Tips and Tricks from four brilliant Silverback Social employees: Social Media Community Management, Brand Strategy and creative Social Media Ideas, Event Management

1. Community Managing
Tips & Tricks
1. Be Prompt!
.. But don't get trigger-happy about answering everything immediately.
I make a habit of waiting 60 seconds before clicking "Send" on a comment,
reply, or message, even if I'm confident that it's appropriate to share. While it's
important to stay on top of incoming messages (especially with larger
brands), it's better to wait and make sure you're sending an accurate,
appropriate message to a user.
2. Be Human!
Feel free to add a little “personality” to your responses. People on the internet
can tell if certain messages or responses are automated, and that’s a turn-off.
Act like a human being when interacting with other users. Keep your
language conversational, as if you were standing face-to-face with the user
you’re interacting with. While it’s important to stay respectful and professional,
you can do so without sounding like a robot. Ask questions and show interest,
and you’ll establish a connection with your user base.
3. Manage Your Time!
It’s easy to get caught up trying to answer dozens of
retweets on a highly engaging tweet, but there’s no
need to let one post, one channel, or one platform
take up all your time. Spread your efforts out evenly
across all the channels and platforms you manage,
even if you’re only halfway through responding to
the comments you’ve received on a successful
Facebook post.
Managing your time will keep your mind fresh and
keep you from using the same stale voice when you
interact with users. The comments you click away
from will still be there when you return to them a
few hours later.
Brian Funicelli (Senior Community Manager)

2. Brand Strategy Tips & Tricks
Twitter: Following twitter chat hashtags is a great way learn
and interact with a community. By participating in these
chats weekly your content will be reaching an ideal
demographic. Here are some Twitter chats to follow -
#blogchat, #MMchat, #LikeableChat, #SMOchat, #SMbiz.
Facebook: Create a content calendar that is flexible. While
you want to schedule out your posts far in advance, you will
want to keep some days open for any possible PR
announcements, breaking news, or a product update.
Google+: This platform is ideal for long form content. If
sharing an article, provide some bullet points and extra notes
for you readers. Using keywords will help your post in terms
of SEO.
Josh Fenster (Senior Brand Strategist)

3. Event Management
Tips & Tricks
1) Due Diligence - Once you decide you are producing an event
it’s important to source out similar events and do your research.
Who's speaking, who's attending, the format of the website. Attend
as many as you can to get a feel for the flow, and mood of the
attendees. All of these things are important to ensure your event is
relevant and can compete.
2) Relationships and Value Go Hand in Hand - It is never
about the one event. Focus on building relationships with speakers,
sponsors and attendees. Look at them all as partners you hope to
have back year after year. On top of that, provide value. If there is
value they will come back.
3) Stay Calm and Act Natural - No
event goes 100% as planned and you never
know where things might go awry. Your
reaction dictates the response from your staff,
sponsors and attendees so staying calm and
positive is a must.
4) Build a Winning Team - No one
person can run an event start to finish. Work
with people you can trust who work at your
speed. Efficiency is key and having the right
team makes all the difference.
John Zanzarella (Chief Marketing Officer)

4. Community Managing Tips & Tricks II
1) Community Management à Content Creation
When community managing, look at your audience through the
lens of a content creator. Every customer you engage with has
the potential to be a powerful advocate for your brand. Make sure
to ask the right questions in order to empower these brand
advocates. Humans resonate with humans, not robots. Take your
learnings from the day to day interactions to facilitate ideas for
future content.
2) Analytics are Essential!
As a community manager, you must strive to be an expert in
social media analytics. We use Sprout Social to analyze post level
and page level data as a reference point in order to project
success of future content. If you don't understand what and why
content is resonating with your audience, you will not be able to
actively increase the reach and social presence of the brand you
are community managing.
Brian Levine
(Senior Community Manager)