Underappreciated: Social Media Community Managers

1. No, they don’t play on Facebook all day.
2. They don’t spend hours just chatting with friends.
3. And they certainly don’t have an ‘easy’ job.

Your social media community manager is more than just some person who throws up memes, shares cat videos, and has admin access to your Facebook page. This is the persona who knows your brand inside and out. This is the person who acts as front line offense and defense when it comes to customer service. This is the person who, not only is on call 24/7 as community manager, but also acts as a writer, analyst, advertiser, search expert, customer service rep, and #1 fan of both your company and your customers.

Misconceptions run rampant. And despite widespread knowledge of social media’s importance to business, it is often downplayed in value, effort, and difficulty.

It’s More Than Social Media, It’s…

Social business. It’s not social business in the sense of conducting a business that supports a particular cause. It’s creating a social business that operates at its very foundation with social media and related philosophies interwoven into every customer experience.

A social business is one that recognizes the need for openness, transparency. It’s not about the technology. It’s an approach that inspires behavior rather than manipulates it. It’s about creating differentiation, influencing word of mouth, and bringing the voice of the customer back into the business.

It’s about a focus on real metrics – the conversions, the influenced sales, not the vanity metrics like ‘Likes,’ ‘Followers,’ ‘Shares,’ and ‘Impressions.’ It’s about a symbiotic relationship between content marketing and social media distribution. It’s about bringing data together and mapping the various customer journeys to automatically personalize content.

There’s no more B2B or B2C. Today according to Bryan Kramer, ‘it’s H2H: Human to Human.’

Next time you run into a social media community manager, show some appreciation. They are your teammate but unlike you their day doesn’t start and end from 9-5 and it takes a truly special, unique person to succeed in this space.

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