As you read this, hundreds of community managers are taking to their TweetDecks and HootSuites to manage social media outreach and engagement. So, is community management really dead? Perhaps not altogether, but the narrow definition of it, which has been used in the past four years, most definitely is.

What is community management? (Some people are still asking )
Community management is the act of taking a group of people and turning them into an asset that can be used to meet brand goals. It is a combination of content creation, social media management, public relations, marketing, event management, customer service and more. The exact combination, to further confuse the definition, is unique to each brand.

Brands with Killer Communities
To clarify the sometimes complex definition of community management, here are three brands that are absolutely killing it.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the surprisingly few brands that know community management goes beyond setting up Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. They have spent countless hours preparing webinars, producing blog content, sending tweets, posting to Facebook, creating videos, crafting slideshows and more. They’ve went beyond the standard influencer identification and engagement, and built an empire.

Of course, where do all of these communities lead back to? The HubSpot website, where they push traffic to purchase their all-in-one inbound marketing software. They produce quality content, build communities based on their expertise in the area and then close the circle by achieving the goal of increased sales.

2. Texts From Last Night

Texts From Last Night (TFLN) has two separate goals: increase ad clicks and increase merchandise purchases. Not only do they sell t-shirts with user-generated content on them (bonus points for selling someone else’s hilarity), but they sell a book as well. On both their Twitter and Facebook pages, you will find an advertisement for the book and a link back to the website, where you can purchase t-shirts.

Like HubSpot, they escape social media tunnel vision, which is commonly associated with community management. Social media refers traffic to the website and helps increase sales in both departments, but the real community is on the website itself. Managing the replies, comments and blog posts round out community management for the TFLN team.

3. Damn You Autocorrect

Just like TFLN, Damn You Autocorrect (DYAC) relies on user-generated content to thrive. Both brands depend on the community on their actual website more than the communities on their social media channels. Without their website communities, where would the content come from? Both serve as an example of brands that focus on internal community management, which exists separately of the social media world.

DYAC sells t-shirts, earns ad revenue, promotes an app and sells a book. The app presents a whole other community that requires management. Hundreds of comments per month provide an additional community management element as well. Once again, social media is a vehicle of community management instead of the destination.

A New Direction
While those three examples prove that community management is not dead, they indicate a clear shift. Community management can no longer be defined as merely monitoring keywords on Twitter or commenting on popular blogs, as community-oriented as that sounds. Between social efficiency, transforming business models and internal communities, community management is headed in a whole new direction.

From spending 24/7 monitoring Twitter feeds and Facebook conversations to leveraging a community as a business asset, 2011 saw a major community management transition. Whether the brands still chained to their TweetDecks and HootSuites would like to admit it or not, community management is more about achieving real-world business objectives than fostering superficial conversations on social media.

Social Efficiency
The concept of social media being “always on” is not new. However, the idea of spending hours upon hours surfing social media channels is outdated, if not dead. With time-saving social media tools, the efficiency of managing social media is improving daily. What was once an 8 hour job has been reduced to a 45 minute job (save a few unexpected hiccups).

So, what does a community manager do after those 45 minutes are up?

Internal Communities
With the advent of social efficiency, we are seeing a clear shift towards internal communities. TFLN and DYAC are obvious examples of how owned communities (communities on web properties you own) are becoming a focal point. Community management is no longer synonymous with social media management.

In fact, some highly successful community managers don’t even know their way around social media – gasp!

Transforming Business Models
All of these changes come back to the idea that business models are transforming. There is no clear-cut definition of community management because each brand has its own unique goals. Not surprisingly, talking to people about the weather on Twitter is not a big concern for CEOs. Community management has become more about putting a community to work, about having it labor towards the same goals as the brand.

In 2012, we will see brands finally reach the other side of the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn tunnel.

Renee Warren

Originally posted at ReneeWarren.com

Landing Page

Start with a simple landing page that provides exciting information to grab visitors’ attention.  Your landing page must quickly answer this very important question: “What’s in it for me and what do you want me to do?”

Your landing page must focus on a single call to action, whether it be an e-mail signup, sharing function, or something else, it must be clear.  [Find more information on calls to action here.]

Current Contacts

This will never get old.  Reach out to your rolodex of friends and acquaintances to spread the word and get product feedback.

“I was fortunate enough to have contacts at a lot of agencies, so I sent out e-mails giving them a small demo of what we were building.  Their feedback has greatly shaped the current version of Geotoko.”

Other Bloggers

Getting mentioned on blogs with high traffic can be the key to initial feedback and buzz.  Think as big as Mashable and TechCrunch.  Pallin explains that Geotoko was on Mashable last August, way before they even had a proper working prototype.  They mentioned they were giving away 500 beta invites and received 2,500 responses from that post alone.

They quickly started allotting the signups to various groups based on how big or small the company was.  They then sent out e-mails with screenshots of what their platform was capable of.  When they finally launched their beta in November 2010, they got their first paying customer in less than two weeks.

Influencers (A.K.A, Awesome People with a Big Following)

Find those early adopters who you know will like your product.  Identify people who will tweet, blog, or share news about your product and offer them early access.  Exclusivity, especially for early adopters, works well.

Create a spreadsheet of 40-50 people in your network and note their social profile information, including: Twitter handle, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, e-mail address, blog link, etc.  Follow them closely on each platform.  Eventually, if you engage with them regularly, they will show more interest in you and what you are working on.

Rank in Google

SEO is still alive!  And yes, ranking high on search engines is still important.  Pallin says if you’re a consumer-focused startup, you should try to get as much press as possible.  If you can’t get on TechCrunch or Mashable, look for high-profile bloggers with good rankings and Alexa ratings.

Ask those bloggers to blog about you and what you are doing.  Some may ask for a small fee ($50 or so) per blog post, but it will be well worth it since most reviews are well written and glorious.  The best part is that the reviews will reach a large following.  These blog posts will generate backlinks to your website, which will help your site rank better on Google.  Be sure they use keywords you want to rank for, as opposed to just the name of your startup.

All these methods are fairly easy to do, but can take time.  Make sure you write a relatively simple marketing plan and share it with your entire team.  Everyone on your team, especially at a startup, is your marketing department.

Renee Warren

For further help, you are most welcome to contact me at renee@sparkboutik.com.  Spark Boutik is a global digital marketing company with offices in Toronto and San Francisco. We help brands gain attention in the digital space working alongside lifestyle brands, personalities and tech startups.

Social media updates describe cleanup efforts, research projects targeting impacts of the oil spill and calls for volunteers.

While the success of BP’s social media efforts is debatable, few people can argue the need to monitor and address online comments and feedback. As BP has shown, the biggest change may be the new challenges in reputation management. With these challenges also come new opportunities – opportunities to mitigate bad press, connect with customers and reach potential influencers in the media.

New Threats, New Opportunities

Reputation management isn’t just necessary for big corporations. Small businesses also benefit from monitoring social media chatter, whether or not they have social media profiles. Simple searches on Facebook and Twitter reveal valuable information about customer satisfaction, competitor weaknesses and new market opportunities.

When redesigning the website for their Palm Springs bed and breakfast, for example, owners of The Willows, found several glowing reviews on TripAdvisor.com to feature in the copy.  Other business owners may have dozens of bad online reviews and not even realize it.

Ignoring social media not only jeopardizes a business’s public perception but also puts it at risk of expensive lawsuits. Lack of knowledge about information shared over social media, whether by an employee or someone claiming to represent the company, does not excuse the company from legal liability for damages that may ensue.  Or worse, letting the power of the crowd take over your brand image. In the case of Tim Horton’s in Rhode Island, a last minute decision to support the National Organization for Marriage’s event resulted in a slew of comments about the company’s support of gay marriages.  The company had an instant PR disaster to deal with, to protect their image.

Online Reputation Management

To combat these threats, some companies are shaping online discussions by using social media to provide better customer service. COMCAST, for example, employs several people to monitor Twitter feeds for complaints and to provide online help.

Since COMCAST started using Twitter for customer service, other companies have followed suit, including Southwest Airlines, Home Depot, Ford and H&R Block. In fact, a Twitter-based complaint about almost any major brand now sparks a quick response from its PR department asking how it can help. This instant, one-on-one attention is often all that’s needed to turn a disgruntled customer into a lifelong fan.

Even local brands now use Twitter to address customer feedback. Stauffers of Kissel Hill, a chain of grocery stores in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, monitors its Facebook page carefully. In July, a customer left a message on the Facebook page saying the noodles she purchased had turned rancid. Stauffers responded:

We will notify the store asap. Remember that Stauffers has a 100% satisfaction guarantee or double your money back! Please stop at customer service and we’ll refund your money x 2! … it doesn’t have to be today…next time you are at the store would be fine!

The customer not only left an appreciative comment in return, but wrote an entire blog post about how the experience made her appreciate her local grocery store.

Influencing the Influencers

Another way PR firms shape online discussion is by using social media to contact journalists with article pitches and relevant details. Online service Help a Reporter Out (HARO) makes this easy by letting journalists contact a database of PR professionals with requests for sources, products and other information.

Entrepreneur Peter Shankman created HARO in 2008 to unite journalism and PR. It has since published over 75,000 journalist queries to a database of over 100,000 PR professionals. In addition to sending about three daily email newsletters of journalist queries, HARO also publishes tweets about urgent source requests. An example of one such tweet:

URGHARO: journalist@email.com needs verifiable examples of companies using non-traditional customer service reps instead of traditional reps

This gives PR firms direct access to influential content producers, while making it easy for journalists to find the right sources, even on tight deadlines.

The Bigger Picture: PR and Social Media

With these new opportunities for improved public relations, no PR firm should be without a social media strategy. This strategy may differ for each client. BP has vastly different needs than a neighborhood grocery store, for example. But in today’s world, no company – no matter what its size or scope – can afford to be without an effective social media plan.

 Renee Warren

So you’re looking at your marketing guys and you’re thinking, maybe I should dress them up in some naff looking skivvy or polo neck jumper (in black, of course) like Jobs. But you know that won’t work. So, you realize you need to hire someone a little different, someone with an edge, someone like…an authentic hipster  - to infuse a counter culture in your marketing department.

Here’s the first lesson of being hip, or a hipster if you must: it means going against the current trend, it means being self-consciously anti- whatever it is that’s happening.

When they asked James Dean what he was rebelling against he replied ‘What have you got?’

That means, paradoxically, whoever’s a hipster today ain’t gonna be tomorrow. Gonna be hard to write that wanted ad isn’t it? A hipster, according to some sources, is someone who is young, middle-class with interests in non-mainstream styles, tastes and behaviors. And hiring one is a very conscious choice: they’re going to be wearing clothes that were in fashion fifty years ago, glasses you once wouldn’t be seen dead in, and with tastes that are intentionally obscure (if everyone’s into it then it’s no longer hip). But, get this, they know it’s uncool – there’s this complicity – like it’s really bad taste, and we know that, ha ha!

I think that in a society that’s increasingly homogenized, marketed to the point of saturation, largely in agreement with its own values and tastes, the hipster credo becomes a necessary antidote. It’s no surprise that these people came into being around the 1950’s, after we had won the war and saw a wave of prosperity that seemed to promise everything and in the end seemed empty, devoid of meaning and delivered nothing. We’re looking for something real to fill that void, and if we can’t find it at least we’ll look cool disparaging everything else.

“The hipster credo becomes a necessary antidote”Anyway here are your tips for hipster startup employees:

You definitely need a hipster. You need someone who’s going to be the absolute early adopter with the (potentially) current trend in consumer products; all those endless gadgets we think we have to have now; your hipster will tell you what we need tomorrow. (As he would have already cracked open the products to dissect it’s insides)  Whatever product you’re creating should be different then the current trend: think miniature (like wristwatch) HD TV or social networking site where you never actually connect with anyone else or where the goal is to be really unpopular (except with the other really unpopular people). It must be simple yet technologically of-the-moment: these people aren’t entirely vapid and foolish, particularly when it comes to shiny accessories.

It’s a style thing, but there’ll be no particular style which you can point at. Rather they’ll have adopted whatever countercultural style has existed for the past 50 years while at the same time discarding whatever it stood for. Who is Che Guevara anyway – a t-shirt manufacturer? What does punk and grunge mean in an age when you can record, in perfect digital fidelity, noise?

Don’t expect too much work from your hipster employee. In fact, I wouldn’t even set up that cubicle. You want them out and about in the world soaking up fashion and trends so that they can reject them in a humorous and ironic fashion. This is where you need to take note. Call them in once a year: carefully examine what they’re wearing, using and doing. Don’t listen to them just take note of the main elements of their ’style’. Move fast and base your product on this analysis. And then hire another hipster – cause after that they’ll be hopelessly out of the loop.  [I am kidding about the don't expect too much work from them. The idea is that they will work, and hard for that matter, but WON'T punch in 9-5pm. They are going to work when they want. So let them]

Anyway, in all this, the bottom line is that a hipster is someone who can bring a dynamic perspective to your team. Their counterculteral views can be a the magical potion you need to take the market by storm.

 Renee Warren

The cashier’s not asking for your Visa or Mastercard. She’s talking about those ubiquitous reward cards that track how many times you might order a bagel, a latte, an ink cartridge refill, or whatever you happen to be purchasing at the time.

Buy 10 and get one free. Purchase six and get the next at half price. Promotions differ, but the concept remains the same: the store wants to inspire customer loyalty, and it’ll reward you for it.

Some people benefit from loyalty rewards and save money. Others find the cards annoying. Imagine if you could replace the process with something that suits your lifestyle better. Instead of having your card punched at the sandwich shop or scanned at the pharmacy, how would you feel if you received a mobile-based coupon on your smartphone?

Location-Based Ads: A Business Boom in the Making

Businesses are increasingly working to improve marketing ROI. A recent study by the Mobile Marketing Association shows that almost one in four adults use mobile location-based services. Nearly half of those shoppers who saw ads from location-based services took some sort of action.

Few metrics exist on location-based advertising and customer loyalty, but so far, results have been promising. Foursquare, one of the most popular mobile location tracking applications, gives its users the chance to become a location’s “mayor” by checking in frequently. Many restaurants, coffee shops and other locations give their “mayors” discounts and freebies as a reward for customer loyalty. Most recently GAP offered a 25% discount if you checked in on Foursquare. The idea was to encourage store exposure, as friends of those ‘checking in’ would see the deal and would, hopefully, also act on it.

The Proof is in the Numbers

Another great example, Starbucks, offered its “mayors” $1 off any size of Frappuccino. Since beginning the promotion, the coffee haven has experienced a 50% increase in check-ins. AJ Bombers, a burger spot in Milwaukee, reported a 30% increase in sales after offering free burgers to the “mayor” (plus free cookies to anyone who checked in.)

Not wanting to limit promotions to a select few, Foursquare lets businesses provide frequency-based specials to users who check in often. Pepsi has built upon this feature by using Foursquare to give points for each mobile coupon used. Loyal soda lovers can redeem the coupons for music downloads and other Pepsi Loot.

The promotion is designed to increase brand loyalty and also to generate valuable data about repeat customers – where they purchase Pepsi, how often they purchase and what they do before and after they make the purchase. In time, this data may help Pepsi and other businesses make location-based ads even more effective. (It’s all in the data)
Have you ever used location-based advertising to promote your business? If so, how did the marketing effort turn out? If not, do you find that location-based advertising increases your loyalty to other local businesses?

Renee Warren

You’ve probably considered your personality type at some point. But have you considered how your personality type affects your social media success?

Type A on Social Media

Type A’s are intense and hard-working people, so they likely approach social media accounts the same way. They may log in at the same time each day to post something thought-out and edited to perfection. They may take a systematic approach to growing connections and networking, adding 15 new Facebook friends every week or responding to 10 Twitter messages each day.

Type A personalities thrive on social media because they take their success seriously. In a world where many social media accounts go abandoned for weeks or even months at a time, Type A’s have no problem putting in the effort to update accounts regularly.
They may be turned off by social media’s casual atmosphere, where not everyone takes time to spell-check their status updates or respond to messages. If Type A’s vocalize complaints, they risk becoming unpopular.

Type B on Social Media

The laid-back nature of Type B’s is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to social media. Type B personalities usually fit right into social media’s casual, conversational atmosphere – if casual conversation is going on. They may also have a hard time getting their message heard.
“It appears that the more aggressive and outspoken you get, the more attention you get,” Frank Reed writes on his blog Frank Thinking About Internet Marketing . “I call this the Rush Limbaugh factor. In today’s world of ‘everyone is right. The bigger the bluster, the bigger the splash.”

Of course, Type B’s may be so laid-back that they don’t care about being heard through the din. Depending on the agenda, that may be fine. But Type B’s should approach social media with some agenda in mind; otherwise, social media may be a waste of time.

The Bigger Picture

Of course, any type of categorization is based on stereotypes. Your own personality – and your social media experience – is probably far more complex than the two described here. Use these insights as a springboard to better understanding your own social media behavior, including what you’re doing well and where you may need to improve.

How has your personality type affected your experience with social media? Or has it?

Renee Warren

When I say Elmo, you think… Sesame Street.
When I say Miss Piggy, you think … The Muppets.
When I say Steve Jobs, you think …Apple.

…I was in Starbucks this morning getting my coffee and I received an email from a friend who was announcing his resignation from his current job. There was a level of secrecy as he hadn’t made the announcement public. It made me wonder why I was one of the few selected to receive this special announcement. I checked to see who else was cc’d and was rather honoured and surprised at who else was also getting it. Then I realized that these were high-caliber, young, professionals who owned or represented a brand. He was reaching out to us for a very specific reason. It got me thinking…although some of these individuals don’t own the company they are working for, they are the face of the brand. They are the front line go to person. I wondered if these companies made the right choice in choosing such people. Although they are outgoing, intelligent, personable people, I wouldn’t say that some were the right people for the job. Perhaps I am wrong.

If you are a small business owner hiring for a brand rep., PR, community manager, community type position, make sure you select wisely as these people or this individual will be your mascot, the person and face that people will think of when communicating with or about your business. Make sure their personalities match that of your organization and that they will consistently and professionally represent your brand to its fullest potential.