community managers

Three Trainings Every Community Manager Should Consider

Companies can also arrange themselves differently, to better learn from the world outside. ~Karl Heiselman, Wolff Olins

SUMMARY: Faced with the challenges of an increasingly segmented digital landscape, community managers must know their customer, know their content, and know their internal team. The following three trainings apply to these needed areas of know-how.

1. SOCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 101: Covering the full range of social media monitoring options and market research training. This workshop trains staff how to creat social network analysis reports and generate insights and recommendations from social data. The course is highly focused on actionable intelligence, INCLUDING how to apply social business intelligence to the practical needs of running and growing a business.

RESULTING CERTIFICATION:
• Use of social media monitoring tools. Knowledge of different options available and hands-on training in the various tools.
• Market research skills basics, including social data research report writing, how to segment data into specific categories relevant to business needs, and how to derive insights from aggregated social data
• Strategy creation, including creating recommendations based upon customer/competitive insights.
• How to present findings in a concise fashion to the various silos at a brand headquarters, to agency staff and to the directors of a brand.

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2. CONTENT MARKETING 101: Covering the complete set of content in the Content Grid v2.0. This workshop is a complete training in how to create and place every single content piece in the Content Grid. A particular focus is placed upon practical step by step production of each content piece, along with tactics for where, when and why to use each piece of content.

RESULTING CERTIFICATION:
• Full understanding of the Content Grid v2.0 and how to create each social object on the grid.
• Training in the social channels related to specific social objects. How to set up these social channels, when to post the social objects, how often to post the social objects, how to schedule automatic updates to social channels using social management software (HootSuite).
• Each student will work on a specific set of social objects and learn how to produce each of these important communication vehicles.

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3. SOCIAL BUSINESS 101: Covering internal culture change related to doing business within social networks. This course teaches managers and corporate leaders how to adapt their business processes when entering social networks. Every silo of a business is covered and trained in the benefits and uses of social networks. A particular focus is placed upon elevating internal collaboration and software/process related to weaving the silos together as a team.

RESULTING CERTIFICATION:
• Training in the various methods used by the Chief Collaboration Officer to facilitate conversation between the silos in a major corporation.
• Training in how to promote and grow on-going conversation between the silos at a major corporation or brand for the purpose of presenting a unified message in social networks.
• Training in how to involve the Compliance Department in cross-silo decisions related to messaging in social networks. Further training in how to present reports and udpates to the Compliance Department so that speedy decisions can be made AS RELATED TO on-going messaging in social networks.
• Training in proper risk assessment PRIOR TO launching a full-blown social presence for a brand.
• Training in how to handle typical customer and internal objections to basic social media marketing practices such as the use of Twitter, the value of on-going monitoring and the use of social project management tools like HootSuite and BaseCamp/SalesForce.
• Training in the basic social business software suites, who the vendors are and the comparison between these vendors. Training in how to present this software to senior management and how to begin cross-silo set-up of social business software (example: Jive Software).

ABOUT C.O.I.N.S. – A CLOSING THOUGHT:
COINS or Community of Interest Networks, ARE essential venues for product and service innovation, as well as customer relationship building. A community of interest is definied in Wikipedia as “a community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about the given passion, but may know (or care) little about each other outside of this area. Participation in a community of interest can be compelling, entertaining and create a ‘sticky’ community where people return frequently and remain for extended periods. Frequently, they cannot be easily defined by a particular geographical area.” This describes precisely what we are seeing in social networks like Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook with specific groups and lists.

No-one can contest that we currently live in an era of massive “COINS” presently via online and in digital social networks. Brands and corporations now recognize the value of orienting their core Business Process Management (BPM) around social business sensibilities. Community Managers are an essential bridge to the customer base and stakeholder community in a Community of Interest Network. Community Managers facilitate conversation, growth and listening within these social networks. Community Managers are the core individuals in charge of fostering unity in groups, lists and forums online.

Social Fishing Rods: The W’s of Social Intelligence Gathering

The W’s of journalism can be a great starting point for asking questions in social intelligence projects. See below expansion of the W’s for social intel, business intel and general social media monitoring work.

Note that the trend in 2011 will be towards integrating “action buttons” WITHIN social intel panels so that community managers can take meaningful and potent action on real-time intelligence.

Another take on this is that actionable tools like BuddyMedia will integrate increasingly powerful business-related intelligence within their already robust metrics panels, informing pre-campaign strategic process and whole-campaign adjustments. Research.ly is an example of a tool where one receives real-time intelligence from social networks and can act on that intelligence using a Twitter posting field.

Punchy insights from real-time data will inform strategic thinking AND the functionality of “social action” buttons used by non-analytical/non-technical Community Managers. Social Intel Tools will merge with Social Management Tools.

▪ WHO:
•Who are your current followers? Who follows them? (GIST)
• How can I take all of my connections established using social media + my contact database, and visually map out a path from my organization to those individuals/companies that will be beneficial to our initiatives?  How can I clearly identify the connection paths, labeling what type of connection it is, and the role of the individuals? (PeopleMaps)
•Who is talking about your brand/product/services/employees? (Social Listening Tools)
•Would any of these individuals make good brand ambassadors, community managers, or customer advocates?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious, Research.ly)
•Which of your current followers are already key influencers in your niche or a related vertical?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious, TwitterGrader, Research.ly)
•Who influences them? And who influences those influencers?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious)
•What Twitter lists are these influencers on or following?
(Listorious)
•How influential are those people in your niche?
(Klout)
•Which of these influencers receive tons of comments?
(ConvoTrack, Technorati, Listorious, CoComment, Backtype)
•Which have tons of followers?
(Listorious)
•Who are the top influencers for your niche?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious)

▪ WHAT:
•What are your stakeholders/fans/allies saying about you?
•What questions are they asking? (Quora)
•What are customers feeling about your brand/product/services/employees?
(One of the world’s greatest experts in the field of discovering sentiment and feeling – Life Analytics)
•What reactions do these stakeholders/fans/allies have about your brand/product/services/employees?
•How can you engage your followers/key influencers beyond a passing mention of the brand/product/services/employees? (Consume Brian Solis and Seth Godin material).
• How can you engage your employees/team members in more effective collaboration and gain insight based on collaborative feedback? (Spigit, 37 Signals)
•What percentage of the conversations are positive, negative or neutral?
•What are the actions of “peers” or the circle of customers around the brand/product/service in social  networks?
•Are your customers/typical purchasers active in social networks? What is the ethos of their online culture?
•What are useful resources to research your brand/product/services/employees/vertical/niche? (Social Tools, Twitter Tools, The Journalist’s ToolBox, TwentyFeet, SproutSocial, Research.ly)
• What apps might provide access to my ideal followers/customers/fans/influencers? (AppData)

▪ WHERE:
•Where are your stakeholders/fans/allies located in social networks? (Flowtown, IntroMojo, GIST)
• Where do I stand in relation to my competitors in terms of traffic, share of voice, engagement? (Compete, Alexa, Klout)
•In which of the following are the conversations happening about your brand/product/services/employees?:
-Twitter (Listorious, Twitter Search, Twazzup, Topsy Search)
-Facebook page-threads, Facebook groups, Facebook Key Influencer wall-threads (Facebook Insights, All Facebook Page Leaderboards, Booshaka
-blog threads (Social Tools, CoComment, Backtype)
-forum threads (Social Tools, CoComment, Backtype, Board Reader)
-web communities (Joongel)
-top-of-mind comment threads (Board Reader, Social Tools, CoComment, Backtype)
-video comments/shares (YouTube Keyword Tool)
-photo comments/shares (Flickr Advanced Search)
-presentation comments/shares (Slideshare search window, Scribd search window)
-LinkedIn groups/comment-threads
-location-based networks (4sqSearch)
•Consider the relative merits/benefits of joining a well-followed conversation vs. creating one.

▪ WHEN:
•What time of day are people talking about you?
•What time of the week/month/year?
•Are the conversations event-driven?
•Are the conversations cyclical/seasonal?
•How do you keep the conversation going during the off-season/non-event times?

▪ WHY: (beware of analysis paralysis on this category!!)
•Why are there spikes in conversation around your brand/product/services/employees?
•What events occurred, what specific words were said, what personalities were involved?
•The answers to the above questions can inform the broader WHY question.
•Create the BIG picture with a Montage (FuseLabs Montage) or hashtag/@-sourced/RSS-sourced real-time publication like Paper.li. Publish all of your findings as a report. (How to Write and Publish an eBook).
• Leave where you are and begin something new. Learn how at Startup School, at Seth Godin and through Tim Ferriss.
• Stay where you are and make a change. Same as above + read Charlene Li’s Open Leadership book + Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategist blog.

Useful questions related to assembling social intelligence reports

a. WHO are the influencers around our topic? Who do we recommend as brand ambassadors and community managers from our findings? WHY do we recommend these individuals?
b. WHERE is our tribe, our customer in the social properties, blogs and major web communities?
c. WHAT VOLUME of conversation is there around our target keywords? Where are those large volumes of conversation taking place?
d. What is the SEASONALITY of conversation around our topics of interest?
e. What TIME OF DAY do people discuss our topics of interest?
f. Which LINKS and SPECIFIC CONTENT are people sending to one another related to our topics of interest?
g. In which CONTEXT are the ‘keywords’ of interest used?
h. Which CLUSTERS OF CONVERSATIONS tend to gather the most interest, volume of attention and influence?
i. Which clusters of conversation are most important to our MARKETING campaign’s needs? REPUTATION of a brand? PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT?
j. Which TOOLS proved most effective in our social media property research? Were there differences in our findings from the different tools? What account can we make for these differences?
k. Which METHODS OF VISUALIZATION are most effective in getting the message across to our client?
l. What INSIGHTS are MOST helpful to our client?
m. What can we find on ALL of the above about our competitors?