Community Management: PR the perfect fit for shaping conversations

To facilitate networking and engage with partners ahead of its 2012 corporate summit in Singapore last September, software provider Parallels set up a presence in LinkedIn Groups and Events. A content calendar provided a stream of discussions ahead of the event and Parallels cross-promoted LinkedIn activity across other platforms, including Twitter and emails.

This is one example of how brands are tapping into community management—engaging with users through proprietary and non-proprietary platforms—to get closer to their customer base. Lenovo has gone one step further, by hiring a community manager to gain greater insight into its customers. 

It’s an area the PR industry is increasingly looking to stake its claim to, with agencies including Text100 and Bite Communications building community management capabilities in recent months. The latter also devised and managed Parallels’ community management activity ahead of its APAC conference. 

According to Jye Smith, vice-president of digital, Asia-Pacific at Weber Shandwick, PR agencies have a natural affinity for this space: it is, after all, about creating earned media through different social networks. And when it comes to managing online communities around a crisis, PR agencies have years of experience that enable them to make the best decisions. 

Brands in the travel, telecoms, personal finance and automotive sectors have been early adopters of community management, due partly to the fact the customer journey for these categories is closely related to use of the web and linked with e-commerce and other web functions, such as social networking. Other categories, like B2B, are likely to grow their community management offerings to engage with customers and become useful marketing and sales platforms.

The key to success in this area, says David Ketchum, president, Asia-Pacific at Bite, is integrating online and offline touch points, finding out what customers are talking about and using this as a starting point. Even though the web is the most efficient community venue, community management should also include events in “real life” and the use of offline media for credibility and authenticity.  

“A strong communities manager helps brands and companies develop powerful points of view that resonate with audiences, and which allow them to join valuable conversations in credible ways,” says Ketchum. 

Community managers are also trying to bring as many members of their target audience off the web, and into an opt-in groups, taking on more of a social customer relationship management role. 

Community management is a rich space for brands, and it seems a natural fit for PR agencies that know how to create and distribute compelling stories. Yet, says Smith, one of the key challenges for PR agencies, is a lack of understanding around the technologies they are using. “This can be as simple as knowing how to optimise user experiences, or as detrimental as trying to hide or cover up mistakes and negative comments,” says Smith. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that with the number of consumer and business touch points available, community management today is everyone’s business. Brands have not yet figured out which type of agency—PR, social media, advertising—handles this function best, or even if it is better left in-house.