Over at Speakeasy, our own Taisa Veras has interviewed a slew of awesome community managers from organizations like PSFK, Spartan Race and Vitamin T to get their insights on reaching their audiences, earning engagement, developing new campaigns and more. In this round up, we're sharing some their best tips.
ON DEALING WITH CREATIVE BLOCK
"I have a writing exercise I do when I'm stuck. I start with that day and work backwards. I write about little things, big things, everything. It's just a stream of thoughts that eventually clears my head and breaks through the block. Whiskey, motorcycles and waves help too!"
"Sometimes, the best creative periods are my daily bike rides where I focus on burning fools in the park (whether they know we're racing is speculative). When you stare at something for too long, you forget there's other subjects of interest."
- JD Beebe
ON HOW THEY DEVELOPED CONTENT
"One of the most important things was looking at what content historically worked for us, and combining it with what the audience wants to hear."
ON SURPRISE LEARNINGS FROM THEIR AUDIENCE
"For the beer brand I worked on, the audience was interested in kicking back and they were enthusiastic about sharing that with our page. The most surprising thing for me about that audience was the amount of engaging and on-brand UGC content they generated for us without any prompting. I could log on to the page any time of day and see a slew of new photos posted by our fans."
ON MEASURING IMPACT
"While follows and likes were relatively important, they ultimately weren't the number one factor in determining community engagement. We measured a variety of things, including site traffic referrals and registrations via social media and blog posts."
"I did this in two ways - the first was from a marketing and advertising perspective - looking at CPM compared to other mediums. The other was for specific customer data, determining a hard dollar value of those we connected with on social vs. our average guest."
ON THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL NETWORK
"Despite claims of its decline, [Facebook] is still tremendously powerful and commands the highest segment of social traffic referrals."
"Facebook. In terms of traffic-driving potential, it's king. Hands down. You have to have the audience to make it useful but it's at the helm of the social ecosystem."
- JD Beebe
"I would say Instagram. Besides the fact that I prefer this social channel for my own personal use, some say it will become the most influential platform in 2 years. I hope they are right. I find it to be the easiest way to grow an audience quickly and have them continually engage with minimal effort."
ON WHAT WE'LL BE TALKING ABOUT IN 6 MONTHS
"I believe privacy, encryption and empowering users/customers with their personal data (possibly in the form of an exchange, a leveling of the playing field between businesses and customers) will become a national dialogue as the government slowly reacts to NSA programs and the advantages of cryptocurrency-based systems emerge."
"I'm really interested to see where the e-commerce space is headed on social, specifically on image-based platforms. On Instagram especially, it was been cool to watch the ways big retail brands, small boutiques and everyone in between have found ways to work around the fact that Instagram isn't exactly e-commerce friendly."
ON THE CAMPAIGNS THEY WISH THEY HAD DONE
"Ship My Pants" was genius. That's one of those spots/campaigns that makes you think "Dammit. That was so f*cking good!"
- JD Beebe
"It's not a social campaign per se, but Will Ferrell's commercials for Old Milwalkee are amazing. I also love all of the mural advertising Adult Swim does around the city for their various shows, mostly because I love bright shiny things. Girls use of Snapchat for this past season was a great example of capitalizing on a new platform while speaking directly to your audience."
"REI's 1440 Project! It's motivating and beautiful."
ON THE WEBSITES THEY CHECK DAILY
- Mashable
- The Next Web
- Venturebeat
- Ars Technica
- ReadWrite
- Hacker News
- Digg
- New York Times
- Inc
- Fast Company
- Vox
- Gawker
- Women's Wear Daily
- Convince & Convert
- Who What Wear
This article first appeared on The Percolate Blog, smart thinking about content, audience, and technology.