For those who aren’t aware of him yet, Yan Luong is a social media pioneer from Romandy. His ex-employers include Couleur 3, EPFL, RTS and the Montreux Jazz Festival.
Now, Yan is social media manager for the International Committee of the Red Cross and is in charge of the masters and postgraduate courses at the University of Geneva.
His experience and bigger picture of the discipline make him the perfect candidate for an interview on the topic of Community Management.
We’ll be discussing attentiveness, crisis communication and… trolls.
Amongst other things.
Happy reading!
- Hi Yan! Thanks for agreeing to answer our questions. So to begin, could you talk us through a typical day in the life of a community manager?
It really depends on the size of the organisation and its aims concerning use of social media, its maturity in terms of its understanding of social media, and the degree to which social media is integrated into other positions within the company. But you can still identify trends, in terms of monitoring (reputation, competition, trends), research, adaptation and content creation, steps linked to publication, promotion and diffusion, as well as community management strictly speaking (reactive or proactive, general public or influencers).
- What are the 3 things to bear in mind to ensure that a company’s/brand’s online presence is managed well on social media?
Remain attentive, set objectives and performance indicators and measure them! Otherwise, it’s easy to just be running around like a headless chicken.
- What are the most difficult challenges you’ve faced as a community manager?
Without a doubt, change management is the hardest task when you’re implementing a social media management strategy. Or rather, the integration of social media and new forms of media into an organisation or company’s global strategy. But that’s also the most interesting task: change management inevitably involves resistance, but also education. And then being confronted with results.
- How do you manage trolls?
I don’t manage them. You can’t manage a troll because they will always be right. So I just ban them. Simple.
- Social networks enable direct and rapid contact with an audience, which can be very handy in cases of crisis communication. Is there an example of crisis management that has particularly inspired you?
My favourite example is that of La Redoute’s ‘naked man’, or how to turn a threat into an opportunity. I’m not going to insult you by explaining it in words, so here’s a link, which seems more appropriate in this day and age anyway ;)
- What’s a top secret tip that you’d only share with your best friend (so, our readers too) to help grow and retain a community?
At the risk of repeating myself, be attentive. We live in an age of extreme noise. And there are two ways to emerge and stand out from this: A) by making more noise (buzz, which can now be created if you have the means of doing so), and B) by earning consumers or users. Add value to the relationship. And that starts with attentiveness.
- What tools do you use to make your daily job easier?
I use quite a varied palette of tools: monitoring or listening software for social media, statistics software to measure key performance indicators, various online tools for producing new media content, and content posting software. The tools to assist with media management have become very professional and the market is fierce. So it’s important to set out your needs clearly.
- For a while now, Facebook has been testing its own search engine to try to keep users on its platform for longer. Do you think we’re gradually moving towards ‘closed’ networks?
Facebook is already a closed network (or almost). You have your contacts, it’s the biggest online database for photos, and also contains millions of hours of video, as well as having a calendar of events. Journalists and media platforms post their content on Facebook, and we’re now increasingly inclined to see if a restaurant of business is on Facebook even before looking on Google. Once they finalise their search engine, they’ll have completed the picture.
- You’ve witnessed both the birth and growth of the role of community manager. Where do you see the role in the coming years?
In the image of what we’re implementing at CICR, the position will become specialised, moving towards development strategies as well as knowledge linked to tools and how they’re used. It will also become integrated into existing jobs. Community management and dialogue with consumers will be carried out by non-dedicated functions (client services, media relations, journalists). There will be social media managers, but more community managers.
- Finally, can you tell us about 3 blogs/sites you follow, and why?
I don’t follow any blogs or sites in particular. I follow some Twitter lists which I’ve carefully put together. And I read books, on paper. I recommend:
- "The Cluetrain Manifesto" by Christopher Locke, David "Doc" Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine
- "Business Model Generation" and “Value Proposition Design” by Alex Osterwalder et al.
- "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook" by Gary Vaynerchuk
A big thank you to Yan! You can follow him on Linkedin and Twitter, and also follow his street food project "La Cantine du 56" on Facebook.
*Photo credit Hillary Sanctuary ©
