Community Management

Venn Diagram of Samy & Amy Meltdown

Yelp may not be the go-to source for restaurant reviews. Why? Amy's Baking Company has 1131 reviews, 99.9% of which are snarky, mean, negative “reviews.” How many of those 1131 reviewers actually ate at the restaurant and how many just piled on for flash mob social media bashing? 99.9%[read more]

Even though Tumblr is often forgotten by brands, it’s still a massive community. In fact, the absence of brands (and the only recent emergence of in-stream advertising) may play a big part in the site’s continued rapid growth. More than 107.5 million blogs and 50.5 billion posts have been created on Tumblr, including the more than 70 million new posts that appear every day.[read more]

Photo credit: Dark Jedi Tumblr 

This post is a love letter to my fellow community managers, as well as a brass-tacks discussion on the practice of community management – the dark and the light side of it. It is also a call to action for community managers to take a proactive stand against burnout — while working all the time may seem like the right thing to do for our communities in the short term, burnout renders us useless to these same communities.[read more]

Write a controversial blog post, tweet someone you wouldn’t dare to on a normal day. Post content that you know will piss someone off. This is how you push the envelope in Social Media, and it is the only way you’ll learn what the boundaries truly are with your audience.[read more]

social media meltdown / shutterstock

It’s easy to read about best practices, nod your head in agreement, and then move on. But the fine folks Amy’s Baking Company are in the middle of writing a modern cautionary tale that shows just how important keeping control of your social self really is.[read more]

As you may have heard by now, The Onion recently became the latest in a string of large news organizations to be attacked and have their Twitter hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. They were able to regain control fairly quickly, but in a surprising twist, they also decided to publish a blog post detailing how their security was breached.[read more]

Facebook insights gives you a fabulous amount of information, but it is only as good as the user using it. To increase your Facebook reach, your goal should be to get as many shares, likes and comments on your posts as you can. The more you have of the "big 3," the higher your reach will be.[read more]

Marketing master? (Image: thecomeupshow / Flickr)

What if you created your own ‘Wu-Tang Clan’ of internal experts assigned to attract and build specific segments of your market? What if you leveraged the audiences they built on their own to create a powerhouse when you brought those experts and their communities together?[read more]

Chris Hadfield

Astronaut Chris Hadfield has successfully returned from a 5-month mission as commander aboard the ISS and has undoubtedly inspired a generation through his unprecedented use of social media and content creation. If you haven’t followed his exploits, not to worry, he has bestowed upon us an absolutely amazing library of content on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.[read more]

What May 11, 2013 brings to the political fate of Pakistan will be determined in some hours of having written this article. Whether that is a "Tsunami of Change" or a "Perception of Stagnation" with the same old leaders reclaiming the helm, we can be sure of the unprecedented role that social media has played in the lives of Pakistanis.[read more]

Patience is one of the hardest things to have when it comes to building online communities. Many business leaders want to believe it’s as easy as creating a Facebook page, combined with asking (or begging) for likes and within days they’ll have an instant community.The truth is that communities take time. Just like relationships are...[read more]

Annette Shaff / Shutterstock.com

Last month, Foursquare’s CEO Dennis Crowley addressed rumors that Foursquare’s growth had become stagnant, which he said simply weren’t true – in fact, they consistently see their numbers grow by 10-30% each month. However, he did admit that Foursquare was no longer the “shiny, new thing” in the world of social media.[read more]

The engagement and activation of your community can assist with virtually every stage of product development including idea generation, concept screening, concept development, commercial viability analysis, beta testing, and commercialization and launch.[read more]

Richard Margetic, Dell's social media lead

Social Media Today had a chance to sit down with Richard Margetic, Dell's Social Media lead, to discuss some of the topics that will be covered at the Social Shake-Up Conference in September, where Richard will be speaking. Here is a transcript of that conversation.[read more]

Blade Runner/Warner Bros

Guy explained that his community-building philosophy balked at Facebook’s EdgeRank when it began downgrading certain posts and prevented people from seeing the content they volunteered to see, so he turned to Google Plus instead.[read more]

Do you have access to Facebook’s targeting options for your timeline posts on your business or brand Page? Funnily enough, I’ve found that this feature isn’t enabled by default for many Facebook Pages, which means you may need to make a few adjustments to gain access.[read more]

attract fans / shutterstock

Facebook is a beast. Small business owners who attempt to tackle the beast have the best intentions in mind, but the beast inevitably wins and the small business owner gets lazy. If this sounds familiar, we’ve got your cure to improving Facebook engagement by truly understanding your audience.[read more]

“Curation is another name for editing which is another word for journalism – bringing together lots of info from one place.” This is exactly what a good community manager does as well. By allowing your community to share and discuss topics that are relevant to them, we are acting as curators. That is precisely why we have community guidelines to help us moderate and manage the members, as well as encourage good community behaviour.[read more]

People get behind their computer screens and say things to other human beings they’d never say in person. Like “real life” bullies, trolls need to get a rise out of their victims if they are to enjoy the interaction. If you spend any time online, you will eventually have trolls and anonymous people attack you. They will make you angry and emotional. They will get a rise out of you.[read more]

Publishing meaningful content is incredibly important for businesses to cultivate, maintain, and grow their business. A strong digital and social media presence can be a deciding factor for many consumers who are increasingly looking to digital and social platforms to assist them with their purchase decisions. To develop a strong social media and digital presence, it is critical for businesses to create and sustain regular publication calendars.[read more]