Social Media is becoming integral to marketing plans. New strategies are being adopted to optimize its impact for companies or brands. Read more...

4. Managing
the online
community
After putting together a credible strategy, the day-to-day
work of a social media campaign should be carried out by an
online community manager. The community manager (CM) is
becoming a central figure in the marketing process. "The community
manager, being on the front line, the first person that client go to
for que tions, knows about the brand more than anyone else," said
Darine Sabbagh , social media and digital marketing consultant. "The
brand is as cool, as friendly, and as visible a the community manager."
RISE OF A NEW ROLE
The role of the community manager reigning over the online society
has become essential. According to Mohamed Hijazi, a social media
consultant, the online community can make a huge difference for a
brand with direct impact on profits or lo ses. "Online community
managers helped us develop relationships with our fans in a cost
effective way," said Marie Jose Abed, Regional Communication
Manager at Hamra Shopping and Trading (HST), known as GS.
Locally, the online community is made up mostly of the 16-30 year old
generation, tech savvy, where Engli h dominate , followed by French
and Arabic. "The local online community i highly egmented, even
more than the general population," said Hijazi. It has critical clans,
and gets irritated easily. They also crave attention and demand to be
treated royally. Special rules must be taken into consideration while
etting guideline for online community management. Many people
• 42 • LEBANON OPPORTUNITIES, JUNE 2014
assume a CM isju t a Face book addict. Most companies think hey can
hand the task to any fre hly graduated geek who does well on social
media. But a CM'sjob goes beyond this. According to Sabbagh, most
companies do not feel how trategic this role is. "It is not an intern's
job," said Ziad Kamel, founder ofCouqley, a French bistro. A CM has a
multitude of tasks and, according to Abed, he is a person able to build
a brand's online presence- or de roy it.
COMMUNICATE AND MARKET
Communication and marketing i the mo t obvious role that a
community manager i tasked vith. 'If you want to market a brand
over ocial media, remember EID,' aid Kamel, "Engage online
Interact with customer and Diffuse negativity." Social media
increases top of mind awarene and create a brand personality.
The CM must start by becoming familiar with the brand's audience
said Sabbagh. Then a story online must be told. "Facebook post
need to be interactive and intere ting at the same time," said
Abed. It i al o the CM' ta k to define the tone of messages. "We
need to be authentic, genuine, and personal," said Abed. Lot
of social pages ask question in order to drive followers to start
a conversation about the brand. This creates a buzz and rai e
audience number and rate of engagement. According to Ayman
Itani, Founder of Think Media Labs, a specialized social media
agency, it is difficult to get people involved in a brand's online

5. activity. Po ts should be intere ting, interactive, and innovative.
It is common that a brand run out of appropriate content to feed
it ocial media networks. A well prepared chedule is es ential to
set the topics that a community manager will be focu ing on during
a week, a month, or over a longer period of time. G prepares on a
monthly basis a calendar of concerns and rughlight of the month
that the team follows and po ts. The length of each po t i taken
into consideration. Large paragraph have low engagement rate
becau e people often won't read the whole thing. "The impler the
po t is, the higher the engagement rate " said Abed. Some brand
do truggle with the regularity of update . "It is recommended to
be active every day becau e users expect it," aid Itani. The larger
the page's reach grows, the more the page is clo er to u er generated
content. Thi i the type of content provided by followers. These
kind of interactive follower are called Super Fan at Roadster
Diner. They end unique picture enjoying Road ter food. It i easy
to hare back or retweet thi kind of post becau e they derive from
the community, and intere t thi community at the same time. A CM
also work on creating incentive for followers. Incentive can be
emotional, physical, monetary, or even piritual. Couqley offered a
free de ert and a chance to win a trip for two to Pari with each
client reserving online. Before the incentive, Couqley had four
online re ervation per month. Within two month of the offer the
re taurant reached 1,700 online reservation and 6,200 guest .
Competitions al o help increa e brand awareness. G po t
on a regular basis a picture of a new product in its tore
and invites follower to gues the brand and a chance
to win it. Medco also relie on competitions to drive
engagement. Its Lucky Pump competition gave
competitor a chance to win a trip to Abu Dhabi to
watch Formula One with adim Mehanna, Medco'
brand amba ador. Humanizing online activity also
helps attract an audience. As Couqley Kamel aid,
ocial media would be just media without the ocial
element in it. ' We per onalize our presence by po ting
about our team, our event , and our activities,' aid Abed.
Consumer are intere ted in knowing more about what
behind the brand name.
CREATE INTEREST
One of the challenging ta k in community
management is creating intere t when follower
are not attracted to a particular brand. Medco
managed to take gasoline from being a ba ic
not-so-sexy commodity to a ocially active brand.
Medco tudied why and when u er log into
Facebook. It found that it is mainly done for
entertainment. "We decided to transform a prime
nece sity into a ocial interaction," said Luciana
Younis ocial Media trategist at Medco. The
company' online community hifted its activity
to a personal, livelier approach personalizing
online posts. Mercury, the yellow character of
Medco smile each time the gasoline table how a drop in fuel price
and has piky hair and a mad expre ion when price go up. The
team also added funny pictw·es to drive engagement. The picture of
Lebanon drowning in water in 1971 versus a imilar picture in 2013
grabbed 16,000 view and 670 like comments and hare . Medco
also share it Corporate Social Re pon ibility activitie online. The
baring is Caring campaign a ked for 1,000 like in order for Medco
to make a donation to the Jeune e Centre Ia Drogue campaign. The
campaign reached 1,555 likes, comment and hares, and reached
more than 29,000 people.
SATIFY CUSTOMERS
Customer support i big part of community management. Social
media has become the first channel through which cu tomers
report a product or a bad experience. People no longer bother
calling or complaining in private. They just spread the word
through social media. Before these channel marketing literature
taught that one unhappy cu tomer tells even people about their
experience, said Kamel. But with social media, one unhappy
cu to mer tell an almost unlimited number of people about their
bad experience. Community management mean re pending as
fa t a po ible with instant damage control and taking immediate
deci ion regarding a complaint. "If a bad experience is reported,
the community manager must have the authority to correct it in
the most appropriate way, ' said Kamel.
LEBANON OPPORTUNITIES, JUNE 2014 • 43 .

7. . ·11 t'
COVER ST0 -;··.~~1;~.­,.
S()CIAL .NIEDIA
0 Links: Click this article's entry in 'Table of Contents' on our website
Watching the watchers
A number of tools are available to measure a
brand performance in the digital public
Keeping track of it online trategy and management and
measuring it performance are a mu t for every brand. Key
performance indicators are metrics that can inform the
company about their client ba e. everal online platforms are
available to user to help them gather the e metrics uch as Google
Analytics. ocial Bakers and Woopra. Metric allow companie to
collect large amount of data about their con umer , how they are
interacting with the ocial media campaign and what their level of
engagement is. The collected data will be used for future corporate
decision . By analyzing thi digital information, brand and
companie can turn the virtual presence of follower into a tangible
marketing tool. Online metrics are the medium through which a
brand or company can tran form a digital trategy into reality.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
Being able to dig into the figure underlying a ocial media strategy
i crucial. Specialized metric are there to help under tand the
performance of social media pages and help companies identify
bu ine problem and resolve them. Result mainly derive from
analyzing Key Performance Indicator . The e KPI are numerous
but some of them are more important than other . Ayman Itani,
Founder of Think Media Labs, a specialized ocial media agency,
aid that there are two categorie ofKPI . The built-in KPls natively
available on ocial media platform how the page administrator
who the visitors of the page are, their age groups and other ba ic
information. The other source is metric . They are divided into
public ones, which help benchmark activity versus competitor ,
and private ones, which give a more in-depth exploration of the
online activity of the brand itself. Itani said that a combination of
both, built-in and external analy i platform , i e ential.
• 46 LEBANON OPPORTUNITIES, JUNE 2014
FAMOUS METRICS
Engagement Rate i a KPI that i tied to the quality of content
community size, quantity of li ke~. comment , and hares. According
to ltani the company mu t know how to amend the content of its page
to increase thi KPl: 'It · not onlv about the number of followers/
like ."Share activity · one of the ~o t important metrics to take into
con ideration. It a e e- the frequency of the like hare a po t get .
The national flag chee-ecake pos ed on Road ter' Facebook page
on Independence Day instantly got 1,000 like and 25 shares. Brand
Activity i another KPI that loo · a how active the brand is in posting
update to it ocial media. Respo - Rate measures the percentage
of users' que tions that the brand addre e . ' We have an edge on
fa t re ponse to complaint or praise becau e we are in a fast paced
industry,' said Sahar Dumyaii. ·or Brand Manager at Roadster.
Audience Demographic i a na IYe reporting metric, which provide
in ights into the age group. nder. and location of a brand' audience.
Grand Cinemas' Facebook audience is made up of 13 to 34 year olds,
mostlymale .ABC audience -madeupof35 to54yearoldsandi 54
percent male. Targeted advertisingcampai can help rectify certain
aspect of the brand' audience dem - phic. Reach Metric is a tool
which measures the number of people reached through your content.
For example, it can tell u thar a po:. ed m _ e was seen by 11,000
people. Promoted po t and other fo ~of ads ignificantly help boo t
reach rate. Click Tracking · ~ a metric that a e e the number of
clicks that a brand or conten !!e " • Iobile U age analytics helps the
brand identify the number and specifications of mobile users. This
can be gleaned from the web-· re analytic and mobile app analytics, if
the brand has a mobile app. mobile ite, or wa as e ing the need for
a mobile presence. Mo t social media u er are accessing content from
their mobile o the content needs to be mobile fliendly .