The term, “digital community manager” is a relatively new term for many companies. A digital community manager can be defined as a person who works to grow and manage a brand’s community on online platforms. The tasks of this position can vary, ranging from managing social media channels, to resolving customer concerns on digital platforms. Duties of a community manager may also include content creation, blogging, and community outreach.

Many companies know they need a community manager but are not sure how to go about hiring one that has the skills and expertise to represent their brand on digital platforms. Whether your company is looking to hire a community manager or you are working to train your marketing team to take on these tasks, here are three attributes your community manager should posses.

The Ability To Empathize

Empathy is perhaps the most important aspect of community management. An individual with experience in a customer service position can make an ideal candidate for your community manager. Whether a customer wants to rave about your brand, or send a complaint, your community manager needs to be able to empathize. By placing themselves in the shoes of the customer, a community manager will know exactly what to say to resolve the issue.

This is an example of a possible situation your community manager will need the skills and verbiage to resolve :

Customer A – “I hate your airline. My flight was 5 hours late and I missed my sister’s wedding!!!! I’m never flying you guys again!”

Community Manager – “I am really sorry you feel this way A. You have every right to be upset with us. You are a very important customer to us and we are so sorry this problem occurred. If you can send us a message with your email address we would be happy to look further into the incident and will work to make this right!”

Enthusiasm For The Brand

Your company has worked hard to build a loyal and respectable brand. Hiring a community manager with the same sentiment and enthusiasm for your brand will be apparent. If your employees don’t love your brand, how can you expect your customers to?

Has a Friendly & Communicative Writing Style

Nothing can hurt a brand faster online than a careless mistake. Your ideal community manager will have a sharp eye for deal, impeccable grammar, and the understanding that carelessness can hurt your brand.

A community manager will serve as the voice of your brand online and is an important asset to your team.  Finding a great one is crucial to any great digital strategy. Do you have a community manager at your company?

But wait…what are B2B companies using social media for?

In a recent study, Kemp Goldberg found that “Top use for using social media in the supply chain is to stay on top of industry trends. Current users also cite connecting with industry experts and peers, while potential users have more business focused secondary objectives like obtaining pricing” Read Full Study Here

Who are our favorite B2B social presences?

SalesForce – “CRM software and cloud computing for the social enterprise from salesforce.com, the leader in CRM solutions”

Salesforce displays all social channels prominently on their home page and encourages others to friend and follow. Often, a brand may have social channels, but fails to incorporate them on their website. Eliminating a hunt for social allows the customer to easily connect and engage.

Not only does the brand have social presence on Google+, but so does the company’s CEO.

Social Channels :

http://www.facebook.com/salesforce
http://www.twitter.com/salesforce
https://plus.google.com/115493663613456422040

Twilio – “Twilio provides infrastructure APIs for businesses to
build scalable, reliable voice and text messaging apps.”

Twilio has done a great job of establishing themselves as a leader in the tech scene. By contributing relevant information, their blog posts, tweets, and Facebooks posts are shared around the web. The Twilio blog offers great information about industry events, product demonstrations, and acts as a hub for developers and customers to connect with the brand.

Social Channels :

https://twitter.com/twilio
http://www.facebook.com/twilio
https://plus.google.com/114904157184548944489

Social media can be a great way to put a face behind a B2B company, as shown by both Twilio and Salesforce. Through social media, both of these companies have established themselves as leaders in the software industry.

Have you seen any B2B companies doing innovative things in the social space? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

It’s a good read overall, but here are some of the highlights if you are skimming at home.

RESULTS
Over the first twelve months of the effort, the marketing team at Distribion has created a large volume of brand-building content:

• Published around 228 blog posts
• Produced 8 whitepapers
• Held 9 webinars with around 400 to 500 attendees
• Created 14 presentations or PDFs for download at the website

For the spin-off opportunities, Distribion was able to accomplish:

• 7 speaking engagements
• 13 bylined articles in media such as Forbes, PC World and The Wall Street Journal
• 982 pick-ups in other media such as tech blogs

After Distribion began promoting the blog posts through press release, blog traffic increased more than 2,000% with weekly blog traffic improving from 700 to 117,000 visits per week.  The company’s revenue grew 40% last year.  Cost-per-acquisition is down about 15% from the previous year.

 

Sears

Starbucks

Tiffany

Coke

Barack Obama

LiveStrong

BMW

Manchester United

Fanta

Macy’s

Have you seen any brands utilizing the new timeline in a creative and innovative way? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Here we’d like to share with you three great tools we use to run contests and promotions.

Strutta :

What is Strutta?
Strutta makes it easy for marketers to build, launch and manage social brand experiences that create content and stories worth sharing. With this application, brands can launch a sweepstakes or contest in under an hour. This application allows you to create a page with minimal coding and allows for a great deal of customization.

-via Strutta.com

Pricing :
Strutta has two pricing options ranging from $298 for the basic version to over $2,000 for the pro-account.

Rafflecopter :

What is Rafflecopter?
Rafflecopter makes it crazy-simple to create, run, and enter online giveaways and sweepstakes. With Rafflecopter, you can easily embed a contest onto a blog post or Facebook page.

-via Rafflecopter.com

Features:

• Turn an ordinary visit into a fun, engaging experience.
• Expand your reach and keep visitors coming back.
• Get creative. Award points for anything you dream up!
• Verify winners and squash cheaters with 1 click.

Pricing:
This widget is currently free and is a great product to test out.

WildFire :

What is WildFire?

With Wildfire you can build and track powerful custom promotions across multiple social networks.

-via wildfireapp.com

Features :

• Simple Sign Up
• Social CRM
• Fan Gate (Like Required)
• Ease of Use
• Analytics
• Design and plugin variety

Pricing:

Wildfire has a few tiers of pricing that range from $6 per day to $250+ depending on what kind of customization you’ll be needing.

Whether you’re looking to host a quick t-shirt giveaway or run a month long promotion, we recommend these tools for your endeavors. What contest tools have you tested? Found an even better option?  Let us know in the comments below.

Today, Google announced that now Related People and Pages on Google+ will be showing up more prominently in the search. Now, it is become more important to push blog posts and content not only your Twitter and Facebook, but also your Google+ account.

Here is what Google has to say :

“It’s now easier than ever to discover and connect with other people who share your interests—right on Google. Find people and pages related to your search. Make sure you’re signed in and have joined Google+ so you can add them to your circles and see new stuff they share, right in your search results.”

How to appear as a related person
1. Fill out your profile
Fill out your profile

Make it easier for people to find you by completing your Google profile. Make sure to have a high quality photo and update your interests.
2. Post about your favorite topics
Post about your favorite topics

Share and comment on the topics you care about and Google will share your posts and comments with people in your Google+ circles when they’re searching.

3. Appear in search results
Appear in search results

Once you’ve created a Google profile and engaged with an audience on topics you’re interested in, you’ll be eligible to appear on the right hand side of search results. The more quality content you create and the more people that engage with you, the more prominent your profile will become.”

via https://www.google.com/insidesearch/relatedpeople.html#u=gp

What does this mean for brands?
If you’ve been ignoring Google+ for your brand – it’s time to get your profile filled out. By filling out your profile, your Google+ pages and profile can get more exposure when searches are made for keywords on your profile.

Give it a try :
Search “music” on Google.com

You’ll see in the right hand corner Google is now highlighting relevant Google+ pages and profiles. By filling out your profile, your brand has the opportunity to appear in this same way.
While there is no data available to the algorithm Google is using to choose these pages, we can infer that pages in the most circles will initially gain the most exposure for broad keywords. By carving out a niche market on Google+, smaller brand have the opportunity to gain exposure within their industry.

What’s next?
It will be interesting to see how Google will continue to incorporate Google+ in their search over the coming months. We can only speculate how the search giant will incorporate new features, but for now, it doesn’t look like Google+ is going anywhere.

What do you think of this new feature? Leave us a comment or tell us on Twitter.

Government entities are highly regulated and often times bureaucracy prevents early adoption and innovation. In the last few years, social media has been adopted to the marketing mixes of both consumer and B2B services. It’s been interesting to see that not only restaurants and software companies are utilizing social media, but so are government departments and entities.

In Washington State, we’ve seen a few of these entities break the barriers and join various social networks. Here are three examples that we think have been doing a great job establishing a social presence, building a brand, and reaching out to Washington State residents. Know of any other good examples? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Name of Organization : Washington State Department of Transportation

Facebook Page : http://www.facebook.com/WSDOT

How They Use It : The Washington State Department of Transportation is utilizing their social channels to update commuters, provide information on fee increases, and show the major highway delays. From Twitter to YouTube, there are various ways to connect with this organization.

In addition to providing information, the WSDOT is using their social mediums as a channel for customer outreach. Browsing through their Twitter, Facebook, and other channels, you can see that they’re making a devoted effort to providing people with current and up to date information. Below are a few examples of the ways in which they are using their channels :

Name of Organization : Washington State Department of Licensing

Twitter : @WA_DOL

Facebook Page : http://www.facebook.com/WSDOL

How They Use It : Looking to start a business? Perhaps you’re getting married in the next month? Licensing is a key part of our society today. Though the Washington State Department of Licensing has yet to amass an enormous fan base on their social channels, it’s a great first attempt. Not only has the department made it easy to connect with the organization on social channels, but they’ve also integrated social media sharing into their blog and articles.

This integration is a great way to spread awareness for the organization and to relay information quickly. The DOL has also established themselves on the following platforms.

Name of Organization : Washington State Patrol

Twitter : @wastatepatrol

Facebook Page : http://www.facebook.com/WashingtonStatePatrol

How They Use It : The social presence of the Washington State Patrol is doing a great job at showing the more human side of the Washington Patrol. The social channels are using for relying information and updating Washington State residents of the activities the organization partakes in. In the future, it will be interesting to see how these channels will evolve as more residents look to social media for their sources of information.

Why should government entities have a social presence? As the mass population flocks to social networks, they become one of the easiest and fastest ways to relay and communicate information. Whether a national disaster, or a change in government policy, social media is a great way to spread the word. As government entities are brands in themselves, greater awareness and customer relations can help them become stronger more trusted organizations.

Right now, you may be thinking – great… I still don’t get it.

If you’re looking for more information on the platform check out our post here.  If you’re ready to build your own Pinterest account keep reading.

Let’s get started!

Who is talking about your brand?
A great first step to getting involved in Pinterest is to see who is talking (aka “pinning”) about your brand already.

You can do this by typing in your brand’s website here but replacing the URL “WEBSITE.COM “with your own.
http://pinterest.com/source/WEBSITE.COM

After doing a bit of research on what others are saying about you, you are ready to make an account. Currently, to use Pinterest, you need an invitation. To get an invite, ask a friend on the platform to invite you from their account in the top right corner. If you don’t have a friend on Pinterest – send an an email to arianna@social3i.com and we will send you one over.

Signup

During the signup process you can choose a username and follow users that you’re connected to on Facebook and Twitter. This is a great initial way to build followers on the service – by embracing the network that you already have. By following others on Pinterest you’ll immediately receive a stream of content to start “pinning” and “liking”. As you sign up, you can choose privacy settings and whether or not you would like your posts to be pushed to your Facebook and Twitter account.

Creating your first board

To create your first board on Pinterest simple click the +Add button in the top right hand corner. You’ll then see a screen that looks like this :

Click the “Create a board” icon on the right.

Then, name and categorize your board. It is important to properly categorize and name your board so users can easily find you and re-pin your content.

That’s it!

Hitting the create board will create your first board. From this point, you can now start pinning on your board.

Have unanswered questions about using Pinterest? Leave us a comment below!

A site that has been gaining traction this year is Pinterest. Pinterest is a social sharing website that allows users to create their own personal pin boards. Much like the bulletin board you would find in a bedroom, Pinterest lets you visually categorize your interests on a digital board. Pinterest launched in 2010 in private beta and to this day an invite is still required for access to the site. The viral growth of the platform has been incredible and businesses are already finding ways to incorporate the site in their marketing mix.

Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.” This mission has since resonated with individuals around the world. Millions has since flocked to the platform and an active and engaged user-base frequents the site often times multiple times a day.

Pins, Re-pins, Likes…. What does this mean for businesses?

According to a recent study by Hitwise, Pinterest drove more traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ combined. While many social sites come and go, Pinterest managed to establish itself as a leader and giant in the social media space. Pinterest is the fastest site in history to break the 10 million unique visitor market. Since then, many brands have integrated the platform into their digital efforts.

• Pinterest is optimized for sharing – A user can re-pin something to their own board in a matter of seconds.  With great content, proper naming, and correct categorization, the likelihood of virality on this site is much higher than platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Not only does can your content go into your own feed, but can be found in the feeds of others once re-pinned.

• Pinterest is a referral engine - With proper tagging and board categorization, Pinterest is a great way to drive traffic to your website. The top pins have been repinned as many as 10,000 times. Many brands have seen their traffic increase from just a few posts on the medium.

“In the last six months, the retail deal site ideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.

“We continue the Pinterest conversation with [the] members by following their pins, and we love to give feedback outside of the shopping category — whether that means commenting on a great recipe or [giving] a heart next to our favorite pet pics,” says ideeli.com social media manager Sarah Conley. “We also see Pinterest as a growing resource to better understand our members and the larger retail landscape.” via Entrepreneur.com

What are users saying about Pinterest?

Who is using the platform?

Brands like your local mom and pop clothing store, to retail giants like Forever 21 have all embraced the platform as part of their digital strategy for 2012. Here are 14 Brands on Pinterest for you to check out.

Here is an example of how one of our clients, Merrill Gardens is participating. Over the past week, Merrill has began creating boards catered towards the interests of their residents. In just a week, Merrill has been re-pinned hundreds of times and has begun to build a following of those with similar interests.

Ready to start? Check out our post tomorrow on “Getting Started With Pinterest”.

Need an invite to the service? Shoot a mail to arianna@social3i.com and we will be sure to send you one.

Already a Pro at Pinterest?

Have you tried these neat hacks?

How to Give Your Pinterest A Digital Edge

How to Integrate Pinterest with Your Facebook Fan Page