I sat down for a conversation with Carmel Baran, who has been accompanying community managers since 2017, and I left with a sea of ringing insights for the rest of the way.
Communities or not to be?
Insights into community management in the digital age (Photo: Unsplash)
When does community management become a thing?
"Community management, with all that it implies, is part of the marketing system," says Carmel.
"Of course, this can also exist in other contexts, but in the business world, where most of the interest in the field comes from, it is based on marketing."
"Community is something that has always existed, but in the last 5 years, since Facebook changed their vision to community first, it put the spotlight on the business potential of communities. Until then, the emphasis of the marketing funnel was always on how to get as many interested people as possible and convert them into customers. The world of marketing was busy with arrivals and conversions, and customer retention (retention), which is all that happens after the conversion, is hardly discussed."
"In the last 5 years, there has been a serious shift towards the issue of retention. After years of campaigns, leads, conversions and all the tinkering with data and looking coldly at numbers, suddenly there is a great thirst in the marketing community for interaction and connection with people. Instead of working on "how to get" the customer to click or buy, the community manager creates for him an experience of contact and connection, because in the end we are social creatures. We prefer to cultivate relationships and create value."
"Whoever produces campaigns, no matter on which platform, is not really producing value, he is working on psychology. A community manager produces a lot of value, experience and connection, these are much more attractive things. Most of the community managers I meet have a strong passion for the field."
Carmel's journey in the community world started as a side hustle, long before it became a buzzword.
"Each time a different need arose and according to it I gathered people and data and formed a group. I did it without anyone teaching me any kind of methodology. It almost always started online and went offline, but of course it also happens the other way around: first you meet people offline and then you collect their phones to connect them to the community."
"Since the Internet has been around, evolution has been quite simple. It started with Google and continued to websites and forums like Orange and Mint. Then Facebook and the like arose and suddenly we had a clan fire. The topic of groups began to gain momentum and reached a meteoric rise from the moment Facebook announced that it was going to be on the front, because it realized that there The central value is found. People are already tired of scrolling through the feed. Some have moved to Instagram or Tiktok, and all the essence that remains of Facebook is the community."
"When you have a community or two or three that you believe in and you make meaningful connections there in the real world as well, you get a much more tangible value. Everyone has these few groups that can bring them value from the connections that are created, especially in the local and professional communities."
"Of course, it doesn't end with Facebook. There is also WhatsApp, which is a significant arena, and there is also Discord, Telegram, LinkedIn, and even Twitter, which recently released a feature that is a kind of version of communities within Twitter. Every major platform today tries to appropriate it for itself, but Facebook was and remains the most significant in this field."
Limited exposure and group inflation
In the groups of community managers of Carmel, essential issues arise every day that the professionals deal with on a regular basis.
When I asked to know which topics are repeated the most, Carmel says:
"The critical topic that all community managers talk about is exposure. Historically, the biggest problem with promotion on Google was that anyone who had an old site that was promoted and linked enjoyed a significant advantage and it was difficult for newcomers to catch up the gap. A similar thing is happening on Facebook now. Those who have strong groups with many people enjoy a huge advantage, but if someone new wants to create a group on Facebook and reach a similar volume, it is almost impossible. The same is true for Amazon, those who started late lost and year after year It's getting harder."
"As a result, a whole field of trading in digital assets has been created. People understand that a Facebook group that already has activity, momentum and data is an asset for anything, and that you can buy it instead of starting from scratch."
"If we go back a few years, when Facebook launched the business pages, there was a lot of hype around collecting likes, whether organic or sponsored. Brands collected likes like crazy and reached beautiful numbers, and then the moment came when Facebook started charging money for exposure. It was a knife in the back to the brands and they did it in a very smart way because they became a monopoly. Except for a few companies that did a boycott at the time, everyone lined up and realized that there was nothing to do because they had no control over this media."
"From that moment on, attention shifted to groups, because people realized that there you can get organic exposure for free. Facebook responded by gradually and systematically lowering the exposures that managers received within their groups, and this trend continues to this day. In fact, as of today, exposure is the most critical issue that all community managers talk about on him".
"Another phenomenon that has developed over the years is the inflation of groups. Every year, hundreds or thousands of communities are opened, more and more people join, but their attention cannot be divided between them all. So at the same time that people started to count the groups they join, exposure decreased. All factors These together have led to a situation where a community manager who was used to receiving hundreds of thousands of exposures for a post, today barely gets exposure and longs for a solution."
Increasing exposure and allowing platform dependency
Like many community managers who have learned to understand the problematic nature of dependence on the platform, Carmel also strives to act independently as much as possible and reduce dependence on Facebook's monopoly.
"The term DATA INDEPENDENCE means that I own the data and I do not depend on any intermediary to decide how much exposure I will get. A community manager who knew how to do it as early as possible, did not fall asleep while guarding, and nurtured the database, is today in a much stronger position in terms of exposure, monetization, And in terms of his ability to set processes in motion. For that, we have to ask people for their phone and email. This is really the core issue of the strategy."
For example, entry to the "People of People" group is conditional on sending a direct WhatsApp message to Carmel.
In response to these messages, you will receive an introductory message with links to all the relevant marketing channels of the group, and choose where you want to receive the information.
Thus, even if one platform loses its effectiveness due to the arbitrary procedures of the networks, it will always be possible to move the center of activity to another platform.
" "We must understand that the platform is only the means.
In the end, if you strip everything around, a community is a collection of records, just like an Excel file.
What is then done with this raw material and where it is poured, is already in the hands of the community manager.
They can be transferred from one platform to another, whether it is one-way channels, such as a mailing list, or two-way, such as a discussion group.
There are many options in terms of what can be done and the combination of channels and platforms is part of the strategy."
"I advocate a method that says that every community member should have the option to choose how they prefer to consume the information, in what doses and in what channels. When you tell people that you are going to publish every Tuesday at 9 am, and whoever is not there in time will not see the content, that is not good On the other hand, when managing a community with hundreds of thousands of people, it is very difficult to control everything, so there must be some kind of legality and a consistent framework."
A complete marketing department in one person
To my question about what the agenda of a community manager looks like, Carmel answers: "First of all, a community manager needs to have KPIs - indicators that can be monitored over time with defined goals such as success, meeting goals, progress, and many other parameters depending on the type of community" .
"After we have defined the KPIs, we build a plan designed to improve the indicators and decide which issues to spend time on to do it. Almost everything is related to adding value, but it is not only about content and creative because it also includes the production of online and offline events, the activation of volunteers who do Things for the community, content corners that encourage involvement, initiatives and collaborations."
"On the other side there are things that are a little more gray and administrative: bureaucracy, onboarding, adding new members, surveys, focus groups, recording and updating data, data analysis. Basically as a community manager, you do everything and there is really no chronological order of actions."
"The community manager can afford to plan his time and prioritize things according to KPIs. If there are monetization things that are more burning, they may be prioritized because there is some financial goal that needs to be met. If the goal is to increase the number of members, then we will be more busy in business development and partnerships.
There are many fronts that need to be attacked at the same time and the community manager beats the whole orchestra.
" "It also depends a lot on who you work with and if there are partners in the picture because it goes far beyond multitasking.
I speak as someone who started and did everything more or less alone.
You need to have empathy and patience for people, the ability to do things that are sometimes Sisyphean, be creative, think outside the box and think about how to bring value.
You have to be able to listen a lot and hear what people want, be curious, ask, research, learn from what others are doing, do trial and error, see what works and improve."
"You also have to be able to do PR to get items on TV programs or in the press and bring exposure from the outside that brings with it a kind of prestige.
Basically, a community manager is a type of All in one - a complete marketing department with one (or more) person who is supposed to do everything: marketing, event production, public relations, sales, business development, content and creative."
A community around a commercial brand - is this even possible?
Despite the growing popularity of online communities, many brands struggle to create the sense of community needed to drive real engagement and translate management efforts into monetization.
So how do you build a community around a commercial brand without losing authenticity?
Carmel answers:
"Many brands come from the place of PR.
On the one hand, they understand the enormous value of maintaining a community and the ability to harness people for the good of the brand, but in the truth of life, many brands look at it as a burden, because once you get into it, it requires a lot of investment in customers, which would not be required without the community.
" "Traditionally, the control It was always with the brands, who decided which communication channels to open to the public and in which format.
For example, Cellcom did not have a Facebook page for many years.
While all the brands were running pages as a customer service channel, it was kind of a joke that a big and respected company like Cellcom doesn't have a Facebook page," says Carmel.
"Brands are afraid of communities because it's a kind of loss of control. They're always thinking about what could go wrong. Something happens and suddenly there's a storm in the network or a consumer boycott, suddenly a lot of complaints will be received and the audience may demand things - there are a lot of dangers in this respect and they don't know what to do with it ".
"Because big companies and brands have a fixed audience, they mostly see the negative side of it. Recently we have heard of companies that have taken extreme steps like hiring companies that smear other brands through shadow fights between bots and users trying to influence public opinion. This just shows how much the power of PR is the facet that is ultimately the most significant.
" "Community management enters the shell of a customer club that gives added value to those who are regular customers.
Calling it a community in the context of brands is really more challenging.
If we all buy Snow products, does that make us a Snow community?
What happens is that brands dress up existing communities.
Snow, for example, dressed up as a community of cleaning patients because they identify themselves with the community and its values.
They would rather establish their own community, but they are looking for collaborations with community managers who have a community that speaks the brand's language and connects to products and needs.
" VP of Customer Retention or Customer Relations.
In my opinion, it should be a joint effort by both of them and each of them should do their part in the strategy."
Where is this all going?
"From my point of view, we are currently in the last year of the hype" says Carmel and explains: "At the end of every buzz comes a decline and we are already in the decline after the peak. The communities will not disappear, huge budgets will still continue to flow there, but the chance to create new communities and reach a degree of influence and monetization at the level of "Mothers cook together" which is already another league, is almost zero."
"Community managers who didn't know how to collect data in the next two years will lose monetization and the entire field of knowledge along with it. Attention will shift to those who will be able to produce it on more than one platform. Bottom line, this is the critical point that will differentiate in the future between community managers who had a strategy and those who didn't."
Marketing and digital
Content and creative
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Facebook groups
community
Online communities
digital marketing
DEM