At last week’s Cause Marketers Meetup in Toronto, Aerin Guy of SpaceRace shared insights from her role as Community Manager with Totally ADD: a multimedia education resource for people with ADD. Since Aerin joined the Totally ADD team in February, the site has developed an active, international community of online contributors.
Aerin has kindly shared her presentation and related notes on her blog (I've also included the slides below). That leaves me to simply share some of the key points I took home as a participant.
Community Manager: Marketing Role of the Future?
- We are starting to see the role of ‘community manager’ more and more often. Is this the marketing role of the future? Will more and more nonprofits have to build community management into their marketing communications roles, responsibilities and staff teams?
- The answer seems to be yes, because now more than ever, our audiences are much closer than we think. Gone are the days of speaking to our audience: today, it’s all about engaging in dialogue with our communities.
Content is King
- The key to building an active community is quality content. While this may be daunting, it’s also an excellent opportunity for nonprofits with limited marketing dollars. Why? Content is searchable, findable and shareable. Worthwhile content will lead people to you.
Strategy Matters
- We want all of our marketing communications to be strategic and community development is no different. When building your content strategy, consider your target audience in terms of topic, format, frequency, timing, etc.
- Your content strategy should flow from organizational priorities, including strategic and marketing plans, quarterly and annual objectives, business visions, wish lists, etc.
Listen Constantly and Respond Frequently
- Successful community building is based on understanding your constituents and connecting directly with them.
- Insights you glean from your community should feed back in to building it and making it more successful.
- Get out there! Don’t let fear prevent you from reaching out and trying new things.
Thank you Aerin for sharing your experience with what will surely become a pivotal role for marketing communicators!
