Big Hoots & Pro Tips for Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD

Archived here as reference to work performed as VP Community at Hootsuite. THIS IS NOT *OFFICIAL* – carry on

Owly in your hands

To see what hijinks HootSuite’s planned for #CMAD 2013, read our trusty primer: Community Manager Appreciation Day.

Although Hallmark doesn’t have a card to celebrate the event, today is Community Manager Appreciation Day. Yes, this is perhaps an odd holiday because: a) not many people know what community managers do; and, b) up until a few years ago, this type of job didn’t really exist – or at least wasn’t as defined or widespread.

Then, a group of social media minded types including analyst Jeremiah Owyang, put forth the idea of a day to recognize the unique challenges and contributions facing this type of multi-disciplinary practitioner. Whether you call them a community wrangler, organizer, advocate, manager, coordinator or ambassador, … someone at your company or organization is likely officially or unofficially filling this role. So remember to do something nice for your community manager.

Hint: they like things like RTs, +1, K+, Likes, comments and clicks. If you don’t know what those things are, then bring them a bacon sandwich and ask for an explanation.

Jeremiah Owyang suggests the following ways to acknowledge your fave CMs:

If you’re a customer, and your problem was solved by a community manager be sure to thank them in the medium they helped you in. Use the hashtag #CMAD.

If you’re a colleague with community manager, take the time to understand their passion to improve the customer and company experience. Copy their boss.

If you’re a community manager, stop and breathe for a second, and know that you’re appreciated. Hug your family.

If you’re a Community Manager, connect with a comment – or a Tweet with #HootCM & #CMAD – and we’ll hook you up with some special Owly treats to say “Yup, HootSuite thinks you are awesome.”

HootSuite Tips for Community Managers

Amongst HootSuite’s 3 million owls are many community managers who are tasked with identifying and engaging audiences, amplifying messages, advocating for customers’ needs, and doing a daily dose of sharing, monitoring and measuring campaigns across many social media channels.

Their diligence allows other teammates to concentrate on their jobs knowing a CM has “got their ears on” by monitoring brand conversations on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Flickr… Indeed, the list goes on and on with new stops on the paper route added each month.

Hoot to Help

HootSuite is ideally suited to make the life of community managers much easier. From using HootSuite to promote HootSuite to other social media community practitioners, I’ve compiled some favorite reasons why HootSuite is ideal for my peers around the social web.

1 – One Tab to Rule Them All
One of the key strengths of HootSuite is the ability to monitor all your social profiles from one web browser tab. No need to log in and out of Twitter accounts or jump between browser tabs. Instead, everything comes to you in handy streams capturing searches, mentions, circles, comments and more… Plus, you can share these streams with your colleagues and track the followup for timing, wording and delegation (or share drafts messages). Switching computers? No problem, the cloud holds all so you can pick up where you left off.

2 – On the List
Many/most Community Managers are following so many campaigns, brands and people that it’s basically an inescapable time sink to track them all. How do I make sure to capture thoughts from the key audience? Twitter lists (and increasingly G+ Circles) are remarkably handy to ensure you keep your finger on the pulse while filtering the chatter. Naturally, HootSuite makes list creation easy with the magic of drag and drop right from the contacts view where you can place avatars atop a list and voila! It’s instantly sync-ed with Twitter – whether public or private.

Often on the go? HootSuite mobile versions apps offer complete list management which I find especially handy at events and getting work done while in transit (I monitor all overnight Tweets on the bus ride in).

3 – Scheduling the Future
Some Community Managers (myself included) interact with audiences spread literally all over the world. As determined and mighty as you are, you simply can’t stay up 24 hours tweeting (I’ve tried). So when you need to get a message out to your Japanese customers during their workday, schedule it and, as Ron Popeil would say: “Set it and forget it.”

Now, I realize that some pundits feel scheduling is “cheating” and by doing so, you reduce the desirable conversational authenticity of your posts. The reality is a mix of thoughtfully created and scheduled posts mixed with real-time posting is a smart and scalable scenario for global operators.

Or try the batch scheduling tool to set-up campaigns in advance. Also handy for event reminders when you are busy sharing hands of on-stage.

4 – Global Monitoring System
Geo-search is another tool for Community Managers monitoring customers in distinct regions. Set HootSuite search results for a specific region using geo-coordinates to organize the conversation by area. For example, if you have a new store opening in London or a campaign in Melbourne the same time, you can filter down just the Tweets from that region. I also do this for tracking local-only mentions of my fave hockey team without the chatter from the opposing fans.

Once you have your search stream filled up, filter by campaign keyword (or try “?” or “http” for questions or links) and even get a quick measure of influence by filtering by Klout on the fly.

5 – Report Chart Hero
A few years ago, social media was mostly about “building buzz” but now social is a line item in budgets as companies invest resources in these channels and tactics which are still evolving (and rapidly at that). Because dollars (or Euros, Yen, etc.) are on the line, there is an expectation for reports which show (deep breath) return on investment for social media outreach.

Of course, HootSuite baked this into the dashboard with 30+ pre-made social analytics reports including integrations with Facebook Insights and Google Analytics alongside the Ow.ly click stats. Bundled together, you can see everything from the best time of day to tweet to the demographics of your Facebook page. And (drum roll) these reports can be automated on a weekly basis with custom headers, categories, pie charts, line graphs, sentiment reports and summary stats. No doubt you’ll look like a hero when your stakeholders receive a custom performance report in their inbox each Monday at 9am.