As the social media presence for companies continues to grow, the challenges related to the management of their communities grows as well. This challenge is compounded by the fact that businesses may have to manage multiple social media accounts on many networks, with each social network having different means by which users may interact with profiles.
Businesses and influencers everywhere understand the importance of community management. However, community management done right takes time and effort. What makes this task more difficult is that social media management and customer service teams may not be expanding at the same pace as social media accounts. The question then becomes what features the next generation of community management tools should have in order to make community management more efficient and sustainable.
The most basic task that community management tools perform is centralized organization of messages coming from all social media networks. This means that instead of working within each network individually, the community management tool pools all messages, user posts, and actions in one place. This allows for better oversight of all your networks and provides for streamlined organization and distribution of tasks for teams.
Having a community management tool with organizational features is only the bare minimum you should look for. Along these lines, many community management tools will say that they offer time-saving features. However, outside of simple organizational tasks, how can the next generation of community management tools help you save time and do more with less? This question is especially important for companies or influencers who need to keep up with their online growth while maintaining a small team.
Let’s talk about two features that can be real game changers when it comes to managing your social communities more efficiently and effectively. The first has to do with automation features that can greatly reduce the manual work your team must perform for simple tasks. The second feature is artificial intelligence integration that can create unique responses to various messages and posts from your community. When looking for the right community management tool, we will go into more detail as to exactly what you should be looking for in terms of each feature.
Automation Features
Community management often requires you to engage with your followers. It is essential that you are showing interest in your community, even for relatively simple posts or reactions from your followers. For instance, someone may say something nice about your company or want to thank you for your help answering some sort of questions. These tasks are relatively simple, but nonetheless can take quite a bit of time to respond to if done manually. The solution? Automation features that you can set up to do these tasks for you.
The best community management tools will offer automation features that dramatically reduce the number of simple, manual tasks that social media managers or customer service agents would otherwise do manually. In most cases, you can set up so-called response automations that are triggered are by a certain event or keywords.
For instance, you could set up a trigger to fire when a user post contains a word such as “awesome”, “great”, or even “thank you.” In these cases, you may consider specifying that the automated response would be some sort of acknowledgement that you appreciate them saying that, such as “liking” these messages. There is also an option to create an automated response to go out that simply states, “happy to help,” or another similar response.
Alternatively, you can also automate the removal of various posts that are deemed insensitive or offensive. For example, you could set up an automated process that removes or hides any comment or user post that has swear words or other types of obscenities in it. Of course, in setting up these automation processes, you need to define what swear words you are on the lookout for. However, once this is done, it can be a real time saver and help keep unwanted comments off your message threads.
Lastly, in relation to organization, you can also use automation processes to help organize messages. For instance, perhaps your company is offering a sale or special offer for a product. You may be receiving a large number of messages about the time period of the sale or any restrictions to it. In this scenario, automation features would allow you to assign these messages to a specific customer service agent that handles these questions. This can save you time by helping streamline the organization of your messages.
AI Integration
There is a lot of talk out there as to how AI is set to change the way many jobs are done. There is some truth to this, but there is often a lack of specifics. So what should AI ultimately do in the case of social media community management?
Perhaps the most important feature that the next generation of community management tools have in terms of AI integration is geared to unique response creation. This is a real game changer since it can create unique and tailored messages for a wide variety of user messages or posts. The very act of reading and writing thoughtful responses to messages and posts is time-consuming. AI technology is now allowing teams to respond more quickly and effectively to these messages and posts. If nothing else, integrated AI capabilities would write a first draft that would get you going in the right direction, saving significant time and effort.
However, your AI integration should not focus only on unique message creation. There is also a possibility that AI can work on bettering responses already drafted by social media managers and customer service agents. After all, if you are writing replies quickly, mistakes can happen. Perhaps you were in a hurry when responding to a message and you forgot to answer one of the questions a user asked about. Moreover, when you are writing fast, there is a greater chance of spelling mistakes. Just like using AI for message creation, it can also help with improving the responses you or someone on your team creates or correcting any mistakes you may make.
We should also point out that the best social media management tools for agencies would come with AI integrated capabilities for community management. After all, social media agencies may be tasked with managing several accounts for their clients with relatively small teams. In this case, AI can be set up to create responses to direct messages and user posts related to many different client accounts. This is in addition to organizational and automation features that would be essential when managing multiple social media accounts.
Keep in mind that effectively using AI technology requires some input from your side. This can include defining the persona of the person responding (i.e., customer support team member or social media manager) as well as other rules and guidelines that AI should follow. It is important that you correctly set up your AI helper in order for your responses to be as accurate and useful as possible.
Looking for the Next Generation of Social Media Community Management Tools
With so much new technology being developed for social media community management, don’t delay in looking for the next generation of social media community management tools already on the market. These advanced tools may not be for everyone. If you are a company that has low message and post volumes on only a few social media networks, you probably do not require tools that have the features mentioned above.
However, if you are working with multiple active social media accounts, the most advanced social media community management tools may be just what you need. The best community management tools would have powerful AI integrated capabilities as well as different helpful automation features that save you time and effort. If you want to test an advanced community management tool for yourself, Fanpage Karma offers a free 14-day trial of its all-in-one social media tool that offers these community management features described above.