The alarm bells should be ringing when all of a company’s social media rests in the hands of one community manager. This means that the company has a high risk and a single chance of failure. Some scenarios to consider are what will happen when the community manager falls ill, leaves the company, or decides to take a holiday? Who takes charge of the social media channels? Companies should consider how quickly they can hire and train a community manager to take charge of affairs. Social media has gone from a nice-to-have feature in companies to being a focus of strategic advantage that involves full-scale out-of-hours operation. A single public misstep that does not live up to the expectations of customers can have disastrous effects on the reputation of a company. A survey shows that community managers never clock off. They work all hours. But this is very risky both for the manager and for the company. All this challenges can be overcome by a company that is low on budget by bringing in outside help. And the authors state that this is their area of specialty.
Key Takeaways:
- A recent survey conducted by the Australian Community Managers discovered that 38 percent of organizations have one or fewer managers handling the affairs of the community.
- When there is just one community manager it is a crisis waiting to happen because he might be hard to replace if he falls ill or leaves the company.
- In the authors nearly a decade of running Quiip, he has seen social media go from a nice-to-have tool to a must-have tool.
“Working all hours isn’t only risky for the community manager. A business enabling (or worse, encouraging) always-on availability may come under scrutiny for working conditions.”
Read more: http://quiip.com.au/the-risk-of-solo-community-management/