As a social media professional, I’ve spent most of my career in the content creation and strategy space, developing thoughtful strategies and creative tactics tailored to my clients’ goals and executing on them. While I’ve always done some degree of community management for my social media clients, six months ago I began working with a client in a role focused solely on community management for a large, highly engaged audience. It has been so much fun and I’ve learned a ton, so I thought I’d share some of the takeaways here.

But first, let’s take a step back. What is social media community management? Simply put, it’s how your business engages with its audience online. It’s all about building a vibrant community around your brand so that your enthusiastic, loyal audience is eager to promote your brand to their networks as well. Great community management can help a brand go from a standard corporate brand to a more human brand, where supporters can tell the voice behind the account cares about them. That’s special--it’s hard for a customer to find, and difficult for a community manager to pull off! So let’s get into it: how can you do community management in a way that is meaningful and impactful? Here are 7 tips: