Community management: tips and mistakes to avoid [Complete guide].

Looking for everything you need to know about community management? You've come to the right place. This blog is entirely dedicated to the use of social networks. And in this article we'll answer all your questions about community management.

Whether you want to become a community manager. Whether you want to manage your own social networks. Or whether you want to hire a community manager. You'll get the answers to all your questions in the rest of this article.

First of all, let's start by defining what community management is and what its main missions are.

What is community management?

Community management involves managing and animating the presence of a company or organization on social networks and other online platforms to interact with its community of customers or fans.

This is generally done by a community manager, also known as a CM. Or even one or more teams if the company is large.

The CM's main tasks

The main tasks of community management are to

• create and publish content,
• respond to users' comments and messages,
• monitor the'organization's e-reputation,
• organize online events
• and collect community data to improve communication strategy.

This therefore includes analyzing, creating impactful content and strategizing. Knowing that Instagram content will not be the same as Youtube or Linkedin content. The community manager must therefore manage many areas simultaneously if he or she is to succeed in developing brand visibility.

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Who's behind this mission?

To manage your social networks, you'll need to hire a community manager. This is the person who will be responsible for your online reputation and growing your brand's visibility. But what really is a community manager?

The role of a community manager

The role of a community manager is to ensure the longevity of your brand online by monitoring and developing your social networks.

The larger the engaged community you have, the more likely you are to make your products known and sold to the greatest number of people.

The role of the community manager is therefore going to be to create, manage and analyze the content on your networks, to define the most suitable strategy later.

For example, you notice that'one of your Instagram contents has broken through and gone viral. This single piece of content has earned you millions of views and thousands of shares. So it's in your interest to understand why it worked so well, and how to replicate the effect. That's the job of the CM.

How to become a community manager?

To become a CM, you don't need to study, but it is nevertheless recommended. Quite simply, because you need to understand the principles of marketing, communication and content creation to be effective.

Although you can learn these skills online, via private training courses or tutorials, companies that will recruit you will often prefer a degree. Your first step, then, is to develop essential community management skills.

The second step would be to fully understand how each of the social networks works. Indeed, as a community manager you need to know how these platforms work. How to publish, analyze publications, what content works best, manage ads, etc. It's an integral part of your job.

To familiarize yourself with these platforms, create your personal account and develop it to practice and have proof of your skills at an upcoming interview. A company will always trust a community manager who has developed a personal account with several thousand followers more than someone who isn't on social networks.

Once you've acquired these skills, you'll need to acquire as much experience as possible in as little time as possible. To do this, look for internships, offer cheap freelance services, apply for assistant jobs... The more active you are and the more opportunities you have to practice, the more likely you are to progress quickly. This is then what will enable you to apply for more important positions.

These experiences will enable you to develop your portfolio of successes to convince your next recruiters.

Once your profile is well developed, you'll be able to apply for more important positions in better-known companies. All you have to do is search and apply for the community manager positions you want.

It's important to note that for become a community manager and succeed in this constantly evolving profession, you need:

• to be at ease with written and oral communication
• to have project management skills
• to know how to analyze data
• to be creative and adaptable

What salary for a community manager?

Whether you want to become a community manager or hire one for your company, the question of remuneration arises. How much does a community manager earn?

Well, this will depend on many factors such as:

• Experience
• Company size
• Industry
• Or geographical location

On average in France the average salary of a community manager is between 25,000 and 30,000 euros gross per year. This can go up to 40,000 and 50,000 depending on experience.

And these remunerations apply in case you're working as an employee, but as a freelancer the remuneration can vary even more depending on your customers' needs, your number of clients and your defined hourly rate.

In France the average daily rate for a freelance community manager is between €200 and €300, and this can rise to as much as €500 for the most experienced or in-demand community managers.

Find out more here about community manager rates.

7 tips for good community management

To help you become a better community manager or recruit the right people. Here are our top tips for community management.

<1 - Be attentive

You must always be aware of what's going on in your company and on your networks. This is essential if you want to be able to devise the best marketing campaigns.

This way you'll learn to better understand what appeals to your audience and how to address your messages to them.

2 - Be responsive

The more active you are on the networks, the more likely you are to create an engaged audience. Try to respond to as many comments, messages and questions as possible, and your community will be talking about you.

You need to create trust with your followers.

3 - Create the best possible content

If you want to stand out, you need to have a strong brand image. And for that the best way is to create the best content for your social networks.

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You need to identify the needs and expectations of your target audience and create content that best meets them.

It's thanks to this type of impactful content that you'll be able to create an engaged community that grows every day.

4 - Be authentic

You need to create a community that trusts you and your brand. And the best way to do that is to be transparent. Be honest with your community and they'll follow you in the long run.

5 - Be methodical and organized

If you want to achieve the best results, you'll need to manage several projects at once. Several campaigns for different social networks accumulate and it's up to you to manage them.

To do this you need to be organized and methodical. Without this you won't be able to measure your campaigns effectively and organize your work. Prioritize your tasks and use project management tools to make your job easier.

Don't hesitate to automate your social network management too, to save time.

6 - Follow trends

You need to be responsive to your audience's messages, but not only that. To ensure that your campaigns are always topical and as relevant as possible, you need to follow network trends.

A permanent RS watch is essential. This will enable you to use trends to boost your audience or avoid big communication mistakes.

7 - Track all the data that can help you

To make the best marketing decisions and for your campaigns, you need to measure all your campaign data. Only then will you know what worked and what didn't. You can then adapt your strategy.

So take the time to set up all the tools you need to good measure the effect of your campaigns on each social network.

If you apply these 7 tips on community management, you should succeed in developing your social networks properly. It may take a little time-you don't create a community in a week-but if you persist you'll get there.

The 4 mistakes to avoid when managing your social networks

You know what you need to do to succeed with your social networking campaigns, but to succeed, there are also things you need to avoid.

So here for you are the 4 mistakes to avoid in community management.

1 - Going against your community

You're supposed to pay attention to your community and create campaigns that appeal to them. If you decide not to listen, you're taking a big risk for your business. Your community will feel abandoned and gradually lose interest in you.

As said above, you need to create a community that trusts you, so not listening to them is a kind of betrayal. Listen to your audience and adapt to them.

2 - Treat everyone the same

This may be related to listening to your audience, but you need to interact in a personalized way with each of your members.

Avoid generic messages, emails that aren't authentic or content that isn't tailored to the social network.

You need to adapt to your community on every medium, every social network and every person. You certainly won't talk the same way with a customer or with a new subscriber who doesn't really know you.

3 - Not respecting the rules of social networks.

You want to develop an engaged community, so respect the rules of social networks. Avoid buying Instagram subscribers, or Youtube views.

If you're not getting the results you're hoping for, revise your social networking strategy.

Automation tools are allowed, but be careful to choose the right tools, not all of them are viable. Here's a comparative list of Instagram automation tools.

4 - Not measuring your data

This is probably the biggest mistake you could make. Not measuring each and every one of your data during your campaigns. If you want to make the right decisions, you'll need to have accessible data, without which you'd be making all your strategic choices based on your theories. Measure all the KPI most important for each campaign.

FAQ on community management?

Do you still have questions? We'll answer them.

Does it have to be internal to the company?

Does a community manager have to be internal to a company? Well, that totally depends on your needs. If you have day-to-day needs and want to totally delegate that, then yes.

If you can afford the services of a community manager, you should hire them in-house.

If you only have specific needs of creating a few Instagram posts, or a breve analysis. Then a freelancer will do just fine.

When should you start managing your social networks?

The development of your social networks can happen quickly in the development of a business, but it depends on the strategy you apply.

If you're comfortable with these tools, you can start them as soon as you create your services or products and even before (to fund a crowdfunding campaign, for example).

If you're not initiated in this, use more traditional services to promote yourself instead. You will later hire someone to manage your social networks for you.

How to simplify community management?

Community management can be exhausting and very time-consuming. Fortunately, there are ways to save time. You can, for example:

• Use automation tools like Boostfluence.
• Use publication templates on Canva.
• Subcontract some time-consuming tasks to specialists via Fiver or malt.
• Or schedule your publications

There are hundreds of possibilities to help you save time managing your social networks.