Through no fault of my own have I found myself today boxed into a personality model referred to as Right Frontal, meaning a tendency for creativeness, innovation, quick solutions, precision and cut-to-the-chase attitude towards information, contrasted with lack of prudence, an outspoken mind, tendency to extreme honesty, day-dreaming and an intolerance to rules, regulations, schedules and an acute allergy to closed minds. True story.
From there on, qualities that would only validate my aptitude and passion for this new found love of community management kept on coming. And it made me wonder: What kind of team do I need? Whom should I choose to surround me? Similar people? Opposites who have my weaknesses as their strengths? And the first real question arose: What is the difference between a Social Media Manager, Social Media Strategist and a Community Manager?
Allow me to share what I found from different articles, blogs and communities, all summed up into this:
Social Media Strategist is the highest authority of the department of Social Media, has the final say in decision-making. In charge of:
Collecting all relevant information about a brand and design the SM strategy,
Defining the behavior, platforms, actions, tone, personality, and the theme of the long-term content and supervise all the tactics, objectives and activities planned under the general strategy.
Social Media Managers are responsible for maintaining all social media platforms, developing and executing social media campaigns, and then reviewing it all. They are often required to have experience with customer engagement, ROI, and analysis of campaign results. SMs are usually communicators who are strategic, they measure and analyze the effectiveness of those strategies. They are expected to establish measurements and use the right tools to track share of voice, reputation and sentiment, and analyze and deliver key insights that can be used for strategic planning. Basically an SMM is responsible for:
Managing Social Media Department,
Creating communications plans and strategic actions of the brand in the medium term (day to day),
Developing content strategy,
Supervise and coordinate the Community Managers,
Ensure that the implementation is done to the letter.
A Community Manager must be personable, friendly and possess the ability to talk to anyone. They also should have outstanding organizational skills and not be overwhelmed by a constant stream of customer inquiries and issues. They are the public face of brands, they interact with the community and generate buzz. It’s a sign of a great Community Manager when you can visibly see improvements and progress in your business and its culture. In summary they should:
Implement the Social Media Strategy,
Search, create and publish content based on the strategy set,
Manage brand profiles on social networks,
Monitor all customer response towards the brand,
Stimulating conversations found during monitoring:
Respond to questions / complaints,
Generate conversation
Interact.
Getting the feedback to the brand.
So, that’s a fine startup for me. Now I can truly focus on the role I will be playing within my dream company and the different sets of skills I will be focusing on to find the best team to get my dream going.
Some caramel on my vanilla. yum
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Pistacchio 