Community Managing Tips & Tricks

1.  Be Prompt! .. But don't get trigger-happy about answering everything immediately. I make a habit of waiting 60 seconds before clicking "Send" on a comment, reply, or message, even if I'm confident that it's appropriate to share. While it's important to stay on top of incoming messages (especially with larger brands), it's better to wait and make sure you're sending an accurate, appropriate message to a user.

2. Be Human! Feel free to add a little “personality” to your responses. People on the internet can tell if certain messages or responses are automated, and that’s a turn-off. Act like a human being when interacting with other users. Keep your language conversational, as if you were standing face-to-face with the user you’re interacting with. While it’s important to stay respectful and professional, you can do so without sounding like a robot. Ask questions and show interest, and you’ll establish a connection with your user base.  

3. Manage Your Time! It’s easy to get caught up trying to answer dozens of retweets on a highly engaging tweet, but there’s no need to let one post, one channel, or one platform take up all your time. Spread your efforts out evenly across all the channels and platforms you manage, even if you’re only halfway through responding to the comments you’ve received on a successful Facebook post. Managing your time will keep your mind fresh and keep you from using the same stale voice when you interact with users. The comments you click away from will still be there when you return to them a few hours later.  

Brian Funicelli (Senior Community Manager)

Brand Strategy Tips & Tricks

Twitter: Following twitter chat hashtags is a great way learn and interact with a community. By participating in these chats weekly your content will be reaching an ideal demographic. Here are some Twitter chats to follow - #blogchat, #MMchat, #LikeableChat, #SMOchat, #SMbiz.

Facebook: Create a content calendar that is flexible. While you want to schedule out your posts far in advance, you will want to keep some days open for any possible PR announcements, breaking news, or a product update.

Google+: This platform is ideal for long form content. If sharing an article, provide some bullet points and extra notes for you readers. Using keywords will help your post in terms of SEO.

Josh Fenster (Senior Brand Strategist)

Event Management Tips & Tricks

1) Due Diligence - Once you decide you are producing an event it’s important to source out similar events and do your research. Who's speaking, who's attending, the format of the website. Attend as many as you can to get a feel for the flow, and mood of the attendees. All of these things are important to ensure your event is relevant and can compete.

2) Relationships and Value Go Hand in Hand - It is never about the one event. Focus on building relationships with speakers, sponsors and attendees. Look at them all as partners you hope to have back year after year. On top of that, provide value. If there is value they will come back.  

3) Stay Calm and Act Natural - No event goes 100% as planned and you never know where things might go awry. Your reaction dictates the response from your staff, sponsors and attendees so staying calm and positive is a must.

4) Build a Winning Team - No one person can run an event start to finish. Work with people you can trust who work at your speed. Efficiency is key and having the right team makes all the difference.

John Zanzarella (Chief Marketing Officer)

Community Managing Tips & Tricks II

1)  Community Management à Content Creation When community managing, look at your audience through the lens of a content creator. Every customer you engage with has the potential to be a powerful advocate for your brand. Make sure to ask the right questions in order to empower these brand advocates. Humans resonate with humans, not robots. Take your learnings from the day to day interactions to facilitate ideas for future content. 2) Analytics are Essential! As a community manager, you must strive to be an expert in social media analytics. We use Sprout Social to analyze post level and page level data as a reference point in order to project success of future content. If you don't understand what and why content is resonating with your audience, you will not be able to actively increase the reach and social presence of the brand you are community managing.  

Brian Levine (Senior Community Manager)