In the last 6 months or so, a lot of clients are really looking at Social Media to start initiating two way conversations with customers, prospects, partners and their industry OR they are looking at Social Media as an extension of their media campaign.
As a result, a lot of our clients are asking us how they should staff their communities or blogs or overall social media activities.
In the spirit of sharing the wealth, here is what I just wrote to a client (OK I edited out a few things and added a few points) who is planning to host a community board and a corporate blog – for the right reasons:
Here is a little more information on staffing of communities and blogs for companies we have helped:
- Since there are a few ways to staff/allocate resources towards communities and blogs, here are a few scenarios that we have seen work:
Scenario 1:
- Dedicate 1 community manager who has access to
- Legal department for fast response to community questions – within 12 or 24hrs MAX
- Business/marketing dept within 6-12hrs response
- Support who can respond to questions within 2-4hrs max
- A late night/weekend community person who can answer “urgent” questions through chat/community/twitter/etc… – this proves to be VERY useful and brings a LOT of value to the prospects/current customers who are solving issues late and on weekends – believe me they will BRAG about the service you provided on their blog/communities/intranets
- Blog – a 50% of another employee’s time who can:
- Read other blogs AND communities – especially in the tech/business work – there are a LOT of communities/bulletin boards where two way conversations are happening
- Attend blogger/community/industry events locally, regionally or nationally
- Comment on blogs
- Author blog entries
Scenario 2:
- 3 part time community managers coming from business/marketing, technical and support (where you allocated 25% of three people’s time to answer technical, support, marketing/business questions)
- 3 part time bloggers coming from business/marketing, technical & support (same as above, allocate 25% of people’s time to read/comment and author blog entries)
- So that these “part timers” do what they need to do – this responsibilities needs to be on their performance reviews – otherwise – they will not dedicate the necessary 25% required on a consistent basis.
- Once you have resources – this really comes before you decide on launching a community or blog, but in your case you are already there so – you need to develop a comprehensive community strategy as well as discusss support, PR, legal and ethics issues BEFORE you launch community and blogging activities – on that point – one mistake can become detrimental to COMPANY NAME HERE’s image and sales
- Otherwise, here are how to best unearth and utilize the information that will be exchange in all conversations:
Use a tool like BuzzMetrics, Radian6, RelevantMinds, others to run queries on:
- Company Name Here, management names, product names, articles, etc.
- Competitors, brand, product, management, articles, announcements, etc.
Identify:
- Influencers (top tier, second tier and third tier)
- Top communities (blogs & communities & groups, etc.)
- Articles that are generating conversations
- Social networks topics/discussions
- Microblogging (twitter, etc.) activity
Meet weekly/bi-monthly & quarterly with community and blog folks internally to discuss:
- Trends
- Specific issues
Strategize on how to:
- Author content
- Respond to negative/positive sentiments
- Opportunities (competitor A isn’t addressing people’s concerns, should we offer our advice..etc.)
- Involve the community with which you are engaged with into product development, business strategy, marketing, etc
- Organize regional events with other communities/bloggers to form relationships with the “communities” that bloggers and community managers are engaged with”
About the author
CEO, co-founder
William advises clients (e.g. ABC Family, ACS, Bank of America, Behr paints, Ebates, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Fair Isaac, National University, Maporama, Pleo, Plantronics, Leading Hotels of the World, Shogakukan, Sutter Home Wineries, Wells Fargo Bank) on market research and interactive marketing initiatives in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has 18 years experience as a consultant and corporate executive, with in-depth knowledge of interactive marketing in the business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and international sectors.
Before starting e-Storm, William created an interactive marketing practice for The Hoffman Agency, a global communications firm with offices throughout the U.S, Europe, and Asia. William's background also includes experience at White+Company, a BBDO company, Thomson Multimedia in Singapore and Northern Trust Bank in Chicago, Illinois.
He has lead internet marketing strategies for companies such as Affiliated Computer Services, Allstate, Bank of America, Coca-Cola Company, IKON Office Solutions, Karen Neuburger, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, National University, NetGear, The Ford Foundation, The Limited, The MacArthur Foundation, think3, Travelpod, Victoria's Secret, Wells Fargo Bank.
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Wow, what an awesome resource you’ve shared. Any company could literally cut and paste this into an email and go for the support they need to get things going. In fact I was just explaining the role of a community manager to someone yesterday and I didn’t it justice as compared to what you’ve pulled together here.
And I would be remiss if I also didn’t say a big Thank You for including using Radian6 in your recommendations. We really appreciate it.
Cheers.
David
Thanks David for the compliment – glad it was useful. Of course, we like Radian6 very much, except for that look back that is limited to 3 months – has that changed to at least 6 months? If so, would love hear!
HI William, this is an excellent overview! We have a number of customers trying to establish their staff levels and responsibilities. I know you don’t use our solution but would appreciate being able to share this. Our customers are using our system for historic trending (full access to the Online Domain since 2005) and additional Business Intelligence Analytics (geo-demographics, concept extraction, sentiment analysis etc.). Because of this, their staffing requirements become very complex so that they can truly capitalize on the value of Social Media engagement.
Thanks!
Steve Dodd
http://www.sysomos.com