Welcome to the Community!

One of my favourite things about being in Public Relations is the sheer unpredictability of managing a brand in an online world. For bigger brands especially, this often means designating one person (or a team, if you're lucky) to take care of your online reputation/resources/etc.

There is a bit of a debate as to what to call these people... are they community managers? Are they social media managers? Everyone has a group of constituents which could be cultivated to drive better performance.  However, not all companies want, need to, or can cultivate a community. Some places have both a social media manager and a community manager... whereas other locations have bundled those positions into one job. You may also know this position as an Online Reputation Manager (ORM).

Among their myriad tasks, these positions take care of driving conversations in social networks, blogs, groups, and forums. They’re brand champions, moderators of discussions, and monitors of their brand bubble.The best managers create a online persona for their brands that you can relate to and vibe off of.

I like (and relate to) the brands that are sassy.  Twitter (especially) is the place people go to rag on certain brands and I always find it entertaining when the Brand banters back. In my opinion, the best example of late is from the final round of the NBA playoffs. LeBron James (a Powerade athlete) found the insane heat in San Antonio too hard to play through and was taken off the court with cramps ravaging his left leg. People immediately jumped to Twitter and lambasted Gatorade for failing their spokesperson. Here is the initial tweet and Gatorade response that started the ruckus:

Gatorade is actually a sponsor of the NBA and did apologize for the tweets a few days later after removing them from the feed.   “Our apologies for our response to fans’ tweets during (Thursday) night’s Heat vs. Spurs game,” Gatorade said in a release. “We got caught up in the heat of the battle. As a longtime partner of the Miami Heat, we support the entire team."

But they were great while they lasted! If you’re like me and love some social media sass, check out this great list from Buzzfeed “14 Times Brands Showed Their Sassy Side On Twitter".

While certain brands rear their heads from time to time in epic fashion, there are a few faves of mine that are consistently on their game: Travelocity (oh that gnome!) and Oreo. I'm not sure what kind of team Oreo has over there (superheroes, maybe?) but I just love 'em. Case in point: the tweet sent out in Superbowl XLVII after the lights went out at the Superdome in New Orleans, LA. 

Awesome!!

One main role of such managers is also to assist with expectation management and customer service. If you had issues in the past, you used to write a complaint letter directly to the company... but now you can take to social media and bare your sorrows there. Check out the Facebook page of any major brand (restaurants especially) to see consumers blast the quality of the product and customer service, among others.

If only online trolls were this cute!

In a perfect world, you would mitigate tense issues through cordial conversation and great customer service. In a perfect world, life would be all pixies and daisies and I would ride a unicorn to work. Alas, 'tis not a perfect world, fair gentles, and all awesome jobs have their downsides. In social media/community management, I can't think of any downside great than having to deal with insane online trolls. For those who don't know, a troll (internet) is one who posts deliberately provocative messages to a message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument. They'll often look to high-profile brands or people to target... and will do so with pleasure. Trolls feed off of inexperienced or underprepared community managers and they can quickly become your worst nightmare. Here's a great article on some tips to deal with social media trolls: Don't Feed the Trolls).

Sometimes the trolls can take over the feed... or an ill-thought post can go viral before you can do any type of damage control. If you're not part of a team, you can (and will) do this job can be 24/7... and for that, I salute you. Social media/community management is not for the faint of heart but it sure can be a lot of fun.

Any community managers out there have a hero (or horror) story to share?

Skills That Thrill

One of the basic tenets of the Communications industry is the ability to write convincingly, concisely, and above all, correctly.

However, I'm seeing far too many people either in my profession or trying to get into my profession who have horrible writing skills. We're positioning ourselves as Communications experts but people are still not using they're/there/their correctly!

I understand that not all of us are born with the innate ability to spell every word properly or have grammatical skills that would put the Associated Press editor to shame. However, with all of the resources available (spell-check, thesaurus in .com or book format, style guides), there really is no excuse for poor writing.

What kind of person or company would hire a Communications professional who submits a proposal with this sentence in it: "teh communications plan would include a detailed analysiss of the companey's stakeholder groups, including a breakdown of there most pressing issue."

Like in all facets of life, there does appear to be a grey area here... in that of character-limited communications (Twitter, anyone?) Even though you get used to driving out 140 character statements, sometimes you may run into trouble. 'To' becomes '2' and you will see a few more abbreviations or acronyms than usual. 

I have heard the following excuse too often: "It's just Twitter! Why should I care about how correct it is?" Well, I don't buy into the notion of practice writing - even if it's not for a job, blog posts or tweets are out on the internet forever and so should be proofread as deeply as any work piece. Perhaps the one exception? Texting on your phone to family or friends. I am guilty of text speak... and there are a few occasions in which it's appropriate (on my phone only!) I say 'perhaps' when talking about texting because it still bothers me if my fat and clumsy fingers cause me to send a text out with errors in it. The people I text with have become used to me following an error with the correct spelling/word usage. Call me nitpicky but it really 'grinds my gears' when I write something wrong.

I don't know it all and I definitely need to take another look at a PR style guide (tip: keep one on hand), but I do have a few years of university English under my belt (aka a burning need to proofread anything I see.)

Having a little trouble with some common grammar mistakes? Check out this great infographic from Socially Stacked - it definitely helped me out!