2019 saw many brands throw out the rule book when it came to community management. Social clout and viral content seem to have finally tipped the scales and become more important factors than maintaining a consistent brand voice, resulting in some interesting social content from the most unlikely places. 

What was once merely a support function for social marketing campaigns, often considered less glamorous than traditional marketing roles, has since been thrust into the limelight and is now an integral part of any successful brand’s social media strategy. 

Traditionally, community management was a tool for customer service and retention, focusing on two-way conversation between a brand and its followers. In 2019 it evolved far beyond this. So, if you’re a community manager or are responsible for a brand’s social media strategy, here’s what we learned last year, and what you should be implementing to your approach in 2020. 

Build flexibility in your tone of voice

The goal of an effective community manager is to establish an authentic connection between a brand and its followers, embodying the tone and characteristics needed to humanise your business. More than ever, the ‘human’ element has played a vital role in building relationships with your followers, and just like a human, with complex and multi-faceted emotions, you no longer must decide if you’re exclusively bold or cautious, funny or formal. 

It’s still important to have a consistent and defined brand voice, but a rigid approach could exclude you completely from the fun and reactive side of social.

Similarly, 67% of consumers have engaged a brand on social media for customer service needs, so you can’t just be cheeky and playful all the time, sometimes you need to put your customer service hat on and manage challenging complaints in the public eye. For your followers, this needs to be a seamless transition, so a degree of flexibility is paramount when defining how your brand operate on social media.  

Take risks 

2019 saw many household names step well out of their comfort zone on social media and reap the rewards. While it’s always been true for social media that fortune favours the bold, it’s really the changing landscape of media news cycles and online behaviours that have encouraged brands to take more risks. 

Levels of content are continually increasing, as is our desire to consume the newest and most relevant information. The result is a news cycle that piques interest as rapidly as it fades. In 2013, a Twitter global trend would last for an average of 13.5 hours. In just 3 short years this dropped significantly to an average of 11.9 hours and has continued to fall. So, your reactive content needs to move at lightning speed and more than ever, the reward could outweigh the risk. 

If that doesn’t appeal to the decision makers in your agency or brand team, let the numbers do the talking. A quick glance at the difference in engagement from typical paid content vs. the seemingly organic posts from brands like KFC, who’ve been named ‘Best Brand Voice’ of 2019 by Twitter, help paint a picture of a much more cost-effective option for driving awareness. 

However, this approach to community management won’t work for every brand. For the most part the levels of risk should be appropriate for your business. Consider risk vs reward as a spectrum and gauge where your brand sits. Being proactive and using social listening to join relevant ongoing conversations can be a big enough risk for some brands and is a great place to start. 

There are businesses whose entire personality is based on being disruptive and cheeky. It’s only recently that more unlikely brands have adopted this approach for social, but the transition can’t happen overnight. The most notable brands, such as KFC, have evolved their tone very delicately over a period of time, until their edgy content seemed entirely natural, like they’d always tweeted about MDMA. 

Utilise closed groups

It’s a hard task engaging your online communities. Social platform algorithms make it challenging to even reach your audience unless you’re willing to invest heavily in paid advertising. Coupled with the growing desire for privacy and the popularity of ephemeral content, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had no choice but to adapt his vision for a more privacy-focused social networking platform. 

Where does this 2019 announcement leave us? If social media users appreciate the intimacy of communicating directly with close friends and like-minded people, then you should consider closed groups as part of your brand’s marketing strategy. Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn can help increase the reach of your content. They can also help nurture strong relationships with your followers and build a community around your brand by bringing people together who have an interest in your products, services or industry.  

Consider automation, but tread with caution 

A massive 51% of brands are currently using some form of automation in their marketing strategy. So, for many brands this is an untapped resource. Unlike traditional customer service, social media users don’t consider opening hours. This is where automation can help when it comes to community management. The intricate automation options built into native platforms such as Messenger can be a lifeline for small teams when dealing with large numbers of enquiries that could come in at any point, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Collect and use data

Many third-party community management tools such as Conversocial, Falcon and Freshdesk allow you to manually (and sometimes automatically) tag all inbound comments, queries and messages by contact reason, outcome and sentiment. This feedback can be vital for the wider business and can help shape better processes and policies for your followers and customers.  

For some brands, it’s also important to measure KPIs and metrics for social media customer service. Customer satisfaction, first contact resolution and NPS surveys are ways of measuring the effectiveness of your social customer service and are worth considering in your community management strategy if you’re dealing with a large customer base.

Give yourself a break 

Above all else, I believe this is important to consider. Growth is uncomfortable and mistakes are inevitable, but very few will cause long-lasting damage to a brand. Social media and mob mentality are practically synonymous, so you’ll rarely find sympathy from an audience online. That’s why it’s important to keep things in perspective and practice self-compassion. This lets you learn from your mistakes and move forward as a community manager and a business as a whole. 

More tips from Richard in this video, ‘ere.

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