The discussion around community management, moderated and facilitated by Meg Canada, covered a range of ways community management benefits an overall marketing strategy. From responding to complaints and giving immediate reassurance to advocating a brand or product, community management is key to new media.

A community manager becomes the human face to an organization, answering questions, making suggestions and generally letting customers/users/anyone know someone’s listening. Specifically, the library immersed itself into social media through Facebook and Myspace, creating applications for catalog search and cultivating relationships online.

An example mentioned came from Sprint. Their Instinct phones were advertised incredibly well, better than expected and phone delivery/activation was delayed for months as Sprint caught up. Many forums and sites were established to vent about frustrations.

Sprint implanted users into these forums. The Sprint representatives tried to clear up interpretations, contradicted false information and reassured those frustrated. Their community managers realized these forums were appearing before the Sprint site and addressed the issues within them.

Community managers monitor, through multiple channels, a brand’s image. They should be professional and approachable. They gather input for products and other forms of consumer research. Their voice should reflect that of the brand because they are advocates for their products or services.

Established advertisement strategies or marketing won’t be replaced by community management but enhanced by it.

Other points or questions posed by Community Management 101:

• What defines a good community? Can the communities themselves take on a life beyond the brand? (Comments on book items within the library’s online catalog becoming a new-age book club)
• When the library needed more images of people reading they used Flickr, Facebook and Twitter to ask for submissions.
• Will a bottom-up, transparent system reduce the shock of scandalous information? Are brands so insulated they don’t have feedback?
• Call-based support services are frustrating. Will an online support system add a level of savvy intrinsic to working from the web? Can the support person do more answering questions online than over the phone?

Within a discussion of early-adopters, with Phil Wilson’s small survey of Lakeville-like participants as statistical guide, I learned that most my target market will miss messaging by way of SMS or social profiles. The awareness is high for sites like Facebook or Myspace but participation is still low. People older than 35 just aren’t using social media consistently.

I caved to Facebook early, have two blogs and a Twitter account (as well as other smaller dips into social pools). But I’m younger than the tourism market’s target and more tech-friendly than even those among my age group. How do I turn a message through a medium that’s almost completely ignored by the market I’m aiming for?

Phil and the rest of us discussed some ideas and I took away from the discussion some ideas. Whether we have a strategy or do anything with social media or not, we need to stake a claim. Until the credibility grows in medium like Twitter or Facebook, there will be little participation but we should be there when people come to us, rather than meet them there later.

Tourism, as a market whole, will be the hardest hit by a downward financial trend but Twitter, Facebook, etc. are generally free. We have nothing to lose. We need to put our brand out there and let people accept us as the media becomes more universally adopted.

Some other ideas from the discussion:
* Marketing around all angles, video, SMS and profile sites to have more information out there.
* Promotions specific to social media adopters, focusing on the smaller pool of possible winners (who doesn’t want to increase their odds?).
* Follow the brand as it’s talked about and mentioned among social media to keep an eye on impressions or opinions toward it.
* Remain current in different media to have a presence there as it’s used more frequently.
* Use comments, tweets, wall posts and other user/customer suggestions (gripes) to direct marketing strategies.
* Use social media as a PART of a greater strategy, a tactic to generating interest rather than an entire campaign.

It was a great discussion of how social media will change the marketing strategies of different companies. Anything from keeping everyone up to date on your son’s little league team through Twitter to using online registration to events via Facebook.

The tourism industry can benefit from giving a more complete impression of the city, tweeting events, photos on Facebook or posting events to an upcoming events feed. As the 35+ crowd starts to sacrifice some security to enter the social media landscape, more customers will start to listen.

As a tool for community and information diffusion, social media will be strong and will only grow stronger as the 90-some percent of people aware of Facebook create a profile to keep up with their children or jump onto Twitter because they hear their boss’ tweets are hilarious.