Social Media Community Management

1. You are here:
2. Handbook
3. Marketing
4. Corporate Marketing at GitLab
5. Social Marketing Handbook
6. Social Media Community Management

Maintained by:

Wil Spillane

@wspillane

On this page

• Community Management is a team effort
• Engaging with team member social Posts
  • Communicating team member posts to the social team
• Core Social Channel Escalations
• Channel and Source Ownership
• Community Management on Instagram

Community Management is a team effort

In order to communicate and respond to our community effectively, management of responses and conversations is a shared effort between Social Media, Community Operations, Developer Evangelists, various experts, and our Support Teams. The two key teams in our processes are the Social and Community Operations teams. Both act as either the final point of contact or the responsible party to forward messages to the other teams.

Engaging with team member social Posts

non-executive, non-evangelist, non-brand personality team members

GitLab brand channels provide additional impressions/view, comments, and clicks when engaging with team member social posts. It will be more common for the brand social profile to like or comment on a team member post, because this does not interfere with the editorial calendar, while still provding an amplification. We also leave a small amount of space to retweet/quote retweet users (including Team Members) on Twitter, as this is appropriate for the channel and still aids in our editorial efforts. Shares on Facebook or LinkedIn are highly unlikely, due to the low volume of appropriate content available to be calendared on these channels.

Team member social posts that would considered for likes or comments from the brand channel include:

• sharing GitLab content that would also be covered by brand channel posts (blogs, event registrations, etc.)
• mentioning GitLab in a conversation with another user
• sharing security or patch releases

Team member social posts that would be considered for retweeting or sharing include:

• promoting a region-wide (EMEA, APAC, etc) event that is or is not currently led by corporate events
• when the author shares their own content (writer of a blog, speaker at an event, etc.)
• breaking changes that were not otherwise covered with brand channel posts
• living or explaining GitLab values or products in a way that is fun or educational
• any posts at the social team's discretion

It is important to note that team member social posts are considered the same pool of content as the greater community. Who's post gets shared is a subjective response from the social team and does not have a specific or repeatable formula, due to the nature of every day social media activity.

Communicating team member posts to the social team

While our team will see every post where the brand handle is tagged, the volume creates a delay. Consider sharing the link to your post in the #social_media_action channel for the brand team to engage.

Also, consider sharing the link to your post in #content_updates or #social_media_posts for additional awareness, increasing the possibility for other team members to engage with your post.

Core Social Channel Escalations

This escalation workflow dictates predetermined actions and DRIs for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram

Channel and Source Ownership

This chart defines who owns what channels, sources, and how often they are reviewed.

Community Management on Instagram

It is worth calling out platform specifics for Instagram in our handbook because the channel does not operate like any other Brand Social Channel. Since Instagram is a visual first platform, we take an editorial approach that prioritizes brand awareness, and 1:1 conversation. This is GitLab's opportunity to share real team member stories, and express our values.

One of the challenges we face as an all-remote organization on Instagram, is that we typically have lower quality images. We have to depend on team members and their cell phone photos. So our approach to each post is to be authentic. Don't filter the image. These are photos of real offices or experiences, and portray actual team members.