Janet Aronica of oneforty on the Ever-Evolving Community Manager Role

Janet Aronica is the Community Manager of oneforty in Central Square in Cambridge. Janet discovered her love for writing and social media while at the agency she worked for prior to joining the oneforty team and possibly even before that dabbling in journalism in college. Wanting to learn to be the best writer she could be, the best way to do that was to write for her school newspaper. Writing for the school newspaper allowed her to learn the tricks and trades of what it takes to be a good journalist. Her journalism skills would later come in handy when she landed her dream job with oneforty working for Laura Fitton- the deemed Queen of Twitter. As Janet would put it, “There is a difference between being a journalist and being journalistic.”

Jounalistic abilities will help you be an outstanding Community Manager. What is a Community Manager and what do you do when you actually land this coveted position with a startup?

After she decided that she wanted to pursue the world of Community Management she started to network and learn as much as she could about social media, blogging and what it takes to build a sold following of quality followers over quantity.  The strategy and plan to bring the oneforty community to the level she envisioned was in her hands now. As Community Manager she started thinking about the differences in marketing perspectives today and what they would look like in the future. How would these changes apply to her role as a Community Manager  moving forward? What is the overall difference between an outbound community and an inbound generated community? This is where her head was. “Was I going to take the five community members (for example) that we had on the website, the fans of @Pistachio and the brand- build upon that? We created a marketing plan to address this group. I needed to learn the scope of the community that we had was, take those people that we did have to make them evangelists to grow the community naturally.”

As a pioneer in the idea of Community Management oneforty is creating an overall group of followers to evangelize the oneforty brand with tools to help everyone spread the overall greatness that is Twitter.

Here are five tips and tricks that will help other Community Managers as they embark on the journey of this role that is ever-evolving in the world of the startup.

1. Learn to be a good writer.

You will be writing emails, writing website copy; what people click on will be what they will judge your credibility and reliability by. By learning to use language in creative ways you will build a stronger voice for the brand. 

Tip: Start blogging on your own, read all kinds of writing including poetry, movie reviews, etc. This will help you in your marketing copy as well as with your tweeting.

2. Watch what you tweet.

As a Community Manager you will have thousands of followers of your personal Twitter account as well as your company’s Twitter account. You are the public face of the brand; make sure that you reflect that in your tweets.

Tip: Keep in mind that most of your followers are going to read your tweets, or at least a good percentage of them. When tweeting, remind yourself that this tweet must have value. Is there anger in this tweet; is there value to our followers who are reading this? If the answer to that question is yes, then tweet it. You must have a voice and keep that voice. Is the tweet valuable and a good conversation starter? Just remember that your influential and strong stated 140-character tweet can sometimes come off misconstrued than what you meant it to be read as. People will make judgments of your tweets on your personal and company brand. Janet reminds herself that there is a good way to think about tweeting, “There is a difference between your outside voice or your Twitter voice,” remember that as you write those 140 characters and press send. Will your followers find ultimate value in the tweet and want to share this content with their followers?

3. Contribute some of your time to become better at your job.

Use your time wisely. You will personally benefit from your personal growth. Your organization will grow and your followers will learn through your development. 

Tip: Spend 10% of your time reading and learning from other companies and other ways of doing things. Seek out resources like eBooks and webinars at HubSpot and look for new tools from oneforty. Use tools like Nutshell Mail to stay updated on new followers or use SocialToo to manage your direct messages on Twitter. If you need a combination of those two things then look to apps like SocialOomph. Is running the company Twitter account taking up all your time? It doesn’t have to with tools like these. Find the right combination of tools and resources to help you do your job better and more efficiently. Think outside the box on new ways to do things. 

4. Monitor all social media outlets to tie together what your community is looking for in terms of content and engagement.

If you can learn to monitor different social mediums and tie them together you will start creating content that is right for your community. The best way to see what your community’s needs are is by reading about that they are asking for.

Tip: If you create content that keeps getting asked for you will create blog posts that you can use over and over again and the reward share will be bigger over the test of time. Remember- Google is not the only place that people go to these days for their information. They go to Twitter, Facebook, etc for their answers. If people are asking about something on Twitter to their following then you can assume they are asking about it on other social platforms and in the search engines.

5. Think social media management.

Community Managers are doing a whole bunch of a lot of different things at once. There are ways to do it more efficiently.

Tip: Find the medium where you community creates the most value. Find what ways will drive the most potential on conversation items and topics. If you find the passion of your community and leverage it through the right tools you will be paving the stones for continued community growth.

At oneforty Janet and her team pride themselves on the purpose of Twitter and how to get business value from Twitter. The passion comes from the right application that will drive the potential for the right conversations. What conversations are happening in your community right now and how can you leverage those?

Janet swears by her community manager toolkit- give it a try and let her know what you think about it. Does this help you? How is the Community Manager role evolving at your organization? What did you do to ready yourself to be successful?