[Build Backlinks Online] The Fundamentals of Building and Managing Your Community

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Fundamentals of Building and
Managing Your Community'


Posted by MackenzieFogelson

When it comes down to it, your job is to get stuff done. If you're in
marketing, it doesn't matter if you work in-house, out-of-house, for a tiny
company, or for the largest brand in the world.


Your job is to get results.


I may be biased, but building community sure does seem like one of the best
ways to not only keep pace with the continuous change we're experiencing in the
web marketing industry, but also to achieve big goals for your business.


There's a lot of work that comes along with building a community, and it does
take time. But it's a powerful and sustainable solution to heighten brand
awareness, build trust and reputation, establish the right connections, and
lower the cost of customer acquisition.


There's a lot of ways you can build a community around your brand. We've found
that there are some very fundamental pieces that will make building and managing
your community a success (each conveniently falling within a five-step process).

The fundamentals of building your community

We've tried a lot of things as we've helped many of our clients (and
ourselves) build community. We've found these five core steps, forming this
fundamental structure and process, to be quite powerful.




In a nutshell, here's how it breaks down:

1. Figure out your goals

Hopefully you're getting tired of hearing me say this by now, but you've got
to set goals for your whole business, and not just for SEO or content or social
media. These goals are the building blocks for the strategy and direction of
your business (not just for your marketing or your community).


You can have huge and lofty goals that are more visionary for your company and
then also smaller, short-term project type goals that you have in mind for
improving things, building things, and just overall stuff that you'd like to
accomplish. Have a mix of both. When you get to the part where you're developing
your strategy, you can prioritize and plan for accomplishing all of these
things.
Some really important things that we've discovered as we've helped companies
set their goals:



Think voice and buy-in
When setting goals, it helps with buy-in if you give everyone in your company
a voice. That doesn't mean that everyone and their mother comes to a
goal-setting meeting. You can ask individual teams to send a list of their top
three goals via email. The marketing team can organize, consolidate, filter, and
then use these suggestions as a framework for what the company is looking to
accomplish.


Mo' money, mo' problemsThe goals you set for your company need to go beyond
revenue goals. Certainly the end goal of all of this community building stuff is
to grow your revenue. Think beyond that, though, and include the direction that
you want to take your brand. Think about how you can focus more on your customer
and improving their experience.



Break it down
It's okay for goals to be high level: "we want to be thought leaders," or "we
want to improve customer service," but it's your job to break those more
visionary goals down by asking, "what does that really mean? What does that
actually look like?" This will bring these goals down to a more granular level,
so that you know what exactly what you're attempting to achieve.


When working with clients, we have found that they need our help getting
focused and setting the right goals. So we normally ask them to provide us with
a list of goals for their company as a whole (they can send departmental goals
as well), and then we do a little discovery research in order to propose the set
of goals we'd recommend working on. We present these proposed goals and discuss
them both for buy-in and to set the tone for the work that's ahead.






2. Define meaningful KPIs

Once you have goals defined, you've got to work on defining key performance
indicators so that you can actually measure the goals that you have just defined
(which translates to proving your value). The reason we define KPIs before we
develop a strategy is for buy-in. We've found that it is important to have a
discussion about KPIs to bring unspoken expectations to the surface. This
provides an opportunity to get everybody on the same page.


Come to the KPI meeting prepared with the goals you're proposing in one column
and some suggested KPIs in another. Then ask the question:


"What kind of data would you like to see in order to prove that we're
effecting change?"


This provides the C-Suite (or whoever else approves your budget) with an
opportunity to review the KPIs you're proposing to serve as an indication of
progress. It also allows them to provide their feedback for additional KPIs
they'd like to track. From this conversation you can gauge whether you need to
spend some more time on education and buy-in.


Keep in mind that not everything is easily measured. And not everything is
going to be measured in Google Analytics. Be creative with how you can prove the
value of your efforts. Avinash has some great posts to get you thinking in this
direction.


Side note: I'm hesitant to provide examples of KPIs because they are going to
be different for every company and every goal. Defining KPIs isn't easy. It's
something dynamic for which you've got to test, collect data, and adjust. But
don't adjust the KPIs to tweak data to make your efforts look good. It's okay to
own up to data that doesn't quite get you where you want to be in your initial
iterations; that's the contrast you need to figure out how your efforts need to
be adjusted in order to get you where you want to go.


3. Develop a creative strategy (and select your tools)

Now's the challenging (but fun) part. You've got to come up with creative ways
to reach these goals you've set. Develop a strategy that will serve as your
detailed road map.


Keep these things in mind as you're working on strategy development:



Strategy jam FTW
Hold a strategy jam session with a small group, and have everyone come to the
meeting with ideas ready to roll. During your meeting, don't filter any of the
ideas. Just think up a list of all the creative ideas for reaching the goals
you've set.
After the strategy jam, schedule an additional meeting to filter, organize,
and prioritize the ideas that made the final cut during the jam. This is
certainly where you match up budgets (make sure you can actually afford to do
what you're proposing), team resources, and time frames for deliverables.
Once the budget and resources have been vetted, you can throw a high-level
outline of the strategy over to your boss, team, or client. That way, if they
don't like the direction you're headed, you haven't wasted time by flushing out
any ideas in detail just yet. If you have to ditch something, no harm done. This
also provides another opportunity for buy-in because you're showing that you
value their input by asking for their feedback.
Once you receive feedback on your high level ideas, you're ready to develop
your road map in detail.


12-month vision; iterations of 2-3 months
When working on developing the detailed plan of your strategy, it's probably a
good idea to show all of the creative things you want to accomplish in the next
12 months (that vision or higher level plan), but then of course you want to
detail the first 2-3 months on a day-by-day/week-by-week basis so that the whole
team has a road map.
Working in iterations of 2-3 months toward your goals will allow enough time
to get some momentum and collect some data, but isn't so long that you can't
change course if your ideas flop and you need to do something different.
As you move along into the execution of all of this stuff, note that you'll
need to hold strategy jams every three months or so and repeat this same
process. It's a lot of work but makes such a big difference in results.


Match tools to goals
As you're planning out your creative strategy, now is the time to select the
tools that are going to get the job done. Our typical set of tools for building
community tends to be SEO, social media, content, email marketing, and outreach.
Whatever it's gonna take to accomplish your goals.


4. Do all the work in the execution step

Now that you have your plan written, get to work. Make sure the proper
tracking and measurement is set up so that you're collecting data on your KPIs.
Then follow your strategy and be consistent. People on your team (and on other
teams) are going to keep coming at you with things that will seem emergent but
aren't necessarily part of the strategy. This is where you get to tell them to
"check the goals, baby" (and the plan that you've established that will get you
there). There will be things (time-sensitive things) that may force you to
derail your strategy. But be careful to stay focused on goals and keeping your
attention on the actionables outlined according to the strategy.


Part of your execution will most certainly be the daily management of your
community (and I've provided some fundamentals on this below).


5. Evaluate your progress with analysis

Now's your chance to figure out what's working and what's not. What needs more
time? What are you missing? Analyze the data you've collected and then do
something with it.


Whatever you do, don't be lame and adjust your goals or KPIs just to make your
efforts look good. Part of the process of measuring this stuff is determining
what works. You're going to fall flat on some stuff. That's what testing is all
about (and that's why you work in iterations of 2-3 months and allow for
agility).



As you build your community (and your business), remember that these are your
bones. This is the stuff that will keep you grounded. No matter what comes at
you as you're growing your community, always bring it back to these five core
steps.


The fundamentals of managing your community

If you're working on implementing the five core steps of community building,
you've got your bases covered. So what about the fundamentals of managing this
community? What is your community manager's role? What are the key pieces that
will be part of their job? How do they play a part in this community building
stuff?


If we had to pick five things to focus on, this is what we'd choose:

1. Working with strategists and strategizing

So this is the way we work this at Mack Web, but you may have a different
dynamic (working in-house vs. agency), so you can shape this however it works
best for you.


We have strategists who are responsible for developing and directing strategy
and for analyzing everything they possibly can in order to make a difference in
our clients' businesses. In order to effectively do this and help those
businesses grow their communities, they need to work in perfect harmony with the
community manager.


Depending on who you have on your community-building team, there will be
someone (probably your CMO) who needs to operate like our strategists by keeping
their fingers on the pulse of the business, setting goals, developing strategy,
communicating with internal and external teams, keeping up on product
development, engaging with customers, and executing all of the pieces that come
along with the strategy so that everyone is getting stuff done and accomplishing
goals.


You're going to have all kinds of other people inside of your company who are
also playing a role in executing your strategy and building your community. Some
people are going to write content. Some people are going to create assets like
infographics and video. Some people are going to be reading and learning and
sharing knowledge.


Your strategist is responsible for leading this team. And of course, working
closely with your community manager to ensure that they're maintaining the
thriving flow of your community.


Certainly there is strategy to all of this good stuff. Community managers will
work with strategists to develop actual strategy and ensure that the base of
your community is growing.


2. Learning and identifying

One of the biggest jobs your community manager has (as well as other people on
your team) is to become a subject matter expert in your industry. But they also
need to learn about tangential and related industries that may become vertical
and new market opportunities.


So the deal with reading and staying up on industry knowledge is that your
community manager has to be a lot of places soaking up information that could be
valuable to your company (or your clients).


What will help with narrowing focus here (and making the time spent on social
media as valuable as possible) is identifying the WHOM:



WHOM to follow
Your community manager will be responsible for doing the digging to identify
the people and companies you need to be following on social media. This also
means narrowing down the blogs you should be reading and engaging with.


WHOM to engage with
Again, you're looking to strategically target an audience of both influencers
and friends. These are the people with whom your community manager (and of
course other key members of your team) are going to focus on building
relationships. They're going to share their stuff, ask them for feedback, and
look for ways to engage them in your community.


WHOM to monitor
Monitoring and listening is a really important part of your community
manager's work. They'll be watching for all kinds of opportunity in your
community and on social media in general (more detail on this below).


WHOM to emulate
Ideally, you'll want your community manager to find a community management
mentor. There are so many amazing community managers to learn from. Your
Community Manager will want to find a few to emulate and try the things they do
with their community. It's their job to add your company's personality, style,
and align with the goals that you are working toward.


3. Blogging

Two things here that we've found to work well for community managers in
relation to the blog:



Manage blog content
Depending on the size and roles on your team, your community manager could be
the one to manage the content that goes on the blog. They can work on
scheduling, launching stuff, and making sure there is a variety of content (see
the Knowledge Spreadsheet idea below).
Certainly, the community manager is an ideal person to engage with those who
comment on your blog. And they can also make sure that spam is being
consistently removed.


Generating content and seeking guest opportunities
Ideally you want all kinds of voices on your blog, and your community manager
is one of them. In addition to being featured on your own blog, your community
manager can be focused on finding other reputable blogs where your team can
contribute knowledge. In alignment with your strategy, your community manager
can take the WHOM they've identified (above) and seek out matches for guest
blogging.
Guest blogging on other reputable blogs is an opportunity to build
relationships with key companies and influencers. It allows your company to find
other possible communities to strategically attract to your own community by
providing them value. Your community manager can find these opportunities and
bring them to fruition.


4. Engaging, monitoring and listening, and brand loyalty

Your community manager is a bridge that connects all of the places where your
customers and community members will experience your brand. They can help build
that experience that connects the online and offline worlds with your website
and social media outlets, the blog, and any other place that is an open door
inviting people into your community and your business.


Your community manager can focus on these things to assist with engagement:



Relationships
Your Community Manager will continuously develop relationships both on and
offline. They will go to events. Talk to people. Make friends. Among the most
important friends that they will make are other community managers. There's a
kinship there that is key to forging beneficial partnerships and also learning
to be a better community manager.


Monitoring and listeningMonitoring and listening is also part of engagement and
is a big part of a community manager's role. Social monitoring and listening is
a dirty job. Seriously. It's a lot of work. There are tools that can alleviate
some of the pain, but when it comes down to it, monitoring and listening on
social media requires a real human sifting through stuff other real humans are
saying and that can be arduous. You really do have to be dedicated to
sherlocking (which is the term we use to describe rooting around and researching
and otherwise detecting) conversations, and doing what it takes to find
opportunities that can be taken advantage of. A community manager's job is to
find those nuggets of opportunity, analyze them, and put them into action.
In general you'll want to have your bases covered by listening for things
like:

Brand-specific content (brand name, product names, employee names)
Keywords (discovered through SEO research)
Competitors
Industry-specific content and other content opportunities
Relationship opportunities


Your community manager can be looking for possible partnerships, friendships,
and relationships. All ways to help people, grow your community, and build your
business.
Brand loyalty
Another way to increase engagement and accelerate community growth is by
embracing your community members in an expression of gratitude for their brand
loyalty (something Joanna Lord discussed at MozCon). These efforts need to be
tied to your overall company goals. Your community manager can research,
identify, and suggest possible ways to reward your community members and
encourage brand loyalty.
Your community manager can create a brand loyalty program. A process they can
use to decide how to reward your customers and your community (with all kinds of
swag) and when such rewards should be given out.
Cultivating brand loyalty can also come from performing "random acts of
kindness" in your community. I remember Moz doing this when my cup broke shortly
after returning home from my first MozCon conference.





Just as with engaging, monitoring, and social listening, your community
manager will want to keep track of all brand loyalty efforts so that you can
evaluate the effectiveness of this program. This will certainly be part of
setting goals, defining KPIs, and strategy development when you're back working
on building your community base.


5. Training

Whether your team is in-house or you're working with clients, education is a
really powerful part of your community manager's routine. Especially because not
everyone on your team is going to be overly excited about the power of community
and using social media.
As a community manager, you've got to rally the troops and get them to
contribute to community management efforts. But they don't need to be on social
media to do this.


I've talked about this hack before, but we've been using this internally to
manage the Mack Web community and it's worked so well for us (and our clients)
that I'm sharing it again.





This is a Community Management Knowledge Spreadsheet and it's made a
tremendous difference in the quality and variety of value that we've been
sharing with our community.


Remember when we talked about identifying the WHOM and finding targeted blogs
to be reading and engaging? Share those sources with your team (and encourage
them to provide you with others). Then ask them to contribute what they're
reading here on your knowledge spreadsheet.


Everyone in your entire company can contribute here. Your community manager
then plays bouncer and decides what is appropriate and useful for your community
(making sure it's actually a fit for your community), where it gets shared (be
respectful that each outlet has different needs), and when. Getting your team to
participate in ongoing learning is just one way to train your team ongoing and
manage your community.



There are going to be many other things that your community manager can do to
contribute to the management and growth of your community. Your community
management fundamentals may look entirely different. Again, it all depends on
the goals that you're wanting to accomplish for your business.


Wrapping it up (a.k.a conclusion)

Building a community is a great way to put integrated marketing into action
(which is what is going to help you weather the Goog and build valuable assets
in your business). These community building and management fundamentals will
help you grow your community from the inside out. They will keep you focused on
creating quality content and resources. They will encourage you to continually
work on improving your products and services. They will motivate you to engage
with and listen to your customers and their feedback. Using these fundamentals
will help your entire team â strategists, community manager, and the rest
â accomplish goals for your whole business.


Have you tested these community building and management fundamentals in your
company? What have I missed? Looking forward to our conversation in the comments
below.

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