Public Relations Principles for Small Businesses Online: Community Management

As a Denver Marketing company we understand what it means to manage community.  We don’t talk about it often but it is definitely a key to both the marketing and public relations side of a business.  Typically though this is something that a public relations specialist monitors.

This week we will look at what community management entails, how it should be handled, and why it is key for a businesses PR persona.

What is Community Management?

From a public relations and marketing perspective, managing a community is simply interacting with people.  This entails being online and ready for anything that could happen.  Typically managing a community involves keeping social media sites and blogs updated about what is happening with the company.  Answering questions posed by community members is a regular occurrence as well. This can also involve thinking of creative ways to get community members to engage the company in conversation.  The key to remember is that there is never a time where a company can take a break from community management.  The internet is a 24/7 job.  

How to handle Community Management

This seems like a simple thing to do, it has management in the title so just get someone to manage the community right?  The issue is that we aren’t simply managing conversation at this point.  We are engaging and creating conversation.  So community management can be designated to one person or multiple people but the key is to keep the conversation flowing.  Good community management has people interacting on a weekly basis.  It’s not about the quantity of people coming to the community but the quality of the conversation.  The better quality conversation the more likely community members are to stick around.  Another key is to make sure that every part of the company is on the same page when it comes to what it wants to post and have conversations about.  This will avoid any confusion down the road.  Finally don’t wait for conversation to come to the company, engage people in conversation.  This is not a place where no news is good news, an active community is good news.  Having an active community shows people joining the community multiple things that relate to the public relations part of the business.

How proper Community Management builds a company’s PR

Obviously simply having a face within a company’s community will build positive PR, but there is more than that.  When people see an active community they know that the company is personable.  People relate an active community to an educated and respectable business.  They are able to see that being involved with a company that has an active community will have strong customer service as well.  Having strong community management gives a positive face to a company that would have little to no face if they had no community or a despondent community.

This is just the beginning of what community management can do for a company.  If you have other thoughts or questions on community management please leave them in the comments below!

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