The complete guide to social media community management

Social media community management and owned community management are like different branches of the same tree.

Both require a keen understanding of a target audience, including their interests, goals and needs for support. The main difference is, owned communities allow for full control over the rules of engagement. On social, you must adapt to the engagement standards of each specific network.

That means working across different platforms, managing multiple conversations at once and staying up-to-date on network updates and trends. In today’s new social media landscape, engagement is just as important as entertainment, and for good reason. Active social media communities build hype around a brand, providing organic amplification for launches and promotional activities, alike.

In this article, we share how you can create more impactful fan experiences through community management on social media.

What is social media community management?

Social media community management is the process of engaging audiences across social media networks to increase brand loyalty and grow authentic connections. This function oversees the one-to-one or one-to-few interactions that strengthen relationships and promote brand advocacy.

Nearly every social media network—Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn, Twitch, Discord—has features that support creating and maintaining active communities. A social media community management strategy defines the cross-network approach a business takes managing conversations with brand advocates.

That said, not all communities are created equal. You should refine tactics based on where the community lives to yield the best results.

Bonus Resource: We surveyed over 4,500 consumers to find out what users actually want from brands on social, and how their responses differ from network to network. Find out what they had to say in the 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report.

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What is a social media community manager?

Social media community managers are responsible for engaging audiences across networks to further develop a community. At a high level, this may sound like a social media manager’s responsibility, but there are distinct differences that separate the two roles.

For example, you might see Oatly’s Social Engagement & Community Growth Specialist, Paula Perez, in an Oatly TikTok from time to time, but she doesn’t take part in content planning.

“I’ll star in a TikTok on occasion because I’m comfortable in front of a camera, but I don’t plan or create any of the content that goes on our social media profiles,” said Perez during a previous interview. “Our creative and social teams work together on that.”

What are common use cases for social media community management?

No day in the life of a social media community manager is ever the same. That said, certain core responsibilities consistently shape their role. These include:

• Customer support: Providing timely and helpful responses to customer inquiries and concerns on social media.
• Audience engagement: Fostering meaningful interactions with followers through content, conversations‌ and campaigns.
• Feedback aggregation: Gathering and analyzing customer opinions and insights to inform business decisions.
• Lead generation: Identifying and nurturing potential customers through social media engagement.
• Crisis management: Addressing and mitigating negative situations or PR issues that arise on social media.

Why is social media community management so important?

You can’t overstate the role of community management in social media. It’s a unique discipline—separate from creative production or content strategy—that can create value for both B2C and B2B brands. When done well, it becomes a powerful tool for boosting brand perception. Here’s how:

It increases brand visibility

Social media algorithms are notoriously mysterious, and what works today may not work tomorrow.

Building an active community is the best way to grow your reach when the algorithm works in your favor, and to maintain it when it doesn’t. Actively participating in conversations on social media pushes your brand past the boundaries of your owned profile, introducing it to new potential fans.

Perez says these efforts helped establish and build Oatly’s brand presence across the social media landscape. “Whenever I tell people I work at Oatly, they always tell me they see our page in comments sections all over the place.

It provides insight into audience preferences

A social media community is a goldmine of audience insights. By tapping into sentiment, pain points‌ and preferences, you can make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies‌ and overall business direction.

For example, Salesforce aggregates data and audience feedback using Sprout Social to learn more about their audience preferences. According to Max Benesi, Salesforce’s Associate Manager, Social Media and Community, it’s one of the best ways to tap into the expertise of their community of highly engaged Trailblazers—brand advocates who are committed to innovating with Salesforce.

“They’re very honest—they will tell us what they like and don’t like,” Benesi said. “We use their feedback to inform our content creation.”

Bonus Resource: Discover how Salesforce 10x’d their community management efficiency (and how you can too!)

Read the case study

It protects and enhances brand reputation

According to a Q1 2024 Sprout Social Pulse Survey, two of the top three factors that have the greatest impact on brand trust are how fast a brand responds to their audience on social media and how personalized those responses are.

By investing in community management and prioritizing timely, personalized interactions, brands can cultivate trust and turn their social media presence into a powerful engine for growth and advocacy.

It strengthens customer relationships

One-on-one interactions in a community setting can have a ripple effect, strengthening customer relationships far beyond the initial exchange. Remember: For every one person who voices a question, there are probably quite a few individuals who have the same question but haven’t spoken up.

In Sprout’s owned community, The Arboretum, we created a designated space for platform questions and feedback. No question is too big or small, and we work with our team of experts to ensure each customer is addressed in a timely fashion. These efforts create a bi-directional feedback loop that strengthens relationships at scale.

How to build a social media community management strategy

Successful social media community management may appear effortless, but it’s a carefully cultivated skill. Behind every well-crafted response lies a strategy honed to build relationships and drive results.

Ready to elevate your brand’s community management game? Here are some actionable steps to get you started:

1. Set goals for your strategy

Setting effective goals for your social media community management strategy requires striking the right balance between ambition and realism. Begin by grounding your objectives in the broader business goals, whether it’s boosting brand awareness, driving conversions or fostering customer loyalty.

Next, translate these business objectives into specific, measurable social media KPIs. For example, if your goal is to foster customer loyalty, you may want to prioritize increasing positive brand sentiment.

On the other hand, if you want to drive conversions, consider setting a target for proactive engagements on product-related content to drive potential customers further down the sales funnel.

2. Identify where your target audience is most active

While owned communities offer a focused space for interaction, social media community management requires a broader approach across various platforms your audience frequents.

To kickstart your strategy, begin by identifying where your target audience is most engaged. This focused approach allows you to tailor your content and voice to resonate with them, maximizing reach and fostering authentic relationships.

Remember, quality trumps quantity. Don’t overextend your resources by trying to be everywhere at once. Use a social media management tool (like Sprout!) to pinpoint the platforms generating the highest engagement, and prioritize your efforts there. A key part of effective community management is first understanding the specific group you’re trying to engage, which involves knowing how to find your niche on social media.

This data-driven approach ensures you’re investing your time and energy where it matters most.

3. Establish a social media moderation strategy

Establishing a clear moderation strategy is like setting the ground rules for a great party—it ensures everyone feels safe, respected‌ and has a good time. By proactively addressing negativity and promoting positive interactions, you’ll cultivate a thriving community where your brand can shine.

If you haven’t yet defined your social media moderation approach, consider these key aspects:

• Brand voice and community culture: What kind of environment do you want to foster? Do you want to position your brand as a helpful expert, a playful companion‌ or something else entirely? Your moderation style should align with your brand’s voice and the desired community culture.
• Response protocols: How will you handle negative feedback or customer complaints? Establish clear processes for timely and empathetic responses.
• Crisis management: Develop a plan for dealing with trolls, inflammatory comments‌ or potential PR crises. Define escalation paths and empower your team to take action when necessary.

Remember, moderation isn’t just about policing; it’s about fostering an environment where genuine connections flourish. By establishing clear guidelines and consistently enforcing them, you protect your brand’s reputation while empowering your audience to engage in meaningful conversations.

4. Measure your results and optimize

Measuring your community management efforts isn’t just about creating reports; it’s about proving value and securing buy-in from marketing leadership. By tracking key metrics like engagement rate, sentiment analysis‌ and conversions, you can directly tie your work to broader business goals.

But the true power of data lies in its ability to refine your strategy. Analyze audience behavior to gain insight into their content, engagement and product preferences. From there, brainstorm ways to make improvements. This iterative process ensures your strategy remains effective and evolves alongside both your audience’s needs and your brand’s objectives.

5 social media community management best practices and tips

Brands stand to gain a lot by prioritizing community management in social media. That said, your approach has to be consistent to reap those benefits. It takes more than just a few likes and comments to create lifetime fans.

Use these five tactics to get the most out of your social media community management strategy.

1. Reward your superfans

As you grow your social media community, you’ll begin to notice some friendly faces. These are budding brand evangelists. Getting them to that stage requires thoughtful engagement.

The first step is identifying your superfans. Look for people who drive community conversations forward by engaging with your social content: it might be someone that always tags themselves at your location on Instagram, or maybe they’re the first to comment on posts in your Facebook Group.

From there, show them your appreciation. Sprout’s community team knows that even the simplest gifts can be a major relationship builder.

“Our community doesn’t owe us anything—it’s on us to keep members who are willing to participate engaged,” says Jonathan Zuluaga, Sprout’s Senior Community Strategist. “We always reward people for their effort to show we appreciate the value of their time.”

2. Prepare to answer difficult questions

If you’re going to do community management, you have to do it all the way. That means engaging with it all—the good, the bad and the ugly.

Don’t worry. Engaging with a rogue hater doesn’t have to be stress-inducing if you don’t let it be. Oatly’s figured out how to make it fun.

“We try to be really responsive, no matter what,” says Perez. “We even have some fun with people who give us criticism. We know we won’t convince that person to love Oatly, but there’s also a chance someone else might see our response and think it’s funny.”

Maintaining this responsiveness means prepping your team to answer the hard questions. At Oatly, this looks like regular knowledge shares on issues relevant to their product and mission. “We get a lot of questions about niche ingredients, packaging, our commitment to sustainability—we’re given the resources needed to speak on all of it.”

3. Prioritize proactive engagement

Brands should strive for balance between the reactive and proactive elements of their social media community management strategy. One reinforces the strength of the community, and the other grows it in size.

If you look at the comment section of any viral TikTok, you’ll likely see a few brands chiming in.

This style of proactive marketing—an audience engagement strategy that uses conversations around brands or industries that don’t explicitly mention a brand handle—is a masterful way to increase reach and expand your community. A top comment on a viral post gets a healthy fraction of all those impressions.

4. Establish a content creation feedback loop

While social media community managers might not be directly responsible for content creation, their role is integral to a successful content strategy.

By closely collaborating with the creative team, community managers can provide invaluable insights gleaned from their interactions with the audience. This includes identifying trends, potential brand advocates‌ and opportunities for engagement, helping shape content that resonates with the target audience.

This symbiotic relationship fosters a cohesive brand experience for the community, where the creative vision aligns seamlessly with the real-time conversations happening on social media. When creative teams, community and social media managers are aligned, the result is a more consistent brand experience for the fans on the other end of the message.

5. Empower your team with the right management tools

Social media is an ever-expanding frontier. Conversations about your brand or industry can—and will—pop up anywhere. If you want to keep up, you need to set your team up with community management tools.

Sprout Social is designed to handle the evolving needs of social media community management teams. Our platform offers a suite of tools designed to provide visibility into fan activity across networks, including:

• The Smart Inbox: Unify your social channels into a single stream to monitor inbound messages, tags, keyword use and more.
• Social listening: Act faster on customer-informed engagement opportunities, whether your brand is directly mentioned or not.

• CRM Integrations: Link inbound messages to database contact profiles in Salesforce, Marketo or Microsoft Dynamics 365 to provide superior customer service.

3 social media community management examples from real brands

Thriving brand communities bring people together over a shared connection to a company’s mission, vision or goals. Learn how to translate your business needs into a thriving fan base with these three social media community management examples:

1. Oatly

Oatly started their TikTok account in October 2022. Less than six months later, they have more than 600,000 followers and 8.5 million Likes on the platform.

“We leverage a lot of the organic conversations that happen about Oatly on TikTok,” says Perez. “It’s given people a new way to communicate with us. There are so many of our fans on TikTok that we weren’t able to reach until now. It’s a new touchpoint that proves the value of being where your fans are.”

The brand’s approach to social media community management helps grow their account by capitalizing on every opportunity to showcase their personality. In some situations, the comments they leave on other accounts receive the same amount of attention as their own posts.

For example, when UK comedian Simon David shared a video poking fun at the Oatly theme song printed on the side of their cartons, the brand was quick to act in the comments.

“Our comment got around more than 20,000 likes—almost 30% of the total likes on the video. It was a really fun interaction and it wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t keeping an eye on our brand mentions.”

2. Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University is home to a large community of students, teachers, staff, parents and alumni. Some of these individuals still call College Station home, but many more have ventured beyond campus limits to start their post-grad lives.

There’s a ton to borrow from the Texas A&M playbook. But, if you’re going to replicate any of their successes, you’ve got to start with their approach to social media accessibility.

“Creating accessible content has been a priority of our team for several years, and things like including image descriptions are just part of our workflow,” says Krista Berend, Director of Social Media at Texas A&M.

By prioritizing accessibility, the Texas A&M social team creates an inclusive community that caters to all Aggies, no matter their physical or cognitive abilities. Berend and her team use Sprout Social to ensure their content creates an inclusive experience for all Aggies, not just some.

“With the software we were using before, we had to do all of that natively across social channels,” explains Berend. “With Sprout we can do all of that within the platform, which makes our workflow so much easier. Plus, as social channels add more accessibility features, we’ve noticed that Sprout almost immediately has those in the back end for us to use.”

3. Lyft

Lyft’s approach to social media community management is a consumer and marketer favorite, because they respond to everything—complaints, jokes, random anecdotes about Lyft experiences. If you mention their brand online (with or without a tag), chances are they’ll be in your replies shortly.

These efforts humanize the brand by reinforcing their voice. A quick scroll through the Replies tab of the Lyft Twitter account surfaces countless examples of the fun and irreverent personality they’re known for.

Cracking jokes and laughing alongside their fans gives them the brand authenticity needed to earn loyal fans in a crowded market.

Strengthen your social media community management strategy

A solid approach to social media community management can bolster organic reach, create brand ambassadors and further cement your brand’s personality in an authentic, human way.

To create audience connections that drive ROI, check out this guide to building a solid community management strategy. It’s filled with practical examples that’ll show you how to put everything you just read into action.