a Community Manager, which can be summarized as follows:
- Listen: Use tools like Technorati, read blogs, forums, to find what consumers are saying about the company or brand. Answer: Quickly and appropriately. The company always has something to communicate. Report: Transmit this information to the corresponding areas within the company: Product manager, Marketing, Public Relations, Engineering, etc. Connect: Perhaps the most important job, being a link between customers and the correct interlocutor within the company. If the client is claiming that the product they bought through remote channels (telephone, internet) did not arrive in the promised time, for the company it is the opportunity to review their logistics processes. Feedback: Each comment, good or bad, is the opportunity to the company to know what really happens with its products or brands,to discover where the opportunities are and even correct the strategy in order to better serve.
Furthermore, we are already talking about what are the levels of commitment to the company that our supporters have. Here is a very useful chart created by Gartner that graphs the four basic modes of behavior of the new 'Virtual Generation', Generation V:
In other words, we are talking that thanks to digital communities we now have first-hand information about our brands, we can really read our reputation, know about our processes, the success of a launch or a campaign.
In short, find out what we are failing (to correct it) and what we are doing well (to encourage it).
