Social Media Citizens

Interview with Community Manager: Zack King from RPM

2025-05-21T10:45:53Z

Zack King is a Community Manager at RPM, working across a number of brands such as Captain Morgan, J&B and Clover. Zack started his career in community management at All-Leo, where he was responsible for the social media accounts for a number of popstars, such as Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis and Take That. You can follow Zack on Linkedin or Twitter.

G: How did you build your experience as community manager?

Z: I am now Community Manager at RPM, working across a number of brands such as Captain Morgan, J&B and Clover, but started my career in community management at All-Leo, where I was responsible for the social media accounts for a number of popstars, such as Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis and Take That. Understanding these vastly different communities and how they wanted to communicate with their idols taught me how to build engagement strategies around the consumer and to never stop adapting.

G: What are your top resources for community management?

Z: Subscribing to feeds, blogs and alerts is vital to staying ahead of developments and so give yourself time to anticipate and prepare for change. Sites such as Inside Facebook, Mashable and TechCrunch are excellent stalwarts, but Google Alerts is a very powerful yet often underused resource.

The best resource will always be the community itself. Spending time becoming part of the community you intend to manage is vital to understanding their expectations.

G: Who are your favourite community managers/strategists or community management case studies?

Z: As a Firefox user, I’ve found the @firefox_answers Twitter account very helpful. Their replies are always quick and clear, which is all brands need to do to satisfy the demands of a community.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

Z: This all depends on what you want to do with your community, as each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, Facebook provides great opportunities to tap in to the power of advocacy, while Twitter’s real-time communication and simplicity allows for lightning-fast viral reach. Company websites almost never facilitate real-time, two-way communication but as Facebook’s social plug-ins become more widely used, it is likely this will change.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

Z: Great content is the most important factor. In 2012 we’ll see a trend towards higher quality embedded media, as channels become adept at hosting and displaying media seamlessly. But no matter how simple the content, if it’s what fans want, the community will work.

G: How do you attract new community members?

Z: There are two distinct methods:

Paid for and organic advertising. Paid advertising yields great results but can be expensive and risks inflating numbers with members who have no real emotional relationship with your brand.
Organic growth will occur when fans recommend you to their friends. As this kind of recommendation is built on trust and word-of-mouth, it’s highly valuable to brands and statistics around organic growth, such as virality, ‘people talking about this’ and reach are worth paying close attention to.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

Z: Conversation forms around shared passion, so establish what drives your community and steer discussion towards your community’s passions. They may be varied but will follow a theme. For instance, if you are managing a community for a cycle manufacturer, then topics such as weather, road safety and other outdoor pursuits will be likely to get fans involved.

G: What kinds of content do you share and post most often on the community platform?

Z: Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm gives greater prominence to pictures and videos than it does to simple status updates and comments are worth about three times that of a ‘like’ in terms of increasing the post’s rank. So create posts that demand opinion and don’t be afraid to post content that is simply fun and irreverent. Content that has little to do with the brand reminds fans that the community is being run for their enjoyment and not simply for their business.

G: How do you reward your community stars?

Z: As I mentioned previously, advocacy is very important. Identifying brand advocates and rewarding them will do wonders for both the community and sales. Tools are available (eg Syncapse) that allow advocates to be quickly identified.

G: Does the size matter?

Z: A larger community means your message reaches more people but says nothing about how engaged the community is. Clicking ‘like’ on a Facebook Page or ‘follow’ on a Twitter Page takes little effort and does not mean the fan/follower will pay attention to your content.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management? What should companies do to avoid them?

Z: There are a few:

Delayed responses. Fans (and potential fans/customers) may only see a post in their feed for a matter of hours. If you always take five hours to respond, you’ve missed your opportunity.
No tone of voice. Getting the tone right can be a delicate matter involving gaining the trust of the client. But this is no reason to post generic, unimaginative responses. As fans will detect the lack of enthusiasm a mile off. Injecting personality is fundamental to engaging fans; you don’t want your community to become the social media equivalent of an automated telephone system.
Automatic posting. There are a number of services that allow you to schedule in your future posts, to save you a little work. There are times and places where this will be necessary but should generally be avoided, as it disconnects the Community Manager from the community. After a post, the Community Manager should be busy listening and responding to feedback. If posts are made automatically, this crucial period becomes too easy to neglect.

G: Do you have any social media crisis management experience? If yes, what is the best way to approach the problem?

Z: There should always be crisis management system in place. Negative stories can go viral in no time at all; yet have the potential to be seen in a positive light if handled correctly. As a Community Manager is representing the brand, the process of escalating and reporting crises is vital to ensure clear lines of responsibility and scope are in place. If things do go wrong, the Community Manager will be the first person considered when apportioning blame!

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

Z: Many businesses are investing in social media after being told this is what they need to do, yet know little about it themselves. They are naturally wary over whether this is a sound investment and require tangible data to demonstrate its worth. The size of the community, along with the number of likes, comments and retweets will tell some of the story, but analysing the data on a deeper level will reveal interaction rates, viral reach and online noise. This holistic approach will increasingly be demanded, as companies become more in-tune to the benefits of social media.

Interview with Community Manager: Monika Katkute from LBi

2025-05-21T10:46:04Z

Monikas Katkute is Community Manager at LBi, one of the largest digital agencies in Europe. She is responsible for managing social communications on behalf of leading beer brand. Also, Monika is developing two ventures: Bit greener – sustainable business directory & community and Craft Fields – marketplace & cultural space of Lithuanian artisans. You can follow Monika on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook or her blog.

G: How did you build your experience as community manager strategist?

M: I’ve started as community managers for a non-profit were I had loads of flexibility and community support. It was a volunteer position and I do miss the simplicity of it.

G: What are your top resources for community management?

M: Oh, it so depends on the topic & client. It may wary from The Next Web to Design Milk or Guardian.

G: Who are your favourite community managers/strategists or community management case studies?

M: Personally I admire personal & funky brands, including innocent team, guys behind Skittles. As an individual voice, I adore to Bri Emery from Design Love Fest.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

M: The best place to build a community is a place where you find them to be – maybe its forums, or closed social networks. Research and talking prior to blind launches is key.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

M: Relevance, passion, sincerity & fun.

G: How do you attract new community members?

M: Via engaging campaigns, conversations, competitions. Sometimes paid media can help to break the ices.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

M: Ask something they care about.

G: Does the size matter?

M: Do believe engagement, not size matters.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management? What should companies do to avoid them?

M: Community managers might become very personal or add too much of their own style while forgetting what is the way of talking. Tone of Voice document could help.

G: Do you have any social media crisis management experience? If yes, what is the best way to approach the problem?

M: Be calm and use common sense. If you have a solid community, they will always help you and protect you.

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

M: Depends on the community. Depth of community matters as well as organic growth. Sales should be included as well. There are some great tools, such as Campalyst, who can help you measure ROI from various perspectives. I suggest giving it to professionals before you’re lost in metrics.

Interview with Community Manager: Robyn Tippins from ReadWriteWeb

2025-05-21T10:46:20Z

Robyn Tippins is a community manager at ReadWriteWeb with 15 years online marketing experience. Robyn is an author of Community 101 book. She has blogged for blog networks and corporations, podcasted for small and large businesses, advised social networking sites, and worked with Fortune 500 companies, including Yahoo!, Intel, MTV, ATT, Fleishman Hillard, Behr Paints, Current TV and Get Satisfaction. You can follow Robyn on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook.

G: How did you build your experience as community strategist?

R: I began as a volunteer on AOL back in 1996. My duties there were mostly board management related, though I also hosted and moderated online chats. In 1998 I launched a startup making cloth diapers. I had learned as a forum moderator that it was important to be a part of the community and to be an expert in your field. I laid both foundations before I started marketing my product. In our first month we did $30k in sales, which is more impressive if you realize I was 23 years old and had spent nothing on marketing.

Very soon thereafter the dotcom bubble burst, and so did my startup. However, I wasn’t out of work long as folks who had heard about my ‘grassroots marketing’ skills, as they were called then, wanted my help. Over the years I’ve worked with small companies and large ones, and have enjoyed every minute of it.

G: What are your top resources for community management?

R: I stalk Seth Godin and Andy Sernovitz fiercely. Otherwise I just watch my RSS feed for ‘community management’ and check out what people are discussing. I use these to propagate my newsletter. There are a few certification courses now for community professionals. I wrote and teach the one at Get Satisfaction. The Community Roundtable offers one and so does the Pillar Summit.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

R: It really depends. Ideally, placing the community on your own site allows you to own your content and to be in complete control. However, control comes with headaches so if you know that this community is not always going to be a top priority for your company, I’d suggest an offsite community. It’s also easier and faster to build a community off of your own site, for most. But, you can leverage some of the social aspects by using social plugins/APIs in your community to connect to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ (once they have a good API).

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

R: At the bare minimum, you’ll need to provide tools that work and great documentation. If possible, add some seeded topics and conversations. I’d expect that the first few months most of the conversations in a new community will be from you and your friends. However, once a certain threshold is met, the community will start communicating more. With continued encouragement, soon they’ll make up the bulk of the conversations.

G: How do you attract new community members?

R: If your community has passion, they will share. That sharing will attract new members. If you’re not seeing enough sharing, you need to work on your passion levels.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

R: Use storytelling to paint a picture. Spotlight members with extraordinary circumstances. Encourage a debate over a political issue. Just make sure that whatever you do fits into your community. If I moderated a parenting site, I’d probably not ask for opinions on NAFTA, as that is off-topic. Also, any time you bring politics into a forum, you’ll increase both traffic and abuse at similar rates.

G: What kinds of content do you share and post most often on the community platform?

R: In my current position I am the community manager for a popular tech blog, ReadWriteWeb. Most of the posts I share are in reference to our articles.

G: How do you reward your community stars?

R: We occasionally give away Tshirts or event tickets. Over the holiday season we partnered with a geek toy provider, ThinkGeek, to give away some cool gifts to readers who answered trivia questions correctly.

G: Does the size matter?

R: Small communities are close knit and fun. I’d say you’ll probably struggle with selling the importance of the community to your bosses if it’s very small. In a small community you’re always going to be working to grow it. Large communities will keep you on your toes, but you probably won’t get to know everyone as you know them in small community. In a large community, your efforts will be focused on abuse and support. It really depends on what you want to do.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management? What should companies do to avoid them?

R: How they handle negativity can be a big mistake. I never delete negative posts unless they violate our guidelines. It’s always best to admit mistakes, but if only one person has a problem with you, posting a blog post about your error is a mistake. Work with that person one on one for resolution.However, if dozens of people are clamouring for an answer, trying to hide discussion is a no-no. Answer quickly to stop the anger before it starts. Be honest, be frank and fix the problem.

G: How do you manage social media crisis?

R: When I was as a large company a few years ago, an event we sponsored got out of hand. Pictures and videos were distributed that made us look as if we condoned and encouraged bad behaviour. Though most of the people in my team wanted to address it, we were unable to do so because PR thought it would die down.In hindsight, I should have pushed harder for my own views. I regret that I didn’t make them understand just how important it is to quickly address such issues, especially when they have such a large impact on your brand.

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

R: I measure it by:

Page Views
Engagement (likes, shares, comments)
Subscriptions (RSS, Newsletter)
Followers
Edgerank Score

Interview with Social Media Manager: Layla Sabourian-Tarwe from Yahoo!

2025-05-21T10:49:42Z

Layla Sabourian-Tarwe is Senior Social Media & Online Community Manager at Yahoo! with 5 years of leadership experience, living and working in Europe, Middle East, Latin America and the US. Previously, Layla has been an International Community and Communications Manager at eBay , Community Manager at Logitech and Global Partner Network Community Rep at Oracle . You can follow Layla on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and her blog.

G: What are the key ingredients of successful social media strategy?

L: The ingredients of a successful social media strategy would vary based on your company’s objectives, just as the 3 main ingredients of a recipe would vary depending on what you are trying to make! Thus, I would find it difficult to narrow down my answer to only 3 key ingredients, however, if we take the example of Yahoo! where some of our objectives include driving engagement with our most active users, and providing new product education, I would suggest the following 3 ingredients:

Humour: Here is an example of a fun campaign we did here around Yahoo! Mail

Sharability: As fun as your campaign can be, it is no good unless it is easily shareable, so make sure the campaign can easily be shared via your most relevant channels. In order for your fans and followers to share your content, they must trust in your brand or the source of content, and feel motivated to share.

Clear Call To Action: Guide your audience as what it is you want them to do. Don’t just post a link, instead, share a short message that encourages your users to watch the video/read the article and highlight the benefits of watching, reading, or sharing.

G: What are your favourite tools which help to implement and monitor the social media strategy?

L: I have just begun using a trail version of SproutSocial and simply love this tool. It is perfect for enterprise settings where you can assign a Facebook/Twitter Post to specific individuals within your organization. I also like Netbase for sentiment tracking. PeopleBrowsr is another favourite tool of mine, it’s end to end social marketing solutions assemble the collective intelligence, identify its most influential people, and make them accessible for analysis and engagement.

G: What do you have to provide to a community to make it work?

L: You have to provide a platform to your community to gather and interact, and you must seed fun, interesting and useful content for discussions.

G: What strategies do you employ to attract new community members and keep them engaged?

L: Every day, I develop fresh, relevant content that is worth talking about. I remain active in our community, leveraging social media to connect with my audience and joining their conversations whenever appropriate. If the current members feel enticed to participate in the discussion or comment, they tend to share the discussion with others who might not be already a part of our community. I often ask our users what they think about current products, and what they want to see added to Yahoo! An example post could be : “In December 2011, Yahoo! Mail expanded to 27 new markets and 22 new languages. What is your favorite new Yahoo! Language? What language would you like to see next?”

G: What are the most common mistakes in social media strategy planning and community management? What should companies do to avoid them?

L: I think the most common mistakes companies make these days is to launch a social media strategy without having clear objectives—or launching a campaign just because they feel like they have to!Forming a social network presence takes more than simply creating an account on Facebook or Twitter, and just because you have presence on a social channel, doesn’t mean your audience will come. The other common mistake I see is by trying to save money, many companies hire inexperienced recent graduates who call themselves Community Ninjas and Social Media Gurus—and who might have had some serious time in their hands to learn how to best navigate the latest social media tools such as Pinterest, and schemer, but as the old saying goes: You get what you pay for! Just as you would not want your Marketing Strategy to be run by an inexperienced student you should take your community management seriously and hire someone with tact, experience, passion, diplomacy and the talent needed to create valuable content and nurture important relationships.

G: What are your favourite social media campaigns?

L: I might be biased here, but the Travelling purple Yahoo! Mail box series generated a lot of fun and chatter on our social channels. Even though it did not specify a clear call to action, it reached our objective which was to showcase the fun, friendly face of Yahoo! Mail. Not a day has gone by since one of these videos is not retweeted or shared by our community.

Diesel’s 2011 QR Code campaign was a dazzling way of incorporating real world content into the community member’s virtual profiles! (Users would take a photo of the QR codes of their favourite jeans in the stores, and share them with their friends online).

Ignite Social Media Agency created a campaign for Samsung TV’s “Like It, Reveal It, Win It” The campaign featured a weekly product giveaway on Facebook that incentivized users to participate regularly and invite their friends to join. After liking the Page, users were able to enter to win Samsung products by unblocking pixels, and recommending the contest to their friends. The more pixels the members unblocked, the higher chances to win the hidden weekly prize! Apparently the company saw an increase of more than 12,000 new fans within the first week and a half of the campaign!

G: Do you think targeting influencers is overrated or is it an important part of Social Media Strategy?

L: Once again, this is really relevant to your overall objectives. In general, I am convinced that it should be an important part of any company’s Social Media Strategy. Here at Yahoo! we launched a campaign called “Yahoo! Insiders in which we targeted our influencers and asked them to post content regarding Yahoo! search for us. The results revealed that whenever one of our insiders (or influencers) shared a link, it received 4% more impressions than when we published the same link on our own social channels.

G: What are the key mistakes when targeting influencers and how to avoid them?

L: There are a few of them:

· Approaching the influencers without having built a relationship first. (First you should read at least 3 of their blog posts, follow them on their twitter, etc, and engage in conversations with them).

· Approaching the influencers with topics they might not be interested/in agreement with.

· Not highlighting the benefits for the influencers…focusing too much on what is in it for you, but not making it clear as how their participation can also benefit them.

G: How do you measure the brand influence (main indicators)?

L: I don’t think we have completely figured this one out yet. But there are various tools like Klout, Kred, and Peer Index that can help you measure your influence over time.

G: Who/What is influencing you the most on Social Media Properties?

L: I am influenced by many people J But make a point to read at least one or two articles/week posted by the following:

· Guy Kawasaki

· Ted Rubin

· Jeff Bullas

G: How do you measure social media ROI?

L: We evaluate what our original goals are for each campaign and track performance measured against our forecast. For most campaigns, it makes sense to track is visit-to-lead conversion. For some campaigns, (for instance Yahoo! Mail), our goal was not to attract new users who converted to Yahoo! Mail, but to engage with our most invested users, and thus the way we measured our success was to evaluate how certain campaigns increased engagement and activity with our current users. We watched site behaviours from our social media traffic, and tried to understand where the social media leads enter, leave, and spent their time on our site. We also analysed what type of content addressed their specific needs (example: tutorial videos regarding certain features).

G: What are the trends that you are following at the moment and feel most passionate about? Why?

L: I run a monthly meetup during which we discuss top social media trends, if you are ever in the bay area you should check it out: http://www.meetup.com/First-Thursday-Silicon-Valley/

During my January meetup, we discussed Location-based social media: The technology in mobile devices becomes more powerful and affordable as we speak. A large user base with geographic ties allows brands to target small, qualified groups of users with unique and relevant messaging.

Socialization of search: Search engines started using social signals in their ranking algorithms in the end of 2010. Yahoo!/Bing continue testing and perfecting their algorithms, the search results are bound to become more personal for us, based on our location and social connections.

Role of Video in Social Media: I am certain video is set to be one of the leading social marketing trends moving forward. With emergence of collaborative video editing tools such as WeVideo, I expect community generated video content emergence to be on the rise, and the launch of a new series of viral campaigns that will surprise us all.

G: How the growth of social commerce and location based services will affect marketers? Why is it important?

L: With multiplying of mobile platforms social commerce and location based services will increasingly become more popular on mobile devices—thus marketers will have to adopt accordingly. Unlike other forms of digital marketing, mobile marketing involves a layer of intricacy due to the difference in platforms, and thus marketers will have to work even harder to come up with innovative campaigns that address all platforms/devices.

G: Is social media integration becoming a quality standard of successful company?

L: Social Media is no longer perceived as the risky investment old-school CMO’s feared. More and more companies have successfully integrated social media in their marketing strategies, and judging from the number of recruiters that hit me on a daily basis for a Social Marketer role, I assume those who haven’t yet, realize they are behind the game and working towards it.

Interview with Community Manager: Will Long

2025-05-21T10:47:35Z

Will Long currently works as a Freelance Community Manager across a range of clients. He started his career in PR, working for a number of music clients before progressing to work on the Virgin Media and Sony accounts at Mark Borkowski’s agency in London. You can follow Will on his blog, Twitter and LinkedIn.

G: How did you build your experience as community manager?

W: I started out working in PR. Initially through music then on to consumer brands such as Sony and Virgin Media. I’d always had an eye on Social Media, managing communities at uni and for other project I was involved in. I worked on a few Social projects in my last PR job and began seeing the benefits more and more compared to what I was doing. The opportunity cam up to become a Community Manager and I took it, now I’ve just turned Freelance.

G: What are your top resources for community management ?

W: For me, I can’t live without Hootsuite. Whether it’s using the geo-search option or simply scheduling content, it’s become a tool I’m familiar with, so I guess I rely on it. I’ve just got in to Buffer as well, it’s a fantastic app/plug-in that allows you to line up tweets and the click of a button – been waiting for something like this for years! People-wise, I’m a big Gary Vaynerchuk fan. Yeah, he’s excitable and over the top but what he says really resonates with me. I always keep an eye of Edelman Digital’s blog too, just seems to have good content for CMs. Keep an on the #CmgrChat hashtag on Twitter too, always interesting.

G: Who are your favourite community managers or community management case studies?

W: There’s so many Community Managers doing a good job it’s hard to pick one. I love Skittles Facebook Page for it’s pure randomness, which always gets good engagement. Same for Dr Pepper and Oreo – who have a good range of content. One of the best in the country at the minute is Manchester City Football Club; they have a stream of original content and place the Page as a fan, rather than the club. It’s one of the best examples at the moment, in my opinion. My favourite example of a campaign recently is Adidas Originals at Christmas. Through an app, you could apply for Snoop Dogg to leave a friend a Christmas message… I did it and I worked. Snoop recorded “Merry Christmas to Ben” for my mate. The app was great because it shared to all your friends on several occasions and the element of surprise really worked.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

W: Each community is different and each social network is different so it really depends on your needs. I think Facebook is a great place to start if you’re B2C, the stats speak for themselves. It’s not worth trying to reinvent the wheel, the platform is there so go to the masses rather than trying to get the masses to you. Tumblr for me is the number one blogging platform if your brand is more niche – fashion, art, media, design etc – and you can build a vibrant community there. Pinterest is going from strength to strength, if you’re in retail I’d head there quickly. Twitter brings something else to the table, so it all depends on what type of community you want to build and your objectives.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

W: An engaging platform. A platform for open, meaningful discussion, original and exclusive content and a reason to return. This can be done in multiple ways from incentivisation (money off vouchers or contests) to exclusive photos/videos, for example. First and foremost you need to put your community first and get inside their minds. If they don’t like what you’re doing, they won’t come back – so give them a reason too.

G: What kinds of content do you share and post most often on the community platform?

W: Visual content tends to work the best. Images or graphics are easy to dissect and process so it’s worth investing in those – they also score high for Edgerank, Facebook’s algorithm. Videos are also sharable but they need a hook, that’s where your wit as a CM comes in – well, I hope I have some anyway!

G: Does the size matter?

W: Numbers in communities aren’t really relevant, as long as we’re not talking one or two people. How engaged is your community is the real gage for success. You could have a huge community and not anyone talking about you – so it’s pointless. Alternatively, you could have a small to medium sized community – say 1,000-5,000 fans – and have more people discussing the brand. Subsequently the reach is far greater. Aim for engagement, as engagement will bring growth anyway.

G:What are the most common mistakes in community management? What should companies do to avoid them?

W: Bad hashtags. A pet hate. Research your hashtags and think about why you’re using them… to get exposure right? Unless you’re grouping a custom made conversation, make sure your hashtags are regularly used and aren’t full of spam – just by clicking on them. Another is links, mainly on Facebook and Twitter. Make the user experience as frictonless as possible, don’t put “to see our store click on the tab on the left hand side below the profile pic within the menu blah blah” – use a link to direct your fans otherwise they might get bored and leave.

G: Do you have any social media crisis management experience? If yes, what is the best way to approach the problem?

W: Things can escalate pretty quickly in communities so it’s worth having your community guidelines in place from the start. Create a set of rule and regulations and host them somewhere your community can refer to. In the event of a crisis any breaches of policy can be dealt with and refer to the guidelines. If a crisis occurs, take 15 minutes to listen. Identify the “haters” and identify the “lovers”, if there is any! Once you know the problem, think of a solution to stem the flow. My experience led to a live Q&A with the CEO of the company on Facebook. It didn’t work… but it did show we cared and were listening. We then identified the “haters” who were rational and engaged in conversation, giving them a sounding board and allowing them to have their say. We also identified the “lovers” and encourage as much conversation as possible. Whereas as before the “lovers” felt overwhelmed by the “haters”, a shift started to occur and other fans began to speak up. Those who broke guidelines has comments removed or were banned from the Page – I must add that banning is a massive last resort but persistent swearing or abuse must be dealt with to protect your community.

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

W: Engagement, “people talking about” or reach – seeing as our business is essentially friend to friend marketing. You’ll always need number of fans or followers to keep clients happy but engagement will draw more people to your community. Services such as Klout are great to quantify your Social activity into one figure – I really feel analytics should be made as simple to understand as possible for clients. At the end of the day, if you’re doing your job right the numbers will speak for themselves.

Interview with Social Media Manager: Hristina Hristova from Acronis

2025-05-21T10:47:57Z

Hristina Hristova is currently working for Acronis as a global social media manager for consumer products. Hristina’s background is in social media and publishing – Hristina was a founding member of Groupon UK, and worked for the social buying giant as a social media strategist. Hristina’s interests include all things digital, web and graphic design, as well as typography. You can follow Hristina on Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest .

G: What are the key ingredients of successful social media strategy?

H: Just three words: creativity, communication and collaboration. The first step is to build a team of inspired creatives – people who not only understand how social media works, but also have the ability to create unique concepts. Content is what is most valued in social media, and without creativity you are unlikely to go far.

In terms of communication, it is important that any brand’s social channels reflect its values, principles and customer promise. To achieve this, social media managers must ensure they involve themselves with as many aspects of the business as possible. Communications between departments, as well as between users, are both equally crucial for a successful strategy.

Lastly, collaboration. Create brand awareness on social media and work together with friend-brands. Create joint campaigns and competitions.

User engagement (and community growth) is how you measure success in social media, and you cannot have these without creativity, communication and collaboration.

G: What are your favourite tools which help to implement and monitor the social media strategy?

H: My favourites are:

Klout – to know where you stand in relation to your peers and competitors.

Google Insights for Search – to help you schedule content and understand keywords better.

Google Analytics – this one is obvious. Measure the impact of your social media efforts in terms of visits and sales.

Hootsuite – organise and manage content across Facebook and Twitter.

Conversocial – I would only recommend this customer service tool to large organisations with multiple and/or international accounts.

Twittercounter – great way to measure growth and engagement. It is also an advertising platform, which works out cheaper than buying Twitter ads.

G: What do you have to provide to a community to make it work?

H: Unique, engaging content is the basis for any successful community management strategy. I find it important to find the balance between content creation and curation, as well as the ability to make content user-friendly and shareable. Great content – whether because of its informational value or incentivising characteristics – is what glues communities together.

G: What strategies do you employ to attract new community members and keep them engaged?

H: Sharing content that is likely to be re-shared is the most obvious way to go about increasing the community’s size. Being identified by users as a reliable, interesting source will ensure your brand’s penetration into the user’s network too. Sharing plenty of multimedia, such as videos, images, podcasts, apps and articles will keep your content diverse and engaging. Asking questions and requesting feedback is also a great way to communicate and collect valuable information about how your brand is perceived, and what can be improved.

Incentives are also known as a practical way to gain following – competitions and promotions attract a large number of users – it is then up to you as a community manager to retain these people through high quality content.

G: What are the most common mistakes in social media strategy planning and community management? What should companies do to avoid them?

H: I’ve witnessed many companies who set up accounts across different social media channels, and update them irregularly and inadequately. Each social media channel has its own recommended posting frequency, which is something that is often neglected. One solution would be to create a weekly or daily content schedule – and stick to it. Planning should be an essential part of any strategy.

Another mistake is to mix up the content shared on different channels. For example, many companies have automated their tweets to be published on Facebook too. Although this saves time, you’d have to be cautious about applying this method – content on Twitter it shorter and sharing on Twitter in general has a different purpose than sharing on Facebook or G+. My recommendation would be – if you do want to share the same content – then change the format and the message.

Another common mistake is to leave user comments unanswered for long periods of time. This looks really unprofessional, and can even slow down the community growth process, as new users would be more unlikely to join.

Not knowing your brand identity also seems to be an issue for many – some companies simply do not understand how to include social media in their branding strategies, or worse – do not have one.

G: What are your favourite social media campaigns?

H: Some of my favourites include Diesel with their QR code campaign, the Heinz Get Well Soon Soup Facebook campaign and Citroen’s Twitter campaign in BENELUX.

G: Do you think targeting influencers is overrated or is it an important part of Social Media Strategy?

H: There is now a thin line between influencer and your general user – everyone is an influencer. That is the beauty of social media after all – we all have a podium and our 5 minutes of fame last a lifetime. I do believe some users should be treated differently, depending on their engagement and feedback of the brand.

G: What are the key mistakes when targeting influencers and how to avoid them?

H: The biggest mistake would be to target influencers without personification – for example, sending generic, robotic emails to bloggers . Social media is all about personality, and if you do not have it – you will fail. Other mistakes include offering payments and including cliché calls of action – gone are the days of “check it out now” and the good old “click here”. As media evolves, marketers must become cleverer in the way they communicate.

G: How do you measure the brand influence?

H: Engagement is the main currency in social media, so a week-on-week increase in user interaction signifies a successful and well-executed strategy, and it is definitely an indicator of the brand’s influence.

G: How do you measure social media ROI?

H: In my reporting, I use a number of tools and metrics, including Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twittercounter, and Klout.

Interview with Community Manager: Lizzie Gold from The Social Practice

2025-05-21T10:48:21Z

Lizzie Gold currently works for The Social Practice as their Community Manager for a range of clients. She started her career as an Online Producer for GCap Media. Later, she went on to be the in-house CM for Global Radio before moving to Yelp UK, as their Community Manager for London. You can follow Lizzie on her blog, Twitter and Linkedin.

G: What are your top resources for community management?

L: The community itself should never be underestimated as a resource. From motivation to content, no one knows more than the people who take part. What can I say? I’m a purist!

G: Who are your favourite community managers or community management case studies?

L: I quite fond of the chap who tweets about Monster Munch – but that could just be because I like those little crunchy monster paws.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

L: I love this question! Social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are a great way to build a closer relationship with your audience and customers. The definition of community however, is common ownership; on Facebook brand pages (not including purpose built apps), Google+ and Twitter, it’s difficult to create this. Posted content generates a reaction, which can be anything from a comment to a retweet. I can’t define this engagement as a manifestation of common ownership; it’s merely reactive. Saying that – I am not ruling out these platforms as a useful tool to engage with your fans, I just find the functionality is limited on them and the strict guidelines take away the freedom, creativity and ownership enjoyed by a community’s members.

I have worked on a variety of social projects; the most successful have always been on stand-alone purpose built sites. That does not mean “Build it and they will come” should be your attitude. I would seed a community on other social platforms and encourage my community members to share on these networks. It also doesn’t mean I wouldn’t search for an experienced Community Manager to curate this activity on these platforms.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

L: Ownership. As the any community you’ll find varying levels of user, you have to enable and reward behaviour from your members to generate an environment in which new members can join and other can become more active. Giving users ownership gives them a sense of pride and will work to your advantage. Every social group has its super users – the prolific faces that you associate with that community – this is not the paid community manager, these are the blood bumping around, generating content and excitement and magnifying the work that a Community Manager does. It is these users you need to recruit and nurture.

G: How do you attract new community members?

L: I’m old school when it comes to Community Management. I believe in face-to-face recruitment and word of mouth. No amount of money you throw at advertising will grow your community; it might grow the number of Fans or Followers, but not the people using your space for a common goal. That comes from recruiting believers, super users if you will, that help make the community a place that people want to go.

But how do you get these super users? With time and effort. Being a Community Manager is a lifestyle job – like leading a church or being a head mistress. Just because you’re in Sainsbury’s doing your shopping does not mean that you ignore community member Jason S. who wants to tell you about his cat’s funky breath. Every user is special and unique. The more time you spend getting to know them and communicating with them, the better your community will get – for you and your members. Oh and the great thing about these super users… they recruit new community members for you, because they believe in the common goal of the group.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

L: Look to other well established communities and forums for inspirational content and ideas. Using a RSS reader and Tweetdeck following trends and topics of interest is key to staying on top of things. I would recommend networking with influential people around your topic/genre remembering not to get too hung up on being shunned. This does happen, and the bigger you grow your community, the more industry “professionals” will start to take you seriously. Part of your job as a Community Manager is as a trend watcher.

G: What kinds of content do you share and post most often on the community platform?

L: Think about your users. How many super users do you have? How many dippers? How many floaters? How many skimmers? You goal as a community manager is to be there for the community. This means replying to question, encouraging UGC and giving them something to engage with. If you have a site full off skimmers, there is no point is reaching out for a level of engagement, which is beyond their grasp or desire. If you’ve got a greater percentage of super users and dipper, they’ll need challenges and the ability to add value to your content.
Every community platform will have varying levels of engagement from a simple up vote or like to something more demanding like writing a review or comment. Different users will use this functionality to suit them, which will give you a greater understanding of your audience and the content they like.

G: How do you reward your community stars?

L: This all depends on which community you’re talking about. What throws newbies about the social industry is the fact that there are people out there that are willing to spend hours producing brilliant content, inspiring new members and being a spokes person for a brand, seemingly unpaid. To understand this, it’s important not to forget that just because it’s online and out of the usual social environment, it does still fit into the Cost Of Social Norms theory. Simply put, the same way you will give time and energy to your friends and family, for the reward of friendship, respect, support and acknowledgement, many super users give above and beyond to their communities. Once you’ve grasped this concept, you’ll understand exactly how to reward your own community super stars and stop worrying about other peoples!

G: Does the size matter?

L: How long is a piece of string? (Apparently if you’re American, you might have to Google that phrase) Yes, it’s all rather wonderful that there are communities popping up all over the Web, but don’t be fooled; these all have a purpose. Grow brand awareness, build a customer relationship, insight into users behaviour and interests, and possibly the simplest of the all, drive traffic. Take a look at Reddit for example – this community of internet super supers have now split into sub-Reddits. This makes the community more useful to its members who use it for pure entertainment. It’s evolved though it’s member’s ownership and dedication into an internet phenomena that baffles and terrifies even the most cocky “Social Media Guru”.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management?

L: Imagine this conversation:

Brand: Lets build a community

Community Manager: Why?

Brand: Everyone else is doing it.

Community Manger: Okay

And…

Brand: Someone said something negative about us!

Community Manager: Let me delete that for you

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

L: I want to scream that this is a stupid question. What the ROI of friendship – wow that sounded cheesy. But seriously, what’s your goal or motivation? Communities are valuable to brands. When they are well, run they enable you to have an open conversation with your consumers. They are your Social Media PR force, word-of-mouth marketers and your market researchers; they are your cheerleaders and your most valuable teachers. The insights you gain from the conversations you have within your communities will be the life or death of your brand – it just depends if you’re listening to them.

Interview with Community Manager: Philip Wride at Zmags

2025-05-21T10:48:41Z

Philip is Community Manager at Zmags. Previously, he was community manager of FIFA UK at Electronic Arts and Digital Producer at The Walt Disney Company. You can Follow Phil on Twitter and his blog.

G: How did you build your experience as community manager/strategist?

P: I started at an early age (16), first as a member of forums and then rapidly moving on to contributing content and managing environments. Special interest fan sites and smaller communities with a core following were the order of the day for several years. I did however take a break to focus on the strategy side rather than the management for a 2 year period and spent that time as a consultant / strategist before diving back in to community management. I think this mix of experience; working from small sites to big communities and with a period of consultancy / strategy has enabled me to develop a reasonably strong grasp of community management and what’s involved.

G: What are your top resources for community management?

P: There are lots of great resources out there but some of the main ones I keep track of are the #cmgr and #cmgrchat hashtags on twitter and Rich Millington’s blog at Feverbee.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

P: From my experience I’ve got a jaded view of this. If you are looking to build a “community” then your own branded and dedicated space is the best option, Facebook and Twitter build audiences rather than communities (there are a few exceptions). The type and structure of a community will vary from place to place but the biggest thing is ownership, if you are beholden to a 3^rd party provider then you start on the back foot in terms of providing for your members.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

P: You have to provide a space for members to connect with the brand/community and with each other. It has to be easy to converse, consume any content, navigate and have the option for members to interact in both public and private settings.

G: How do you attract new community members?

P: There are two main routes for this; create an environment that members buy in to and an experience they want to share, this word-of-mouth promotion will drip-feed new members in to your community. The other way is external promotion. For a business that may be hitting your mailing list and making them aware that a community exists, it could be Facebook advertising if you are trying to build on Facebook. Essentially it’s about promotion to those people that aren’t yet members.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

P: This largely depends on the nature of your community and the common thread that’s their reason for being there. Finding common ground that you know will always have differing opinions is always the best way to spark a discussion.

G: How do you reward your community stars?

P: Whilst at EA (Electronic Arts) I created a group labelled “GameChangers”, this was a mix of the most vocal and influential members of the community sprinkled with outsiders; those who didn’t frequent the branded community that often but had their own communities to manage. Their reward was the opportunity to get information early, be part of the decision making process, to come in to the office to see things first-hand and generally take a step closer to the brand and product. A number of them were flown from the UK over to Vancouver to meet the product development team and exchange ideas.

G: Does the size matter?

P: Size doesn’t matter. The aim for a branded community is to ensure anyone that uses the space builds stronger relationships with the brand and with other users.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management?

P: Some of the most common mistakes I’ve noticed can be split in to the following; wrong internal department trying to create and manage a community, lack of resources and support for the Community Manager, lack of understanding of the value of a Community. To avoid them they need to do the due diligence (like any marketing project, acquisition or costly activity) before launching one.

G: Do you have any social media crisis management experience?

P: The best way to approach the problem is to plan well in advance, create a strategy of how to deal with a situation, who should manage it and what the likely scenarios are for a crisis. They can’t always be avoided but you can prepare and put processes and support mechanisms in place to deal with them.

Interview with Community Manager: Morgan Clark from Channel 4

2025-05-21T10:48:57Z

Morgan is a Community and Social Media producer with Channel 4 who also works on community and social media strategies at Mondo Management who represent talents like Orbital, David Gray, Lisa Hannigan, Ruarri Joseph and Pixie Carnation. Previously he was Assistant Communities Editor at Associated Northcliffe Digital. You can follow Morgan on Twitter and Linkedin.

G: How did you build your experience as community manager?

M: It was a lot of trial and error. I was put in a job where all of a sudden I was dealing with quite a vocal community which needed calming down, diplomacy and tact. I ultimately dealt with the community as I would any face-face situation. I wouldn’t say there is a magic key to gaining experience other than just getting in amongst the people within your site, treat them fairly and they will treat you and your organisation with respect. Like a lot of community managers I fell into this position, it wasn’t a big job at the time but it is now.

G: What are you top resources for community management?

M: E-mint, linkedin, colleagues, ex-colleagues.

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

M: Facebook is great to grow numbers, but to have value I believe it is back on your own website. Facebook is the bar where you meet people and can decide if you like them/not like them and if they are worthy of your product (vice-versa), your site is your house where you invite the good people back to your place where you treat them like real friends.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

M: A reason for being there, value, importance and comfort.

G: How do you attract new community members?

M: Offer something that no other site is doing. Don’t be patronising, be real and invite advocacy. Make your community work for you.

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

M: Topical, relevance and importance. Don’t ask your community a simple question like how is the weather where you are? What did you have for breakfast? Boring, irrelevant and no direction of conversation.

G: What kinds of content do you share and post most often on the community platform?

M: Mostly clips, updates, breaking news, an offer of free content only available to fans like a song, etc

G: How do you reward your community stars?

M: Something nobody else can get their hands on. If it’s a preview ticket that is not for sale, an old record that was never released, give it to your fans and people who promote your content not in the hope of one day being reward but because they have been an ambassador to your product for some time.

G: Does the size matter?

M: Not at all. Everyone goes on about having the most numbers for a Facebook page, but unless that Facebook page is active it means jack. I would rather have a community that is small and active where the community is active and likes to get involved rather than a massive community that doesn’t do anything and there are no innovators within. Sadly though that doesn’t translate so much to Directors of some organisations, it’s a numbers game where it should be value.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management?

M: Be a person, not a brand. Don’t let the intern do the communication. Value the people in your communities. They invest in you, invest in them. Keep your cool with difficult contributors. Speak to people as people, be irreverent and don’t scream from the hilltops how great you think your brand is.

G: How do you recommend to manage social media crisis?

M: Deal with it immediately, don’t let time get ahead of you before it reaches the Daily Mail. Be open and honest about your mistake and mostly be transparent.

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

M: Advocacy, interaction, repeat visitors, and yes – numbers (positive growth).

Interview with Community Manager: Ben Bateman from Square Enix

2025-05-21T10:49:13Z

Ben Bateman is community manager from Square Enix. An energetic and highly talented gaming specialist interested in all aspects of game development. A Currently Community Manager for Codemasters, supporting all boxed titles including DiRT 3, Operation Flashpoint Red River, F1 2011, and Bodycount. You can follow Ben on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook.com

G: How did you build your experience as community manager?

B: I was fortunate to have some inspirational mentors but ultimately I gained my experience through practice and experimenting.

G: What are your top resources for community management (websites and people)?

B: I work in the games industry and many of the community managers tend to be quite tight knit and regularly talk with each other. I often find out new strategies or ideas through what they’re tweeting about. Similarly, I can voice my ideas and questions and people more often than not chime in with their thoughts. If I were to pick one website that I read a lot then it would be mashable.com. It’s always up to date with the latest social media, SEO and general geek news.

G: Who are your favourite community managers and community management case studies?

B: There’s so many to choose from. I admire a lot of the community and social media work done by the Xbox team. Particularly Larry Hryb (@majornelson), Dan Maher (@MrPointyHead) and Graeme Boyd (@aceybongos).

G: Where is the best place to build the community?

B: Building a place for a community is not as simple as just creating a facebook and twitter accounts, or starting a new blog. It’s important to think about the product you’re trying to build around and the audience that you’re trying to interact with. Each community you build needs to be approached separately and considered independently of any existing communities you’ve built. Does the lifespan of the product warrant a full website? Are you going to provide enough regular, unique and engaging content to warrant a blog, or will facebook suffice? Are you building a franchise? These are the kind of questions you need to be asking yourself. A bit of market research and competitor analysis can often support you in any decisions you make.

G: What do you have to provide the community to make it work?

B: Your time and dedication. If you don’t put the effort in then your community will wither and die. Providing an open dialogue with your community should always be your priority. It doesn’t matter whether you put one new asset or ten, if you don’t listen to what people are saying. Interact with them, discuss openly what they think about your brand, what you’re doing, and feed it back into your company so that you can build better content and products. The community wants to be able to trust you and if they do they will stay loyal.

G: How do you attract new community members?

B: Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck up on the idea that you need to attract new community members. While acquisition is very important you shouldn’t let it cloud your judgement. Always concentrate on of quality over quantity. Why use a marketing gimmick to generate lots of sign-up if the retention rate is diabolical? Focus on creating interesting and engaging content. Build it and they will come (and stay!).

G: What are the best ways to spark a discussion among your community members?

B: How would you start a discussion with anyone? Just start talking. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about your company or brand. If they say “This looks cool” then say “thanks, we’ve got some more cool stuff on its way”. The important thing is that you’re engaging with them. If they’ve got a question for you they’ll ask it. Just make sure you respect everyone’s opinions and as a representative, that you don’t display any strong opinions that might offend anyone or conflict with your employers. You may have “These are my opinions not my employers” on your twitter account but don’t fool yourself, you represent the brand at all times.

G: What kinds of content do you share and post most often on the community platform?

B: This really varies. In my line of work I follow the cue of PR beats and asset drops but I also have to fill the gaps. Video and audio content tends to work the best with my audience but ultimately you need to think about who you’re talking to. Are you talking to the hardcore fans and evangelists, or the broader mainstream audience? The important thing is to strike a balance between the different audiences you answer to, but don’t feel scared about mixing the content up once in a while. It’s good to experiment with your community and see what works best for them.

G: How do you reward your community stars?

B: As I work in the games industry I try to build up a community before the game is out. This can be months, sometimes even years before they get to buy it in the shops. So obviously allowing evangelists access to the game throughout development and treating them like press is a great reward. Aside from the usual material things that we can give them it’s also important to make celebrities out of them. If some user generated content stands out then why not highlight it on facebook, twitter, or your website?

G: Does the size matter?

B: You should have realistic targets set up based on any market research you’ve done. Have them in the back of your mind but concentrate on good engaging content. Your community could be slow to grow or grow beyond anyone’s anticipations. Just make sure that you have enough resources to support them properly.

G: What are the most common mistakes in community management?

B: There are always a few, but the one I see the most is deleting content. If a forum on a thread gets out of hand then close it and explain why (unless in extreme cases). You can’t educate people or expect your community to support themselves if you delete their content. Similarly if you screw up then own up to it. Trying to hide the evidence just makes you look bad, and on the internet nothing is ever hidden.

G: How do you manage social media crisis?

B: Every situation is different. Take a step back, think it through and get the key stakeholders on board. You’ll need different perspectives to decide on the best cause of action.

G: How do you measure the ROI of your community?

B: There are a lot of ways, but I think that it’s generally bad to believe that community activity can be summed up in one ROI figure. You’re building a brand, and the power of word of mouth can’t always be summed up in a number. Having said that there are basic stats tracking that can help you gain an idea of how you’re doing. Most social media networks have in-depth insights track. Try to compare previous product campaigns and timelines. Compare reach with CTR, and some basic Google Analytics. As a Community Manager don’t forget your in-built ‘sentiment meter’. Try to gauge how people perceive the content you’ve put out. You might have X thousand people viewing your website, but what are they saying about it?