brandknewmag.com
34
Pop quiz: You run a company, maybe a big one with a highprofile public image, and you know that your brand needs
to be represented on all the major social media outposts.
You want to make sure that the person managing these
platforms knows their ins and outs, but you also don’t want
to pay an arm and a leg to have someone spend the day on
Twitter. Do you turn the keys to your digital kingdom over
to a junior employee, or even an intern? For every story of
community management done right – a pharmacy chain
customer service rep pretending to be an operative from the
future comes to mind – there are a dozen other examples of
the damage Millennials with social media passwords can do
to a brand – think about HMV’s experience, the resignation
of the UK’s “teen police commissioner” for tweeting about
her own scofflaw way, or the multi-part Matthew Keys saga,
in which the twentysomething former social media manager
for Reuters was charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly
providing the password to the L. A. Times website to
members of Anonymous. Is your brand image actually safe
in Millennial hands?
Susie Hall, president of Vitamin T, likens community
management to cat herding on the internet.
“Community managers are the social voice of a brand or
organization, which can mean they are the person behind
the complete social strategy or the people solely responsible
for executing that strategy. They’re typically responsible for
finding and sharing content daily to help grow a network,
responding to and engaging audiences on various platforms,
managing and measuring social campaigns and following
marketing trends and the constant changes in social media,”
she says.
Sounds like a weighty responsibility and it’s one that’s
predominantly shouldered by young women, according to
research from Social Fresh. Allie MacPherson is one such
community manager. A digital consultant for Text100 and
community manager for one of their clients, KAYAK, she
believes that affinity for the tools involved and familiarity with
the nature of online interpersonal interaction is a big reason
why online community management tends to be the domain
of younger employees.
“I think we see so many Millennial community managers as
a result of the natural comfort level that most Millennials
have with social media. This isn’t to say that Millennials are
better fit to be community managers than older generations,
simply that most of us grew up with these platforms and
have a more innate sense of comfort. Combine that with the
entrepreneurial spirit and confidence that Millennials are so
frequently labeled with and you have a generation of social
media users comfortable taking on the voice of a brand on
the internet.”
those things, the right person for the job could be someone
more junior than expected. But without those things, junior or
not, you’re putting your brand at risk.”
She’s right. Even company owners themselves, especially
those unschooled in social media etiquette, aren’t immune
to falling prey to brands behaving badly syndrome. Consider
the recent the tidal wave of nega ѥٔ