Social Media offers a variety of functionality that help your work and boost your clients’ recognition. With so many options and possibilities, we were interested to talking into one of our clients who’s been using social media with its wide variety of purposes for a wide variety of clients. That someone is Christian Wolf. He is one of two managing partners with his self-founded agency Jack Coleman. He’s been smart to use social media ever since it came around. Apart from the 360° service his agency offers, Jack Coleman handles the pages for major Austrian companies Raiffeisen, Spar, Marie and Antenne Steiermark. In addition he’s one of the first agencies in Europe that can boast about having their own Head of Online Content. Christian talked to us about the day-to-day of his job and his thoughts on the industry and competition.
How long have you been working in social media?
I’ve already been working in social media for approx. eight years (especially for our own brands) but we’ve put a focus on it over the last three years at Jack Coleman during developing holistic (multi-channel) communication strategies for our clients where social media is an essential element.
What attracted you to social media initially?
Social Media is live! You definitely work on something where you can see your success promptly. And every fanbase has their own specialities and every project brings his own „challenge“ to our team. Social media is a playground a lot of potential customers are already playin’ on, and a lot of companies/brands/products want to enter. You have to know how to enter and especially how to succeed.
What advice would you give someone just starting their page?
Hurry up, guys!
What do you see as your market?
We are working for clients who have decided to make a switch to dialogue-based communication, as it is on social media instead of big ATL Campaigns or at least a good combination of both. And that’s where we see our market, because we can offerour customers a lot of experience and different views. From developing a strategy, content creation or ad planning – all these services are part of our agency.
What kinds of skills/qualities do you think you need to possess to be a community manager?
You have to be creative and able to speak the language of your community. And I don’t mean the language of the country.
What’s your biggest challenge when managing your community?
A year has 365 days and you have to be really creative to find RELEVANT (and of course not only commercial) content if you manage a lot of channels. That’s challenging!
Is social media helpful in your customer service?
Yes. We have developed our own, very personal way of communication that people are used to and gets customer responses every day.
What has inspired you lately on social media and why?
Facebook itself and the never-ending story of buying all high-potential companies in their business-segment.
What are your competitors doing on social media?
Sometimes big mistakes, sometimes fancy stuff. But we don’t really keep an eye on their work…
Do you see your brand/industry as challenging?
Of course. Is there a brand/industry on our world that’s not challenging?
How much time do you spend per week on your social media work?
…how much time can you spend without social media work in a week ?
Is there an important lesson you had to learn?
„Listen first!“ – a very important behavior for social media.
Is there something you wish you could do with your page?
Make a backup from time to time and save the whole content locally.
What tool/network/platform is interesting to you?
Now we are developing a lot of Instagram stuff. A new way to communicate, a new way of storytelling and some new chances for fresh advertising.
What websites and tools would you recommend?
I can highly recommend pages like allfacebook.com, buzzfeed.com,
And of course for managing all that stuff: Pagelanes ;)
