THE DETAILS
ROLES: community, social media & events manager
TEAM SIZE: 4
PERIOD: Juli 2014 - June 2017
HIGHLIGHT: reaching more than 350.000 people on Facebook with a protest against spec work.
ANTWERP. POWERED BY CREATIVES. wouldn't exist without my three colleagues Klara, Thijs & Sara. And I also wouldn't be where I am now if it weren't for them. They took a great leap of faith by hiring me while I was still in college, albeit almost graduated, but took this decision conscientiously because they knew giving me room to grow would ultimately pay off.
The trusting and amazing environment they provided allowed my fledgling & latent skills in social media management, content creation & community management to grow & flourish which in turn helped me become an ambitious and capable digital marketeer who loves his job!
THE STORY
ANTWERP. POWERED BY CREATIVES. is a platform that unites different stakeholders from the Antwerp creative scene to support the creative industry, make businesses more innovative & spread the value of design.
It was formed in 2014 by the city of Antwerp, the province of Antwerp, Designcenter De Winkelhaak, UAntwerpen, KDG Sint-Lucas & Antwerp Management School and is funded by the local Flemish government and Europe.
I joined ANTWERP. POWERED BY CREATIVES (or APBC) in July of 2014 as community manager and worked there until June of 2017.
Community, communications & events manager
Although my official job description says community manager, the actual contents of my job also include communications and event management.
Community management is quite a broad term and its definition differs from company to company. For APBC it means getting to know our community on a personal level and having an accessible community manager, whereas for other companies it mostly boils down to customer service.
Creating a community was never a goal on itself of us. The last thing we wanted was to force ourselves upon our creatives and to become a top-down platform. Instead we wanted to support & connect pre-existing initiatieves.
Nevertheless, by positioning ourselves as a collaborative, connecting platform for the creative scene for the Antwerp region, a new APBC Community naturally came into existence .
Naturally, but not without effort or a strategy.
One of the things that makes me a natural community manager is that I am very accessible on social media. I'm present on every relevant social medium and add new people to my network every day.
This isn't spectacular or unique by itself, but in a world where social media has given us unparalleled insight into each other's lives, being so close in touch with your community yields many benefits.
For starters, being so closely connected with each other creates a level of trust that would take much longer to form if you only saw one another at occasional events.
It also allows you to react to rather quickly to questions or interesting opportunities and spot interesting content for socials.
Finally, communicating frequently and openly also adds a layer of transparency that's essential to any community.
