Grande Guide to Community Management

Info:

Company: Oracle
Price: FREE

Content:

Community management has become one of the most important, yet least understood roles in marketing. A good community manager acts as a bridge between the internal and external stakeholders in your brand by performing three critical functions:

Customer Advocate: No matter what you sell, you have customers—hopefully, many of them. Social media has dramatically amplified the power of word of mouth. Now your customers can reach hundreds, maybe thousands of their friends—even their friends’ friends. Positive or negative feedback gets amplified and this can have either an uplifting or chilling impact on your company’s brand. A community manager monitors what people are saying about you and your competitors, initiates a dialogue, or routes questions or comments to a subject matter expert. Like a telephone operator, he or she makes sure the correct parties connect.

Company Glue: Community management is a cross- functional role that serves customers by bringing together representatives from disparate departments. A strong community manager builds relationships with research & development, customer service, human resources, product management, and, of course, marketing to make sure the information the public receives is accurate and on-message.

Creative Kickstarter: Public discussion isn’t always a cacophony of complaints. Customers often share ideas for new products, additional features, or product enhancements. The community manager is responsible for spreading these ideas internally. In other words, community managers not only spark external dialogue, they also foster internal conversation.