Savvy companies recognize the value of a strong community. Think of Nike and its community of runners, Nike+, and you'll quickly understand that creating and fostering an online community around a product or brand is a powerful way to boost marketing efforts, gain valuable insight into consumers, increase revenue, improve consumer loyalty, and enhance customer service efforts.

Companies now have the unprecedented opportunity to integrate their brand's messaging into the everyday lives of their target audiences. But while supporting the growth of online communities should be at the top of every company's priority list, all too often it falls by the wayside. That's why brand strategy expert and digital marketer Lauren Perkins wrote The Community Manager's Playbook (#CMplaybook on Twitter), a must-read guide for business and brand builders who need to strengthen their approach to online B2C community management and customer engagement.

As Perkins explains, if companies want to create thriving online communities focused on their product or brand, they must do more than simply issue a few tweets a day, create (and then abandon) a Facebook page, and blog every once in a while. Instead, organizations of all sizes must treat community management as a central component of their overall marketing strategy. When they do, they will be rewarded handsomely with greater brand awareness, increased customer use and retention, lower acquisition costs, and a tribe of consumers who can't wait to purchase their next product.

Perkins not only teaches readers how to build an engaging community strategy from the ground up, but she also provides them with the tactical community management activities they need to acquire and retain customers, create compelling content, and track their results along the way. Distinctive in its comprehensive, step-by-step approach to creating online communities that are fully consistent with a company's existing brand voice, The Community Manager's Playbook:

• Explains how excellent community management provides a competitive advantage with a large impact on sales
• Provides an in-depth overview of brand and business alignment
• Teaches readers how to identify their community's online target audience and influence their needs and wants
• Details the appropriate online channels through which content should be distributed
• Champions the use of an agile approach through repeated testing to maximize the return on every company investment
• Discusses the many diverse metrics that can be used to measure community scope Today, there is no brand strategy without a community strategy. Companies that are not developing communities are losing control of their brands and missing opportunities to optimize their marketing investments. With The Community Manager's Playbook as their guide, however, marketing professionals and the companies and brands they represent will be equipped with the tools they need to manage their online marketing efforts, engage their core customers at every level, leverage community insights into the product development cycle, and ensure that their messaging is heard across all corners of the digital landscape.

Autorentext
Lauren Perkins is a motivational coach, digital evangelist, and brand marketer who devotes her energy to helping individuals and companies unearth and implement solutions that will make a difference in their businesses and lives. After beginning her career as a journalist at a local paper, Perkins was asked to join The Boston Globe, where she learned the necessity of asking hard-hitting questions, assessing the entire landscape, and diving deep to understand the why behind each story. That philosophical approach has endured Perkins's career shift to experiential marketing, brand management, and digital technology, topics that she consults on at Perks Consulting, which she opened in 2008 to modernize the intersection of technology and lifestyle. With the goal of providing holistic, consumer-centric strategies, Perks works closely with every client including eDiets, Laura Mercier, Cookstr, and Pfizer to align brand with business, products with platforms, and marketing with media. In addition, Perkins is a leading instructor at General Assembly, New York's largest technology and entrepreneurship campus. Currently she can be found leading classes on Community Management, User Acquisition, and Brand-centric Business Strategy.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Community Management: A Lay of the Land Chapter 1 will establish a definition of community management and then guide readers through the book's purpose. It will also discuss the benefits of both developing such a community for readers' businesses and having a solid understanding of the various aspects of community management.Chapter 2: Audience and LandscapeChapter 2 will discuss the research and development that is a necessary step to successful management of a community. It will lead readers through the "who," "what," "where," "when," and "why" of community management and the implications of each of these elements to one's company. It will then illustrate the digital landscape where existing communities burrow and already segment themselves. This landscape is comprised of the platforms associated with the digital sphere, including traditional media, social media, location, mobile apps, and websites. A digital road map will then be provided that will lead readers through the four locations of content segmentation: platforms, channels, assets, and mediums. Lastly, this chapter will discuss targeting communities, how to deal with uncontrollable preexisting communities, and why delivering useful content to an audience will help a community grow and thrive.Chapter 3: Building Your StrategyChapter 3 will begin with a discussion of primary and secondary objectives to cultivate the "why" that supports the basis of a community's creation. It will continue on to provide readers with a visual representation of audience segmentation and explain how people can be divided based on an applicable example. It will also talk about target customers and other key players in the relationship network and how to differentiate audience segments and correctly prioritize them. Chapter 3 will pull together the strategy development by helping readers determine where to host their communities: an already existing web, mobile, or social platform, a newly dedicated and branded page on a social platform, or on their own website or hosted platform.Chapter 4: Branding Within the CommunityChapter 4 will start with an introduction to what brand means and the features it is comprised of. It will then illustrate brand identity using applicable case studies. Readers will dive into the needs related to brand consistency through visual assets and messaging that elicit a response in and are relevant to the targeted audience. Chapter 4 will also delve into how to position a brand to deliver competitive intelligence and needs to customers. Finally, this section will discuss how to figure out what customers expect from a community, which defines a brand's sentiment.Chapter 5: Content Creation for CommunitiesChapter 5 begins with an overview of content strategy, including why it is essential to community and what types of content can be used. This chapter will also discuss planning content, how to decide on the right content for the community, and whether the community should use content from other sources or original content. It will then conclude with a discussion of the benefits that each type of content can offer a community, as well as an overview of best practices for responding to a community. Chapter 6: Distributing Your Message and ContentChapter 6 takes readers through the various ways they can distribute their message and content. Deciding the appropriate channels is pertinent in correctly connecting with the target audience where…