Community Management is a new term you see popping up as of late. But what exactly is a Community Manager? and Why does a company/team/driver need one? Community Management is a little different for what each company wants it to encompass. We have our definition of what we do here, that may be different than yours and Joe Bob Race Team may have a different idea of what it is to them. The basics of community management is just that, managing your community. Community is just that, what do you (the company) define as your community. It most always does involve social media outlets. The role is sometimes given to a PR person which honestly is a terrible idea. Why you may ask? I will explain all that in this post.
Hiring someone who is unfamiliar with motorsports to work for you is a great idea. If you like starting behind the 8 ball. You know as well as I do that motorsports is a different beast when it comes to business. Being knowledgeable about the workings of a car, a race series or team can be very helpful when communicating with fans or sponsors. Example. Say I hired Betty to do my PR and Joe to do my CM (we’ll shorten community management to that) neither of them have any idea about cars or racing but they came highly recommended by a friend as the best. While giving info for our next press release to Betty I have to stop and explain everything to her. She’s not knowledgeable about our series or how the car works. When we finish Betty goes off on her merry way to write the release and send it out to the world. I get the email in my inbox couple hours later and well she got it all wrong. What will fans think when they read this? They will think we have no clue what we are doing! I hop over to our Facebook page to see that Joe has posted a picture and called a transmission a dinglehopper! *Facepalm*
Fans know your sport better than anyone. There’s fans out there who have been fans longer than some of us have been alive. These fans know the sport inside and out, backwards and forwards you can’t get one over on them! That’s why you have to know your stuff. Know that when you hire someone that they are going to be as excited and into it as you are. That they will help you with things that the fans want to see. Not knowing your audience is just plain silly in any business.
So that’s the first step in hiring a CM, hire someone who knows what you do. But why? CMs are people who know the inner workings of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, etc. So much that they have nailed down when you get the best traffic to your FB posts and that if you post at Noon on Twitter that you won’t get as many responses as if you waited till 12:15.. They allow you to be freed of worrying about keeping your fans in tune with what you are doing while you are busy at the track. While it is customary for them only to Tweet on your behave while you are at the track or even more so in the car. These people know what to do and when to do it and what tricks work better than others when it comes to social media.
Having someone to show your fans how your day is going without them being at the track is critical. Not all fans live near a track that they can experience your series or some fans just aren’t able to come for one reason or another. That’s where having someone to record your weekend at the track is so very important. Words just don’t cut it either. While they keep your fans updated they feel more a part of what’s going on through pictures and video. Another critical part of a CM’s job is to update when it happens and know the fastest way to get the information across to fans. Just do a quick lap, have the CM snap a pic of the timing and scoring board or run the fastest ¼ mile time of the weekend, snap a pic of the time and send it out for the world to see. Fans want to be involved. Having this stuff will ensure that your fans feel as if they are there with you for your race weekend.