So? What’s the Difference Between a Social Media Management and Community Management?
The question of the specific difference between social media management and community management is one too few online users understand. To help you understand more clearly, it’s necessary to define what these two entities really are and how they affect communication and businesses.
Social Media Management – The Nuts and Bolts
Social media is a dimension of communication that networked users to a virtual ocean of opportunities to exchange ideas. In social media, audio, visual and graphical presentations aid in the exchange of ideas between the networks of users.
The tendency of social media is to become overwhelmed by too much data. For computer hardware, too much data needs to be “managed.” Social media management is simply applying oversight and maintenance to the multiple accounts within the social media users’ daily volume of data acquisition. Fortunately, software developers and designers are attentive to the needs of social media for a higher level of management, using social media management software applications.
What is Online Community Management?
Community Management refers to the numerous social media and online accounts within a specific website. For example in the games industry, there are many “communities” of players. These communities are managed by the games providers and the software applications providers who create, implement and update games for users within the online community. Due to the inception of masses of online game players, without some form of community management, the use of these games would be far more disoriented and chaotic.
In order for online community management to be fully functional and comprehensive, community managers need to visionaries and excellent managers of inter-relationships between the online community and community users.
So? What’s the Big Difference?
The biggest difference between social media and community management in a word is “freedom.” In social media management, management is free to create advanced levels of communications, promotions and advertising on a more expedient basis. Community management, on the other hand, is limited by the needs of the community which holds greater emphasis. Social media management can offer a wide range of games, exchanges between unlimited numbers of users. A community is more structured toward segments of users. Within the framework of these differences lies the core: the social media developer and online community developer. Basically, social media management isn’t focused on “community” and “community” is limited to groups of users.
In social media, there is a free and open exchange between an unlimited population of users. It’s more difficult to create a defined sense of “group” or “community.” In online communities, smaller groups of users have the opportunity to maintain specific focus on products, services, businesses and issues. In the online community, groups have familiarity. In social media, familiarity may be limited to those with celebrity names. Ironically, many social media and online community managers recognize an immutable link between all users.
