A community manager is not just behind a screen and a keyboard! The community management of ground also offers itself to this role. Let’s find out :
The community management of land or how to leave his keyboard and his screen to go in search of engagement, content etc
I made one of my expertise in arriving in this universe, because associating the field and work on the internet represented for me the perfect balance to adopt for this job.
So do not think that a community manager is just a person spending his time behind a screen and a keyboard! His work is becoming more and more diverse and is already widely practicable in the field since the start. Let’s see how to evolve a community manager in position or diversify a little its missions to break the routine.
The community management of ground
There are at least three dimensions in the community management field, through which the community manager can extricate himself from social networks to find a real commitment with his community. As everyone knows, a community remains very volatile as long as it is managed remotely.
As a result, nothing can stop a user from going to see if the grass is greener at the neighbours.
How to create a much more sustainable commitment with his community?
This is what we will see detailing three roles that the community manager can endorse during his missions.
1. Go to meet your community
The first of the 3 points in the community management field we will discuss, will address the meeting of his society to create the link. If social networks allow us to get in touch with hundreds, see thousands of people around the world, they do not connect relationships.
It can work with a few people, but most relationships remain volatile, and everyone navigates where he wants when he wants. By this, we mean that no Internet user is committed to a community to the point of remaining obligatorily faithful to it. Fortunately, moreover!
- In this case, how to strengthen this commitment so dearly coveted by the community manager?
By creating an intra-community link that is to say, by allowing members belonging to the same community to meet and exchange, which is not manageable via social networks. Meeting your city is not just a role to assign to the community manager. If he is known to users, it is only as useful, see indispensable, that the members between them also know each other.
One of the best examples we have with a brand in the community management field is Michel and Augustin. He organized about once a year an event called a night under the stars. Out of tens of thousands of applications, only about 3000 people had the opportunity to participate in this event.
It was a question of spending a night under the tent in the Parc Monceau in the middle of a set of activities for young people and adults. Each person could at leisure participate in the activities he desired and join a group with whom he exchanged moments of emotion and intrigue.
The 2016 edition of a night under the stars: Event Michel and Augustin
Here is a video of the 2016 version of a night under the stars. A few moments are enough to understand the very principle of the commission created by meeting the members of the same community.
How to meet your community?
There is no question of meeting thousands or millions of people if your community is relatively large. A few dozen are enough to create a pleasant moment to reiterate monthly, for example.
To achieve this, different formats can be exploited as the event focusing on a topic of common interest, followed by an afterword. It is about speaking 2/3 speaker on current issues for 15 minutes, for example, and interspersed with sequences of questions/answers. At the end of these small interventions, and after-work will allow everyone to exchange and thus make acquaintance.
The future community manager of the field will only have to animate the event by presenting it and making itself available for each person wishing it. By creating partnerships with food brands or actors in a neighbourhood, it is easy to mix the useful and the pleasant without seeing to spend. The place can be business premises, or a partner agency knows a bar where everyone can consume according to his means.
These small events where the speakers will also exchange gracefully, will not represent big budgets. With 300/400 €, we manage to overcome a possible lack of partnerships to buy nibbles and drinks if necessary. The ideal is to find a bar willing to receive 80/100 people knowing that everyone will consume at least one alcohol.
Afterwards, it will be a question of maintaining these events and making them his trademark to create lasting commitment with his community. It’s also an excellent way to improve your image and e-reputation.
Bringing online and offline together helps to balance the role of a community manager and further increase the credit associated with this growing profession.
A tool to manage all this?
To help you manage these events, we advise you to use the online meetup tool. It will help you manage all your members by indicating all the necessary elements like meeting place, schedules, ticketing if necessary etc
With the help of meetup, you will be able to manage all your events, and you will thus constitute a base of faithful members who will adhere to your meetings.
2. Participatory marketing: listening to your community
A community to look at more closely is a real wealth from a business point of view. If it is consistent, it can quickly become a fascinating sample for surveys, rather than paying large sums to institutes.
But it is also on his community that it is necessary to rely to get feedback on his products/services…. better yet: co-build its products/services with it. Today in all logic, we seek to please the consumer by offering the products or service best suited to his needs. To do this, many companies rely directly on their consumers to co-create, test or finalize their products/services.
As such, a community manager could very well organize internal co-creation meetings to improve the quality of what his company offers. It will be the same in terms of content or anything that aims to create significant interest for its audience.
By listening to your community, you look to the consumer and give them the importance of what we offer as a business. It is a form of engagement that places the community directly as an essential link, for the success of a company and what it offers its customers.
How to listen to your community?
In terms of the community management field, it will be here to organize meetings regularly, either around a professional breakfast or a more informal meeting in the evening. From there, it is necessary to let the community express itself on what it thinks of your products and how they could be improved.
No need to invite dozens of people, but between 8 and 15, it can be more than enough to start. To control the exchanges and to avoid scattering, it is necessary to qualify upstream and internally the elements that must include a product or service, to see if it overlaps with the community. Each new idea will then be weighed and retained to see if it is found with other members. Voting can also be done online via the entire community.
The community manager will also have the opportunity to meet his community and allow everyone to share, certainly on a smaller core but creating a stronger commitment.
3. Outside is the content!
Many community management activities allow us to go out and look for content. Every external event related to a company is already a way out of the screen and shoot some photos to share on social networks.
Among these activities we can count just a few:
- Music (all musical concerts and events to be enjoyed by its members)
- Sport (sports events to shoot and share)
- Urban construction (making the community live the progress of a construction site)
- The catering (shooting food and porn food for Instagram)
- The trip (fishing for clichés)
Each activity can at one time or another offer the opportunity to share originality, photos outdoors, a heritage to share, local dishes etc
We can also break the rigid side of a company by offering original content and related to its region (see the heritage, local artisans, many cultural riches etc.)
Think about organizing some outings to search for content on the field. The community management of land is also that!
In conclusion
Hoping that one of these 3 points will be for you, as a community manager, an opportunity to go out a little head of the screen and to seek commitment, improvement for its products/services and content in the field.
Not difficult to implement; it may also be an opportunity for you to be proactive in your direction.
