Community Management Immediate Future

Community Management

Being head hunted by a leading social media agency is a massive compliment and also quite daunting. When it comes via social media, then you know you have pitched your professional personality well, that someone sees you as a potential employee! When I was originally contacted by Indiana at immediate…

To be an excellent recruiter, you must be an excellent marketer. Although the stereotypes in personal attributes to these two careers seem poles apart, the link between them is getting stronger. It is no longer about job boards or who you know (although that does play a part). It is…

Key to any effective social media strategy is the ability to monitor what people are saying about your brand across social networks, blogs and forums. There’s a wealth of data available at your fingertips – the challenge is how best to turn that collated data into real-time actions. We…

Real-time marketing is a hot topic right now. Gone are the days when it was acceptable to schedule tweets and Facebook posts to go live during an event, it’s now all about real-time social media marketing and the ability to display near-instant creativity. Social media itself is a perfect fit…

The ever dividing gap of age generation is now so evident within the digital sphere of social media. With statistics evident of teens turning from Facebook or Twitter it’s safe to ask what the social media platforms are they turning to have or don’t…

Having a firm grasp of Facebook advertising mechanics is a must when it comes to social media marketing. Any creative campaign can be turbocharged by way of Facebook ads, assuming they are managed effectively and optimised in real-time. But Facebook doesn’t always make it easy for marketeers to get started,…

Sociology is the study of social change, how we live our everyday lives and how we interact with other human beings. The evolution of the internet has erupted a social shift in how we interact and communicate, with offline human behaviour being replicated through popular platforms such…

Since the interview aired on BBC Newsnight less than a week ago, social media commentary about the Brand v Paxman debate has exploded. On the official BBC Newsnight YouTube upload of the interview, there has already been 7,562,772 views: that’s a whopping 1,260,462 views per…

Last Thursday British Gas tweeted this: Our Customer Services Director Bert Pijls will be taking part in a Q&A about our price rise at 1-2pm. Tweet your questions using #AskBG! — British Gas (@BritishGas) October 17, 2013 The company already has a…

As social media, connectivity and the web in general continue to evolve and transform our lives, the crossover between social media and behavioural science is becoming ever more evident. Even though I’m not a psychologist, I found the article written by Sean D. Young on TechCrunch a couple…

Who hasn’t been trying to monitor their online performance and hit a road block because you can’t access the proper tools? Maybe you’re up to your eyeballs in meaningless figures and graphs? All you need is a little context, some simple analysis, a general overview – but you don’t want…

© Kenichi Nobusue ”My social networks” Photo. Attribution 2.0 Generic There is no simple answer to running a successful business but those who do often rely on business instinct. It could be a sixth sense that leads you to success, but sometimes it’s best…

What is Netflix? Netflix is the world’s leading internet TV Network with more than 37 million members in 40 countries watching more than one billion hours of TV programmes and films per month. Since Netflix launched in the UK it has received a mixed response. It has challenged the…

Where would you ask a question or make a complaint about a brand? Via letter, phone call, email or social media? Customer service has rapidly progressed. Where once we would write a letter, walk it to the post office and expect a response within around 2 weeks, we now send…

Yesterday LinkedIn announced a feature just launched on the social network, ‘University Pages’ – essentially data hubs relating to universities and their alumni, from all over the world. So far, the new feature has been released to a seed number of universities including University of Oxford…

It feels like a while since I last blogged about social customer care, despite it being one of the areas of social media management and strategy that fascinates me the most. In my time spent working in social media, I’ve observed brands and businesses evolve their clunky social care processes,…

Are you struggling to find time to do everything you want to on social media? It’s not uncommon that in a busy day with meetings, planning and everything else, social media can sometimes slip down the list of things to do… However, luckily, there are ways to help. Why would…

Fresh from unravelling truth within the NHS, examining the issues of South African police and children in the Taliban, the current series of the award-winning Channel 4 documentary Dispatches turned its attention towards social media last night. In the programme, entitled ‘Celebs, Brands and Fake Fans’, the…

Social Media has become an increasingly important part of a B2B strategy, although many businesses are still finding it difficult to grasp a hold of the power in social media. Pioneering campaigns have shown that the medium plays an essential part of many organisations that want to engage with other…

Your business is full of experts. And people who know a lot about what they do is extremely interesting to others. Some businesses are starting to move towards being an authority in what they do, to get people to buy into their expertise, rather than just telling people they are…

Following on from my time spent driving the social media programme for the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit held in Monaco this June, I’ve been pondering the importance and real value of using social media effectively for events. This week, I stumbled across an infographic, titled ‘4…

Following on from Adam’s blog ‘From Monaco With Love’, and whilst I’m still buzzing from the excitement of managing the social media conversations around the IBM #SmarterCommerce Global Summit last week, I’d like to share some of the key learnings and insights the team garnered…

Social media continues to revolutionise corporate culture. It opens up new avenues of communication, breaks down barriers between employers, employees and the public, and provides new opportunities for brands to put a human face to their image. CEOs are no exception to this quiet revolution. Customers want to see that…

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” Kennedy’s inauguration speech was as relevant to the American people in 1961 as it is to the content marketer in 2013. Why? Substitute the word ‘country’ with ‘audience’…

Socialbakers recently released its Q4 results for the best and worst performing brands on social media, defined by a brand’s level of attentiveness to its community. I was immediately struck by giffgaff’s position at number four in the worst offenders list. This is a…

What can social media tell us about the sad demise of high street retailers such as Woolworth’s, Comet, Blockbusters and Jessops? Some quick and dirty research shows these high-street failures were also social media fails. There could be many reasons for their failure, not least the products they sell, their…

Accumulating connections on Google+ isn’t a problem for some brands – take Cadbury UK with nearly 3 million! But for others, growing the size of the community remains a big challenge when using Google+ Business. The art (and little bit of science) of growing the follower and fan-base for business…

I love to talk about social customer service. I think it’s fascinating and incredibly pertinent in our digital world. It also still amazes me how brands and retailers are still missing a trick! I’ve experienced this slow uptake for myself recently; waiting nearly 2 months for a replacement washing machine…

We love this recent infographic from the guys Our Social Times. With more than 57% of consumers searching online to solve customer service issues, it’s an area that just can’t be ignored. If you would like to find out more about the way social media…

Engagement is of paramount importance when it comes to getting it right in social media. Your contributions on social networks form the outward representation of your brand or company online and define how you are viewed by others. Which is why effective and compelling engagement requires scrupulous planning and calls…

You may have seen the other day that GPS navigation system Waze hit 10m users. It’s a social tool that aggregates user reports on traffic, accidents and the like. I’m a recent convert and signed up a few months ago, since…

An experimental scientist? A mathematician, an historian, an IT geek, a money making economist or socially savvy psychologist? Last week we conducted a Twtpoll to discover who you would rather employ as a social media consultant for your business. The results were eye opening. To our…

In 2004 social networks were a groundbreaking channel for brands to self-publicise and broadcast their news. Today, the dynamic between brands and their customers has shifted. Customers want brands to talk with and not just at them. According to Heather Taylor, founder of online community, RiotRemedy, today’s brands need to…

In the words of the Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Chernov: “Without content, social media is a sports car with an empty gas tank”. No one knows that better than an online community manager. But what that community manager also knows is that accelerating your social media…

Social media marketing is not new. We’re all familiar with the basics and brands are actively engaging with their consumers on a daily basis. So, why are people still doing it incorrectly? Here, we share what to do and, more importantly, what not to do when it comes to the…

In the last post we looked at figures from the twentieth century and the lessons that could be learned from their experiences when implementing brand social media training. In this post we’ll investigate some historical recommendations crowdsourced on Twitter over the…

Those looking to ensure staff are equipped to represent their brand across social media platforms could do worse than learn from some of history’s most famous and infamous historical figures. So what can your social media training learn from the past? “To be ignorant of what occurred before you…

The importance of online communities is evident to many brands. What isn’t so obvious is how you set objectives for the community and, then, how you develop a framework to measure this. What you measure depends on what you have set out to achieve. If awareness is the objective, then…

Facebook pages give brands an opportunity to build close relationships with consumers; however, they also present new challenges for online community managers. Unlike forum based communities, brands have little real ownership over the platform: posting is instant, 24 / 7, and pre-moderating is restricted. This means that the risks are…