How to be a great social media community manager

When I am asked what my daily responsibilities look like at Allee Creative, my reply always includes, “Helping manage my client’s social media accounts.” From those who have not spent much time in marketing or social media, I often get a confused look as they ask, “Oh, so you just post on their social media channels?” And while, yes, social media management includes curating and posting content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and the like, it also involves so much more than that.

Social media management goes far beyond just posting content and letting it sit online. As a good community manager, there are steps you can and need to take in addition to posting. Here are a few:

Use listening tools

Social media can be a voice for your brand, but it can also be a channel for consumers to speak out about you and your products. Are you listening to what they are saying? The good news is there are quite a few tools available out there to help you listen to what people are saying about you on social media including TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Spredfast and Sprout Social. You can search for keywords related to your business or even your competitors.

Know your analytics

Are you aware of your followers engagement on your social media channels? It is important to track real-time statistics and analytics behind your social media channels to help motivate you to stay active. We often use Sprout Social, not only to schedule our content and listen to our audience, but also to pull their great reports on our channel activity. In addition, Google Analytics will tell you the numbers behind your website activity, and even which social media channels are successfully directing traffic to your web pages.

Respond in real-time

While it is nice to have the option to schedule content in advance and then forget about it, you still must be actively checking your channels in real-time and engaging with followers. You followers want to have a personal interaction with your brand, and you must be responding to their comments and showing them that you are listening.

Find new content

It is okay to use other sources for your own social media content or inspiration for you blog. Twitter has a handy featured in which you are able to create your own lists, adding your followers and even those you are not following into groups for better management. With these lists you could create a list of customers, thought leaders, industry news or local accounts in your area. You can then add these lists into your management tools so you can easily monitor what is being said and see any opportunities to engage.

When it comes to social media management, you’re actually probably doing it wrong if all you are doing is posting content and then not checking in on how it’s performing or worse, what your audience is doing with it. More than 25 percent of consumers who complain about products on Facebook or Twitter expect a response within one hour, and if you’re not taking advantage of all the benefits of social media management tools, you might be missing out. We provide social media marketing and management services for businesses who need a little help with their channels.