Social networks offer great opportunities to connect with customers, fans and those who want to be. To successfully advertise for new customers and also deliver good customer service in case of complaints, a few simple rules are necessary. Here you will find 7 simple basic rules that will leave your social media channel successful.

7 tips for successful community management

In the age of social media, community management plays a particularly important role when it comes to communicating with customers and prospects while at the same time cultivating the image of one’s own brand.

Comprehensive monitoring

To meaningfully engage with the community and stay engaged, comprehensive monitoring is necessary. To do this, you should check your page at least three times a day to see what has happened. Visitors often contact us not only directly on the site, but also by private message.

Watch what your community asks, what comments they have, and keep an eye on the posts. On Facebook, for example, it’s possible for other people to post publicly to your wall. Check these posts regularly, and whether they fit your site or are perhaps spam or even self-promotion.

Fast response times

Anyone who contacts you via a social network expects a quick response; otherwise, he or she could write an e-mail. So you should make sure that someone addresses the concern within a short time and at least gives the customer feedback that someone cares.

Especially in the case of complaints, you should react quickly so that the customer does not have another reason to get upset. The Facebook page publicly states the time within which you or your community manager normally responds. Although a visitor may have to put up with somewhat longer response times outside of normal office hours, many users are also on the road at the weekend.

Additionally, you should publicly post your office hours so that your visitors also know when they can usually expect to see you.

Also, you should at least ensure a response at all, even on weekends, because the Internet does not sleep. And if you just see a new post or a response from a customer and reply to it quickly, you’re showing genuine interest. Keep discussions alive, ask questions and encourage your visitors to keep writing. This way, your followers realize that they are really in dialogue with you.

Uniform formulations & positions

Determine (possibly with your community manager, if available) what the company’s position is on various happenings or circumstances. No matter who is writing a post, replying, responding to requests – it should always sound like only one person is writing. You can also define the positions yourself, but they should also be well formulated.

Uniform and clear formulations are particularly important so that no misunderstandings can arise. Think about the sentences several times, show them to other people before you use them publicly to see if they can be misunderstood. If they are good, always use them on the same occasion and always in the same style. Save them as text modules, so you always have them at hand and can use them quickly.

You should also pay attention to activating speeches at the end of your postings. Simple questions like “What do you say?” or “How would you proceed here?” wake up the sometimes quiet community. Since man is a herd animal, more comments will then come, etc.

Set clear rules

Just as you set your internal communication rules, you should also set clear rules for your visitors. Some people seem to think that the Internet is a lawless space, but they forget that you have, for example, the domiciliary rights for your social media presence. You determine who is allowed to express themselves in what way and how – and this is where the tightrope walk begins.

If you leave offensive or inappropriate topics, your page could get a bad reputation. Remove too much and the community might complain that you’re censoring a lot and the internet isn’t there for that. This is where a community manager who takes care of such things makes sense. Trolls, name-calling, or even discrimination should have no place, because that’s the only way more people will feel encouraged to contact you.

Clarify responsibilities

Even if you have set texts for communication with your visitors, you need to clarify responsibilities in your team. Especially if you have dedicated employees who also like to participate in discussions, you need to determine who can officially write for your company. Otherwise, there will be chaos and visitors will not know who is now officially answering and who is just giving their own opinion.

Interaction with the community

Don’t just respond to your community, actively engage with them. To do this, you should know your target group exactly – analysis tools help here. Facebook Audience Insights lets you see the age of your target audience, their main gender, and the devices they prefer to use to go online. You can use that in combination with knowledge about your field for active communication.

You can also use relevant surveys or open questions on current topics.

Show empathy

This point is very important. Especially if you have reluctant visitors on your site. Listen, respond to them. If you have a lot of expertise in your area, you or a co-worker may react harshly to constructive criticism. It is therefore important to entrust the right employee with this. Especially in social media, repeated criticism should be responded to objectively, or perhaps even with a wink, or self-deprecatingly.

Give the critic the feeling that he has now landed exactly with the right person with his request. Tell him that you personally care, or that the right employee will immediately deal with this issue or case to resolve it conclusively.

Successful community management

Good community management gives you a lot more opportunities than simply advertising. Responding openly and positively to your fans builds trust in your brand, your company, and yourself. What’s important is that you mean business and don’t just give empty phrases to the community. Then you’ll soon have a larger fan base that likes to shop with you.