A few business owners often ask me, “What do you mean by Community Management?”.
Community Management is often a term used in quoting management fees from marketing clients. As the name suggests, it describes the management of a certain community. But therein begs the question: if most of these businesses hardly even have a presence online, where is the community to manage, and why should businesses pay for such a service at such an infant stage?
Majority see community management simply as managing a branded community, defined by the fans who liked the Coca Cola page, the followers of Oreo on Twitter, or those who hashtag #Starbucks on Instagram. I prefer to see it in a different light. I prefer to interpret each branded community as part of its parent industry, and each industry is a community consisting of similar yet different communities which we call brands and its fans.
Perhaps the deeper question is, “why do such community management matter?” and “why is such a service charged to the client?” Unlike traditional marketing and digital marketing before social media, social platforms have made it easier than ever for brands to appear humanlike. Thus, it seems intuitive that brands on social media embody a social element, not just with its fans, but also with other brands and entities. Interactions with the more well-known brands would certainly give more visibility to the lesser known brands, and help them build their own branded communities. Until it becomes a giant that can ignore such unorthodox methods (which we call growth hacking), each brand should take advantage of the openness of social platforms to increase their awareness.
Most of you by now are probably feeling very uncomfortable as to how it might dilute your brand, or spoil your brand’s reputation in the eyes of the consumers. The counter argument is two-fold. First, your brand probably has less brand equity than you think. Second, that’s exactly the reason why you leave the experts to do it, and why they therefore charge you for such a service. Striking a balance between maintaining your brand’s social profile and reaching out to as many targeted fans as possible is not easy, but it shouldn’t be avoided just because of irrational fear or fear out of outmoded reasons.
If you’ve alternative views, please feel free to share it in the comments below.
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