Evaluating Yourself as a Community Manager
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Community managers don’t have an easy job. They’re tasked with overseeing a business’s online marketing campaign, fostering customer engagement and doing their best to improve a company’s reputation. They often have to juggle a lot of tasks, but be able to do each of them is very important in a company’s success. If community managers do their jobs right, their efforts will hopefully yield higher sales, a larger customer base and more loyal customers.
If you’re a community manager, it can sometimes be difficult to know how well you’re doing. Business improvement is a difficult and time-consuming process and it can take some time before you see clear results. There’s so much involved with the job that sometimes, you can lose sight of how each small task makes a difference. While community management is truly more an art than a science, there are several criteria you can use to measure overall effectiveness. Here are ten ways you can evaluate yourself as a community manager.
Traffic and Returning Visitors
Although you may not see that big of a difference in the short term, it’s important to keep track of changes in your business’s website traffic over time. You’re probably doing something right if you see a steady increase in overall traffic, as well the number of returning visitors to the site.
Clear Expectations
One of the first steps in becoming a successful community manager is knowing exactly what is expected of you. Before and during your job, be sure to ask what the company wants to achieve and where you come in. This is the time to find out what kind of metrics the company expects to achieve and when. The more you know about what the company expects, the more successful of a community manager you’ll become.
Number of Referrals
As a community manager, one of your jobs is to keep customers happy. Satisfied customers may recommend your business to others. Generally, the more referrals your company receives, the happier people are with business.
In addition to personal recommendations, it’s also a good idea to keep track of people referred to your site through social media, online ads or other sources. This will help you see which parts of your campaign are generating the most leads.
Survey Results
Creating customer surveys is a good way to see how people really feel about your business. Their feedback can be invaluable in tweaking your business plan and making your company as user-friendly as possible. In addition, customer reviews are useful for gauging your success for a community manager. The more positive the reviews are, the better you’re doing.
Content Output
Content creation is one of the most important elements of inbound marketing. As a community manager, you need to make sure your company is producing a lot of quality content. Does your business have a strategy in place for social media updates and blogging? Where do you post content? Do you have a quality assurance system in place? Quantity and quality of content are equally important in online marketing.
Social Media Numbers
While the number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers you have isn’t everything, they can be an important measure of success. If you have a lot of people following and responding to you on social media, you’re probably doing a good job with customer engagement.
Social Media Analytics
Most of the major social media sites have some of analytics data available. This can be invaluable in finding out how successful you are. Does your social media data show a high conversion rate? Are people actively engaging with you on the sites? If not, you may want to step things up or revamp your strategy.
Web Analytics
There are lots of great analytics tools available to businesses. Google Analytics is one example. The numbers you see may need some interpretation, but you can glean a lot of information about how your business is doing. If your web analytics are favorable for your business, you’re doing well.
Response to Dissatisfied Customers
Dealing with customer complaints is never fun, but it’s necessary in keeping your business’s image clean. Think of responding to negative reviews online as a form of rodent control for businesses. Just as you wouldn’t want rats to infest your office, you don’t want a few poor reviews to turn new customers away from your business. As a community manager, you want to respond to complaints in a diplomatic way and do your best to correct the problem for future customers. If you already do so, you’re probably doing a good job. Just make sure you don’t remove comments or ignore them — both tend to make the problem worse.
Response to Satisfied Customers
Some community managers are great at responding to negative feedback but forget to recognize praise. When customers say something positive on social media, thank them and say something good in return. As a community manager, how often to you respond to good reviews? The more you do, the more likely the customers will stay loyal.
The criteria above should give you a good idea of how you’re doing as a community manager. What else do you think is important for community managers?
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