Content to Commerce: Engaging Consumers Across Paid, Owned and Earned Channels

Chapter 8

Continuity

If great content is the spark that ignites audience engagement, absorbing conversation is the fuel that sustains it. So, it is no wonder that channel and community management are the most common roles within social media.¹ Content teams are tasked with creating compelling content, but it is the management teams that are responsible for nurturing it and ensuring that it is consistent across all channels and communities.

As noted in Chapter 4, a brand's network is similar to that of TV. Both are composed of the various channels they own and operate, whether it is Viacom's MTV or any brand's Facebook pages. There the similarity ends, however, because a critical component of most social channels is the communities that reside there.

Insight

As Big Fuel's vice president of brand channel management, Mandy Gresh oversees the firm's channel and community managers.

The dictionary defines a community as “a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.”

So, in social media one could say:

• The locality is the channel—such as Facebook or YouTube—where the community lives.
• The government is the community guidelines set up to moderate the conversations (for harsh language, etc.).
• The common cultural and historical heritage is the affinity for a brand and/or what it says about community members and their interests.

Essentially, when people “like” a brand on Facebook, follow ...