By Mina Vu
“So, what do you do?” People tend to give me a confused look when I tell them that I’m a community manager. I usually have to clarify with “I handle social media for clients.” To which the person assumes I look at pictures of cute puppies all day. If only!
As a community manager my responsibilities span more than monitoring social sites. A big part of my day involves not only managing social sites for clients, but also content curation, content marketing, SEO and website analytics.
Social Media Monitoring
Web users have embraced social networking sites as a way to interact with their favorite brands. In many cases, users value a brand’s Facebook page just as much as its official website.
Engaging with the audience is a high priority task, but people often forget that social sites change frequently. It feels like every other day one of the social networks changes its cover photo layout. If these layout and photo changes are forgotten, the formatting looks outdated which reflects poorly on the brand and makes the brand come off as not being in touch with how quickly social media can change.
Content Curation
In addition to engaging with audiences on social sites, content curation is equally as important. This allows your social platforms to serve as a news source to your followers. This is why it is so important for community managers to read read read. I cannot stress that enough. Staying on top of industry news and mainstream news in general helps you become aware of what is going on in the world around you and your clients’ industries. Real time stories or relevant industry news will gain more engagement when shared with your followers.
Some companies might be stuck in the mindset of only posting things about their company but doing this will turn off your audience. You become too salesy and clutter your followers’ news feeds. There has to be a healthy mix between sharing content with the community and talking about yourself. This is where content marketing comes in. We follow the 80/20 school of thought: 80% of your content should be solely for the benefit of the audience, while only 20% of post talk directly about the company.
Website Analytics
While we are not an agency that specializes in SEO, we have a solid understanding of how SEO is key to your site performing well in search engine rankings. With the new Google Hummingbird update, fresh content gives your site a lift when it comes to search engine rankings. However, posting content for the sake of having something new on your site will not get you far either. Quality content that focuses on one or two keywords will give your site the push it needs to move up on the rankings list.
A day in the life of a community manager isn’t all cute animal pictures on the Internet, but that is certainly a perk. Think of your client’s presence on the web as individual gears, a different gear for each platform. My job as the community manager is to tend to these pieces so that they work together like a well-oiled machine.
Be sure to subscribe to The Coop Scoop to stay up to date with our latest blogs.