Community Management is Not a Job for Interns

And it must be loyal, responsive, and engaged. Creating this requires a mix of soft and hard skills, which are anything but obvious. These skills must be built and practiced: yes, intuition plays a role, but most importantly, there’s solid know-how, experience in handling diverse situations, and a well-thought-out strategy.

Now, this isn't just a simple equation of few followers = high engagement because a handful of comments are enough to boost the KPI. From one Content Manager to another: how many times have we racked our brains to gather a bunch of comments? How many hours do we spend crafting the perfect copy to grab likes? How does the mother of a friend of a friend (®️) achieve these numbers with cats, flowers and ducklings?

I’m overwhelmed by this question.

Yet the answer is quite simple, and it’s in her comments section. The creator responds to everyone, and not with a couple of sparse hearts: she writes up to 4 lines explaining that the cat in the picture has grown up, is mischievous, and drives her crazy. She provides context, empathizes, and always asks a follow-up question that encourages the respondent to return to the content and reply.

In short: she builds relationships.

The mother of a friend of a friend (®️) nurtures her little garden (=network) with consistency and dedication. She talks with her followers, not at them. What she does intuitively, in the most appropriate way for her small community, we must evolve and adapt for sectors, needs, moments, and objectives, just as two well-known faces in today’s digital landscape do: Duolingo and Ryanair.

Zaria Parvez, the face of the language learning app, is the pioneer of the brat ToV (Tone of Voice) that characterizes the brand on TikTok and has marked the beginning of a new era in community management. Parvez states:

“In a way, a brand account going ‘rogue’ is an interesting tension point that captivates the attention of the audience.” — Interview for University of Oregon

How does she find her insights? Constant social listening and comment section analysis, treating them like “social briefs”. Camilla Macchia, the former SMM of Ryanair Italy, brought Parvez’s approach to the Italian account of the low-cost airline. She explains:

“On TikTok, it’s necessary to create a reaction in the user [...]. To do this, we developed a character (a plane with eyes) that interacts with the audience as if it were a creator. This allows the user to interact not with a brand, but with a real character.” — Interview for Piano Social

Our challenge, then, is to make a community of thousands feel as important and cherished as the mother’s garden, and as entertained as Duolingo and Ryanair’s followers.

Let's start with the technical basics. CM is done to:

• Build trust and loyalty within the community;
• Get direct, genuine feedback on products and services, improving listening;
• Humanize the brand, making the behind-the-scenes presence of real people (not a given) felt;
• Generate constant, valuable User Generated Content.

Moreover, and this is a very important and often underrated point, CM can help manage communication crises. A product launch gone wrong, an unhappy customer commenting on all your posts damaging your reputation, a public misstep by an employee: the most critical brand battles are fought in the comments section.

The approach also changes depending on the platform:

• Clearer and more reassuring on Facebook, where the audience seeks confirmation and support;
• More engaging and proactive on Instagram, where it’s harder to get users to comment;
• More pop-referenced and wild on TikTok, where the community loves niche slang, spicy ToV, and citations. No flattery here, just (thoughtful) humanity.

And what if haters show up? Haters gonna hate, I’m just gonna shake their feelings (semi-quote). 

Nothing disarms a keyboard warrior more than a response whose kindness (or humor) is directly proportional to their rudeness. And when other users back you up? We absolutely love it.

And if the haters are right?  

This becomes Crisis Management. Don’t panic: listen, consult the customer, and offer maximum availability for clarification. Always be present, don’t disappear: make them feel you’re there and working on it. Here, too, Bestie Talk applies.

And when everything goes well?  Enjoy it.

On TikTok, Community Management has taken on a life of its own. The comment section has become an integral part of the content, with no limits to what can happen there. Some brands comment on seemingly random content:  

Users, at the creator’s request, impersonate historical periods or stereotypes, building themed comment sections:

And comment sections take on a life of their own, independent of the TikTok they’re commenting on, transforming the content into… a festival (technical term):

The comment section has become pure entertainment. The most dynamic conversations, the most interesting trends, the most used micro-language: it’s all here.

But how can a brand exploit this magical world for its awareness? By focusing on 4 factors:

• timeliness: being almost everywhere, often;
• proactivity: inserting itself into trending videos before the trend explodes. Or at least before no one reads you anymore;
• versatility: the audience has diverse interests, and the brand must be present in those too. Our bubble is no longer enough: we need to be extremely curious;
• humanity: being supportive when there’s a problem, excited when there’s something to celebrate, teasing when there’s curiosity. The right dose of empathy, at the right time.

Community Management isn’t a job for interns, not because they can’t handle it, but because it requires skills to be learned, calmness to be trained, and patience and experience to handle the most bizarre or rational complaints, critical situations, and requests. The Community Manager is the voice of the brand: use it well, and everyone will want to listen.

Want to learn more? Contact us.