Effective Online Community Managers And Their Habits.

Ever since Social Media has started to make its ground in the middle of all brand/marketing campaigns, organizations and senior managements have warmed up to the idea of actually looking towards social media and other online platforms as an important part of their brands marketing entourage. This has in return given rise to the concept of hiring “Online Community Managers”, Social Media Specialists, Online content specialists, and the list goes on.

Certain important traits which I have found to be innate in all Online Community Managers or Social Media Specialists, or should be naturally present in Community Managers are:

• They love to have conversations,time and again I have mentioned that Social Media is all about having conversations,developing conversations, starting and carrying them on. A Social Media Specialist should be able to  talk to people,start conversations not only this he should be have the quality of loving talking to people. If he is all this then your Social Media/Network page will flourish, if not…its time to think on alternatives.
• is good with analysing emotions, trust me when i say empathy can be one of your most important weapons on the social media,it allows you to understand the emotional state one is in, and create a favourable path for you to communicate your opinion and take control of the conversation accordingly. A good online Community Manager knows how to handle frustrated customers because he is able to assess their frame of minds and thinking at that very instant, therefore he knows how to handle them/criticism appropriately.
• Staying informed, a good social media manager makes it a point to stay informed about trends,major events, trends in conversations to judge where to pick up a good angle from. In other words, he/she should be hooked to the social network.
• Reflecting on the culture of your customers.Understanding the customer and what are his inclinations is a very important trait of any Online Community and Social Media Managers. Analyse conversations which go on around your page. What are your page fans talking about? what topics do they normally bring up when interacting with other fans on the page? you might want to have someone in your social media team who,if not an expert,possesses knowledge on the topics being talked about so that he can add in to the conversation, and ultimately steer it in whichever way he wants to.
• Needs to have a sense of humour,lots of it, No one likes dry messaging on Fan pages, the whole concept of a Facebook Fanpage is interacting with the fans, you need to interact with the fans using techniques which develop conversations and a flow of comments,opinions and preferably,ideas. Having a sense of humour helps in breaking the ice,getting information which the brand might be able to use for future, and pretty much an honest opinion from the users.
• Word-play: perhaps one of the most important traits in an effective Community Manager is that he knows how to craft conversations, content and statements. Always remember, in order to get “inside” information out of the customer/user, one needs to know how to angle a conversation in such a way that the information which he/she requires falls right in his/her lap. in other words an effective community manager will always be a good Wordsmith.

Without Limits…Without Boundaries

Its been quite some time since i wrote a post. So as a jump starter for gaining that posting momentum again i thought of starting with something light today. No Content marketing strategies, or how to “WOW” online audiences, this post is dedicated to simply casting a stone on how far and wide is the reach of the social media, and any/every content produced online, and how it just cannot be kept hidden from public/people anywhere in the world.

Talking specifically about Epic content websites/engines such as Youtube where content pools extend into gazillions of videos and other interactive content available to audience worldwide, content stealing, idea ripping and idea duplication cannot go unnoticed. To ALL THE BRANDS/MARKETERS /CREATIVE AGENCIES out there, people do find out when a particular concept has been ripped off an international campaign, or when a complete international commercial has been duplicated onto a local brand communication/advertisement.

People cannot be made a fool of anymore simply because of the fact that:

1) Online resources for content searching and researching are mostly crowd sourced and hence open/available for use by anyone at all.

2) The biggest online resource pool for ideas is Youtube itself and hence its quite evident that someone is bound to run into a “rip off” you agencies make out of various international ads/campaigns.

people, and more specifically people related to creative fields such as marketing and advertising need to realize the fact that online content sources are made without keeping limits or boundaries in mind when it comes to sharing content ,so if a video is made in Pakistan, it would take less then an hour or so for it to go global and be watched by millions of other users on the internet, and out of those millions there are going to be at least a couple of thousands who would catch it IF its a rip off of some other campaign or idea, and hence would start a new thread of sharing but this time around that thread would not be so positive, rather it will be filled with critiques and negativity for the Brand,the Agency and the ultimately the company.

Its better to be cliched honestly than ripping off content online and duplicating it. not cool 🙂

Content Marketing Success.

I read a very interesting post on content marketing the other day and it talked about how to position your content marketing strategy to really hit it where it counts with consumers. just to summarize it lets look at some of the things I learned from it.

Design means a lot: your content is far more interesting to read and a lot more receptive for the reader if it has visual appeal to it, remember the reader/audience might not be big on reading lengthy articles, while if these articles are complimented with visual aids, (infographs,pictures,GIFs) it hold the audience concentration in one place and allows you to get your point across more efficiently.

Use all aids: like i mentioned above about how to give a thought into putting some design in your content, adding visual aids pretty much goes hand-in-hand with this, use videos ,animations, call-outs to make your message more interesting to the audience.

Don’t force feed: the basic rule of marketing, which is to make profits and sales is always there somewhere in the head of a marketer,but when it comes to content marketing this changes a little.With content marketing you need to follow a more subtle and in-direct approach to selling your brand, content marketing should aim at educating,informing and entertaining the audience so that they themselves are enticed enough to inquire about the product or service and then allow themselves to experiment by actually using it. Going in with a “hard-selling” strategy will not allow you to approach audience/customers in a unique manner and you will end up as just another orthodox marketer trying to force feed your brand into the customers mouth.

Don’t keep them waiting: Most marketers do not realize when writing content that on the digital front, information needs to be fast and complete, and there has to be as much IMPORTANT information as you can put in when writing a content piece. What you need to do is to maintain the audience attention and make them go through as much information as they can WHEN they are in their “content reading mode”, provide links to support your article,give them hyper-linked content so that they can look into something right there and then. Don’t lead them on and don’t make them wait give them all important information all at once.

Sharing is caring..literally: Your content should be easy to share and go around, “liquid” content should not only be in terms of smoothly flowing and connecting but also in the form of easy sharing.

This is it for now 😀

Content Marketing Ideas Worth Putting to Use.

Time and time before i have mentioned, that social media is all about interacting and making connections, creating relationships and expanding your network. Traditional marketing loses out on this one aspect, as it falls dead on its face when it comes to creating a relationship, they “think ” they are establishing a relationship but the truth is that they really aren’t engaging enough with their customers, especially engaging with the customer in his own settings, (home,cafe,office,hotel room), Social Media does all that and much more.

You see its all about building a relationship with your customers and prospects that helps in building trust and turns prospects into buyers and customers into brand custodians,ambassadors and high value repeat buyers. How do you do that? by talking to them,engaging with them, and providing them with what they want to know, in the manner they want to know it…providing them with SUPER CONTENT.

Content Marketing is all about creating compelling,Liquid ( contagious,viral) content and just spreading it like wild fire over the internet.

you start this by first just asking the customer for his permission that you may send him content, this could be through asking them to like your page to deliver them with information and content which they would want to read and watch. Content marketing is not an easy job there are certain challenges which you need to face in order to construct good compelling content. these challenges start with actually finding the inspiration to generate ideas for content, then create it,make it relevant, how to resource it in the long term, and finally managing and moderating it.

The Multi-Media Reign

Traditional marketers do not put heavy faith in alternative media like videos and rich messages since they kind of consider it to be a temporary blip/ bubble in marketing which might fade after time. What they need to understand is that compelling content needs to be in more than one form, textual content just doesn’t cut it for audiences anymore,they need visuals,they need video,they need something to interact with something to “experience” the message with, hence the use of alternate media while making content is advisable, use photos,videos,animations and it WILL work.

in short here are a few ideas for creating compelling content.

Idea: Include images and Photos

Idea: Create a “liquid/contagious” Online video

Idea: Design visuals/grpahics which would explain the content in a better way

Idea: Use Infographics-the hottest trend in content nowadays 

Idea: Create Blog posts or e-Excerpts which are well structured, and relevant.

Hopefully if you guys delve into these elements in a little more detail you will understand what and how useful content marketing, more specifically compelling content marketing is.