Dare I bring up the fact that Valentine’s Day is this weekend? Oh sure, why not?!
Regardless of whether you choose to acknowledge the holiday, it’s still going to take place.
Many kids love Valentine’s Day because they often exchange silly paper cards and candy with their friends and classmates.
As we grow older, we usually give and receive fewer (if any) Valentine’s gifts.
Either way, as adults we associate the holiday with romantic love and may even celebrate it accordingly. In my opinion though, true romance can and should be celebrated every day.
Many successful community managers also believe in the “everyday” approach for creating and sharing their brand romance.
In other words, every day is Valentine’s Day for community managers, especially when they are in love with their jobs, their brands, and their communities.
Here are three simple ways that community managers can create brand romance:
1) Woo potential clients by advocating your brand(s)
In a recent article for Sprout Social, Michael Patterson describes the role of community managers as follows:
{Community managers} create their own social personae and actively go out within the online community to connect with potential customers and advocate the brand. Community managers typically deal with those who haven’t heard of the business they work for and boost awareness for the company.
Think it sounds a little bit like flirting at a cocktail party? Yes, possibly.
But, like flirting, you never know how things might turn out.
You may possibly start the ball rolling by bringing the right brand and client together for a long-term relationship. How about that?
2) Spread your brand’s love by growing its community
When you love someone, you want everyone to know it, right?
It’s kind of the same thing when you love your brand – you believe everyone else should, too.
Community managers who focus on growing their brand’s communities benefit the brand by spreading their love even further.
Having a satisfied, and loyal brand following is important for many reasons. Among those reasons is that strong brands with supportive communities enjoy greater networking opportunities as well as increased business prospects.
Sookie Shuen provides the following advice to community managers who want to grow their brands’ networks:
A good community manager should grow your networks by engaging every day online (via forums and owned communities) and offline (via events, conferences, and meet-ups). They should also, of course, craft status updates, posts, and tweets social media depends on sharing excellent content. They should also increase your Facebook fans and quality Twitter and LinkedIn contacts. Quantity is important, but quality is crucial.
Source: DigitalDoughnut.com
3) Create trust and integrity through communication and engagement
Contrary to popular belief, successful community managers do not spend their days just posting memes, quotes, or sales messages on their brands’ pages.
Rather, they take the time to learn what their communities really want to read and see on social media (among many other things!).
Community managers must also remember they are always representing their brands when posting content.
Community managers also communicate with their brands’ followers by responding to online queries and comments as quickly as possible.
Another part of communication for community managers – which might be the most important – involves actively listening to their communities.
Making regular connections and having two-way conversations goes a long way towards earning a community’s respect and loyalty.
So, are you a “romantic” community manager, or do you work with one?
What are successful examples that you have seen or used for creating brand romance? I’d love to hear about them – please feel free to leave a comment!
P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day!!!
See you in the social sphere!
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: How Community Managers Create Brand Romance
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