Have you ever heard of community management? This term directly refers to social networks. But who does community management?

The community manager is the profession that is linked to SMO (Social Media Optimization). This vocation is constantly evolving, requiring you to be alert to changes linked to social media trends. This constant monitoring must be accompanied by a wide range of skills to cover varied missions ranging from writing blog articles to creating visuals for Facebook publications.

The community manager must be on the lookout for comments from his community just like Jim Carrey with believers in the film “Bruce Almighty”.

This profession revolves around social media and networks. A community manager seeks to unite a community. To do this, he will put in place a set of actions to promote an entity.

Visibility on the web affects a lot of people, public figures, associations or companies, it is relevant that you are present on the internet. This is why a large audience can call on a community manager. The point is to let an expert take care of your networks to promote your image.

Now that we know why it is relevant to use a community manager, let's see together what the objectives of community management are. This professional activity is part of a global communication strategy.

If we had to specify the two essential objectives of using community management, it would be to increase the notoriety of an entity via social networks and to build a community via the various publications made on the web.

Let's start by detailing the first objective of community management, that of increasing the notoriety as well as the visibility of an entity. To do this, the community manager must create value-added content that can serve as a source of interaction with his audience. But to achieve this goal, it is not enough to create good publications. Community management is more complex. You must be interested in the areas of activity linked to the entity that you wish to promote and interact with the actors in this environment. In doing so, it will be possible to interact with other communities, occasionally creating bridges allowing communities to mix.

The use of relevant hashtags allows you to enter circles linked to your field of activity and therefore to communicate even indirectly with your targets. Collaborating with content creators is also a great way to build trust in your community about your image.

Finally, if you want to obtain better notoriety and attract public attention to your networks, it is imperative to optimize the different profiles of your social networks. To do this, publish attractive visuals worthy of professional production as well as captivating texts that accurately highlight your speech.

A community manager must succeed in building loyalty in his community. This is how he will be able to generate new customers for his business. We use the term Inbound marketing when we talk about a marketing strategy aimed at bringing customers to you rather than coming to get them. In the case of a community manager, this is exactly what he does. He will address the name of the brand that uses him in order to generate reactions and create an emotional bond between him and his community.

To build community loyalty, the community manager can offer special offers through competitions. It can also create value-added content, presenting a set of relevant information whose primary objective is not to advertise. The point of this type of content is rather to advise and provide new knowledge to readers.

Finally, to build loyalty in your community, it is imperative for a community manager to respond to comments. Positive or negative, an opinion must be taken into account. You need to understand why the person wrote their comment and respond accordingly.

The idea of ​​having a competition does not date from social networks. We could already see this kind of idea before, for example in the film “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” where the chocolatier Willy Wonka hides 5 golden tickets in his chocolate bars.

Social networks are communication tools, each with its own particularities. Their use is part of an overall communication strategy for the company. It is necessary to create a social media strategy for all networks used by the company.

For each social network, you must define its audience, its content strategy and create its editorial schedule. So, a community manager must be organized.

The community manager must be a good writer because he will have to write a lot of posts on different networks. The reading must be attractive and must often be accompanied by an image.

So we come to the second important point in content creation, I am of course talking about the management of graphic tools. It is essential to integrate visuals (image or video) into these posts in order to maintain the user's attention. Photo and video editing skills are essential to successfully creating engaging content on almost any social network.

Any good community manager must know how to interact directly with Internet users through social networks. He must therefore show empathy. At the same time, the moderation of a community also makes it possible to unite it around a passion and common values. It is important to encourage discussions around certain subjects related to the brand's sector of activity and to develop its audience around passionate people who will know better than anyone else how to speak positively about the brand.

Any strategy put in place needs to have a goal. To know if it has been achieved, an objective must be composed of measurable results. A good community manager will therefore measure the results of a social media strategy. It will monitor the actions implemented and see if they have borne fruit. For this, statistics related to the audience, the number of subscribers to the interaction on the posts, etc. must be taken into account. The analysis such a result must be achieved via reports which in addition to highlighting the results must propose improvements. A community manager must therefore be proactive.

To better understand the environment in which he operates, the community manager must organize himself and be constantly monitoring. He must find out about the communication strategies that are implemented elsewhere and do research on the sector of activity in which he operates. At the same time, customer opinion must be taken into account to evolve in a positive direction.

The community manager's strategic monitoring must therefore allow him to evaluate his own content and know if it is still relevant. The brand's message must evolve, as must its graphic content and the terms covered. It is for this type of change that strategic monitoring is necessary.

The community manager must be on constant watch. He may be pushing the vice into the offices of his communications agency.

The first piece of advice we can give you is to free up time to devote yourself to the community manager. If you want to obtain results, you must look at a strategy requiring rigor and the implementation of appropriate resources. It is for this reason that community management has become a profession in its own right. There is at least one person (CM) who is responsible for establishing and applying the company's social media strategy.

Even though at first glance it may be tempting to improvise your content on social networks, you must establish a strategy. Visualize it as a road map, it serves as a guideline so that the desired discourse is consistent across all social networks.

Companies with a strong presence on social networks have a strategy dedicated to their networks which fits into a more global plan. It is therefore essential to do the same so as not to get left behind.

Above all, an objective must be SMART, it must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. A strategy involves having a goal. Let’s take the example of a communication strategy on social networks. The objectives may be as follows: developing visibility, strengthening engagement, increasing customer satisfaction.

To measure these objectives, we use tools called Key Performance Indicators, which we tend to shorten to KPIs. In our example, the KPIs used could be the following: the evolution of the number of new followers, the difference in reaction between publications, the number of comments, customer ratings.

A company can use several social networks, must make several posts during the week or even during the day. The topics are different each time, you also have to organize the next publications. In other words, if you do not plan all of the actions that are planned on your social networks, you will get lost.

A planning or editorial calendar allows you to have an overall vision of your communication. It allows you to organize yourself alone or in a team. An editorial calendar therefore saves considerable time, it helps you establish a guideline and therefore offer better quality content.

Content moderation is a thorny subject. On one side there is freedom of expression and on the other censorship. Depending on the field of activity, this boundary is more or less blurred. If moderation is necessary on the networks, it is mainly to:

On social networks, some responses can be rude or insulting, but a good community manager must always keep calm and remain professional.

We discussed it during the skills necessary for a community manager, competitive intelligence is essential. To succeed in community management you need to analyze what is being done elsewhere. So, understand what works and succeed in reproducing it while respecting the message of your own company.

As you may have noticed, community management is complex. It takes a lot of time. Both to think about the topics to address and to post publications and analyze their results. Everything is done in parallel with competitive monitoring.

By using a community manager or an agency specializing in communication, you ensure that you have regular publications on your various social networks. The writing of publications and the creation of designs will be done in-house. And you will have plenty of time to read a report which will detail the analyzes carried out by said agency. This will help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as the action plans to put in place to improve.