Content

Planning for
Community
Managers
By Julia Bass and Brian Kotlyar
Published December 4, 2013
CONTENT PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY MANAGERS | December 4, 2013

2013 Dachis Group | 515 Congress Ave., #2420 Austin, TX 78701 USA | T: +1 512-275-7825 | www.dachisgroup.com 2
Community managers are one of the only parts of an organization that are truly front-facing to
community members. At most organizations today, they are responsible for utilizing their deep
understanding of a brands audience to create engaging content that helps build brand affinity
and loyalty. As the prominence of timely, on-the-fly content creation grows, this role is going to
expand. Community managers must learn to follow trends relevant to their audiences and
respond in creative ways in near real time.
Content is the primary tool in most community manager toolkits. Whether its an erudite blog
post or a hyper-relevant Tweet, content is a powerful way for brand marketers to connect with
audiences. According to Forbes, an estimated 60 percent of companies now employ some sort
of inbound content creation in their marketing strategies. But simply creating content isnt
enough audiences eventually tire of the same old product shots, cat photos, and holiday posts.
Timely and relevant content is the best way to ensure consistent engagement in any community.
Two great examples of this are Mini Cooper and Starbucks UK.
Mini Cooper
When Mini Cooper hopped on the February 2013 horsemeat scandal in the UK with a clever,
time-sensitive graphic, interactions with the brand topped 1 million in a matter of days.
Starbucks UK
Even timely content that is not even all that well conceived can be powerful. One example is
Starbucks UKs participation in online conversation surrounding the birth of the royal baby. The
brand joined the conversation with a humorous, but not particularly inspired piece of content that
was timely and appropriate to the whirlwind of social activity. The result was impressive. While a
typical Starbucks UK tweet generates 10 to 40 retweets and 20 to 50 favorites, Starbucks UKs
royal baby tweet yielded an increase of more than 3,300% in retweets and 2,000% in favorites.
Even if social content isnt perfectly crafted or clever, it can deliver results.
The path to timely, real-time content
Effective content moderation and community
management is the foundation of successful
social marketing. Its no surprise then that it is
also a key element in developing an effective
real-time marketing capability. Social media
has created an opportunity for companies to
directly communicate with consumers, and
community managers are uniquely placed to
facilitate these powerful interactions in real
MINI Cooper demonstrated their real-time
marketing capabilities in February, with a
campaign about horse meat.
Starbucks UKs royal baby tweet
yielded a 3,300% increase in retweets,
compared to the brands typical tweets.
CONTENT PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY MANAGERS | December 4, 2013

2013 Dachis Group | 515 Congress Ave., #2420 Austin, TX 78701 USA | T: +1 512-275-7825 | www.dachisgroup.com 3
The opportunity for brands is significant
The opportunity to improve brand content and become more timely is substantial.
Brands typically publish at least one piece of social content per day (and oftentimes more). At a
minimum of one post per day to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn,
Pintrest, and YouTube each, that adds up to about 240 posts per month. Thats a lot of content
and its not even including extra posts that engage with consumers and advocates.
Community managers brainstorm, plan, and map out upcoming events as part of their daily
routines; but how can managers ensure that they are creating timely, trend-sensitive material that
appeals specifically to users and advocates in the brands audience?
Here we will outline the best ways to perform community management for timely content, and
how community managers can contribute to the real-time marketing engine of their organization.
He r e a r e 6 S t e p s t o T i me l y C o n t e n t Ma n a g e me n t
1. Plan for real-time flexibility
In almost every organization, community managers maintain active content calendars, with
designated slots for regular communications and pre-determined posts. Community managers
are now beginning to carve out time specifically for publishing
trending content and participating in timely conversations.
There are two emerging practices that help brands become
timelier.
A) Designate slots for timely content in your calendar
reactive and proactive postswhere your team and
content approvers are notified and prepared to move
quickly to join a timely trend. Stay tuned to trending
topics throughout the day by using tools like the Brand
Trend Dashboard. Start with just one day per week in this
mode, but as your organization becomes more
accustomed to timely activity, you can increase the frequency.
B) Introduce a daily pulse or idea report that arrives each morning. This report should
consist of ideas and trends that can easily be transformed into timely and relevant content
for release into the community. This report can be produced every day, but only a subset
of the ideas should be put into production. If the timely idea doesnt receive a green light,
then the brand should revert to its normal content calendarevergreen postsfor that
days activities.
Eventually, timely content will occupy a larger and larger percentage of the brands content
calendar. The calendar will take on a more fluid, open style, focused on following and spotting
trends and responding to them in a brand-appropriate way as quickly as possible. As you plan
your content process, it is important to think ahead in terms of this change in the real-time
marketing landscape.
6 Steps to Timely Content Management
1. Plan for real-time flexibility
2. Organize your tools and system
3. Know your audience
4. Know your platform
5. Focus on creativity, speed, and the right tools
6. Just do it.
CONTENT PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY MANAGERS | December 4, 2013

2013 Dachis Group | 515 Congress Ave., #2420 Austin, TX 78701 USA | T: +1 512-275-7825 | www.dachisgroup.com 4
2. Organize your tools and system
There are other ways that community managers should be planning ahead, specifically in terms
of tools they use and process required to create real-time marketing campaigns efficiently.
Community managers should identify reliable sources for the manual curation of audience-
appropriate trends (e.g., Reddit forums, Buzzfeed etc.), or activate one of Dachis Groups
audience-targeted Brand Trend Dashboards to find the conversations in which their audiences,
advocates and consumers are participating.
Once an idea is identified and approved, it must be created. This task is usually done through
an agency with two key qualities: a strong digital content creation capability and speed. Real-
time marketing is most effective when the content is both rich and relevant to your target
audience.
With a content idea ready to go, community managers will usually also act as the facilitator for
internal review. The goal should be to create and approve a great piece of content before the
relevancy window for that piece of content closes. This typically requires an abbreviated version
of the usual content approvals, but nonetheless this step cannot be overlooked.
With the right trend identification, strong content, and targeted audience efforts, real-time
marketing is an effective branding tactic. Audience members will come for the content and stay
for the conversation.
3. Know your audience
Not only should you be searching for trends directly applicable to your audience and advocates,
but you should be aware of your audience makeup when creating content and placing it.
Community managers should be constantly analyzing how social-savvy their audience members
are, and putting out trending content before audiences have had the chance to see it elsewhere.
Successful community managers use tools like Feely and specific RSS feeds that supply content
relevant to the audiences they are managing. Many even subscribe to the Twitter accounts of
community members. These methods allow community managers to stay current with the trends
specific to their audience, and provide daily insights into user habits, tastes and interests.
Community managers also benefit from collecting data on their community members. By
familiarizing themselves with the demographics, psychographics and platform usages of
individual members, community managers will have an easier time connecting with and
engaging the audience.
Producing content that is not only timely, but relevant to the audience, is an essential cog in the
real-time marketing machine.
4. Know your platform
Social trends are platform agnostic: finding great trends on Twitter does not mean you can only
share and reproduce them on Twitter. Community managers can easily repackage trending topics
for other social platforms and get mileage out of it from several communities.
Content Moderation/Community
Management is a key step in your real-
time marketing campaign strategy.
CONTENT PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY MANAGERS | December 4, 2013

2013 Dachis Group | 515 Congress Ave., #2420 Austin, TX 78701 USA | T: +1 512-275-7825 | www.dachisgroup.com 5
For example, just in time for the flurry of 2013 Cyber Monday shopping, Amazons CEO
described a new capability the company was testing for drone delivery of Amazon packages. The
comment was paired with a viral video demonstrating the ideas feasibility. The Internet went
crazy over the idea and the conversation quickly took on a life of its own in nearly every social
platform. This tactic effectively put Amazon at the forefront of the digital conversation just in time
for the peak online shopping day of the year.
Brand marketers, industry analysts, and social media managers tapped into this trending topic
by re-posting the video to Facebook communities and sharing blog posts on the topic via
LinkedIn. With this in mind, its important for managers to familiarize themselves with the
attributes that make each platform different. This includes the speediness of Twitter in contrast
to Facebook, or the conversational style of closed communities that
respond better to questions rather than straight content.
5. Focus on creativity, speed, and the right tools
Some of the essential skills for community management include copy
writing, image editing and an understanding of web analyticsto begin
with. Community management teams must be experts in using social
networking platforms, and possess the improvisational creative skills that
make for compelling content. They must know how to produce a great piece of content when
lightening strikes. Images are a critical component to any social business strategy, attracting more
attention than posts without any images. Community managers must be able to edit, resize or
even create photos, graphics or art for their social content in a fast-paced fashion.
When brand marketers make the investment in trend-identification software, community
managers can focus their efforts on these skills and their talent for creating great, timely content.
One of the benefits of trend identification software is that community managers can hone in on a
specified set of tasks, instead of wasting time manually searching for trends.
The definition of what makes a marketing team great is changing; community managers must be
able to take the seed of an ideaa trendand improvise good, brand appropriate content in
short order.
6. Just do it.
Try it out and learn from it. Its not that hard or expensive. Lets break down what this community
management production cycle looks like.
As the prominence of timely, on-
the-fly content creation grows, the
community manager role is going
to expand.
6 Steps to Timely Content Management
1. Plan for real-time flexibility
2. Organize your tools and system
3. Know your audience
4. Know your platform
5. Focus on creativity, speed, and the right tools
6. Just do it.
CONTENT PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY MANAGERS | December 4, 2013

2013 Dachis Group | 515 Congress Ave., #2420 Austin, TX 78701 USA | T: +1 512-275-7825 | www.dachisgroup.com 6
A day in the life of a timely-content-focused
community management team:
I N A D V A N C E
Develop a content calendar filled with pre-planned evergreen material: posts that can be
used at any time, regardless of trends or news. This calendar should also include
upcoming (relevant) events that can be the basis for proactive content, directly related to
the event.
E A R L Y M O R N I N G
The community manager sifts through trending content, using a Brand Trend Dashboard
or another trend-identification software platform. She develops a list of the mornings
trending content that is relevant to her brands audience: the daily pulse or idea report.
M O R N I N G
She shares the list of trends with her creative team, who develop content proposals for
each trend. The team has the option to produce 1 of 3 post-types: reactive, proactive, or
evergreen. This creative process could entail proposals for short videos, witty copy,
infographic mockups, or an outline for a blog post.
M I D - M O R N I N G
The community management team shares these proposals with the decision-makers
(marketing managers, brand directors, etc.), who either approve or reject the reactive or
proactive posts. If the proposals are green-lighted, the community management team will
finish producing content, decide on the best times to publish, and post.
N O O N & A F T E R N O O N
Production and posting.
Key Terms for Timely
Content Management:
Daily Pulse or Idea Report: early-
morning, curated list of trending
topics relevant to your brands
audience, used to develop the days
timely content
Reactive posts: hyper-relevant,
direct responses to trending topics
Proactive posts are trend-sensitive,
pre-developed posts in response to
planned events
Evergreen posts: content written in
advance; can be used as backup
content when timely posts arent the
best fit.

For more on these terms check out
the work of real-time content
marketing agency Relevant24 at
http://Relevant24.com.
Conclusion
Content planning and community management doesnt have to be hard: you already create
content calendars, plan your marketing efforts in advance and try to keep up-to-date with
relevant events and trends. Just take your practices to the next level, by keeping the real-time
habits of your audience and consumers in mind and implementing concrete systems for staying
relevant.
About Dachis Group
Dachis Groups data-driven social marketing software and solutions enable
the worlds biggest brands to engage at scale with their customers, prospects,
advocates, and influencers.