On 7 February, the Virtual Community Summit took over London’s Royal Institution for the second year. The UK’s only dedicated community management summit featured speakers from across the industry and the world.

Community management covers a range of activities from social media to terms and conditions and metrics to forums. The sessions at yesterday’s summit spanned those topics as industry experts and prominent community managers spoke on the issues facing the industry today.

Alex Shebar, London community manager at Yelp, spoke on social media and brand reputation. “Community management is customer service, it’s just more direct,” he said. “If you have great community management, you have great customer service.”

A session on brand reputation and risk management delved into the value of community management in preventing a crisis. Effective community management leads to brand loyalty and a strong relationship between the brand and its audience. This can, in turn, help a brand avoid a crisis of communications with its followers or users.

The conference also dealt with the issues of determining metrics for understanding the community and the monetisation of a community. The morning keynote, delivered by John Coate, discussed the origins of community management. Meg Pickard closed out the summit with a keynote address on the modern community manager’s role.