It wasn’t long ago when organizations asked themselves if they actually needed a social media presence. Nowadays, most businesses have at least considered gathering a social media team or at the minimum, finding the right social media management tool.
Being present on social media is still a back-burner idea for a lot of companies. This results in several brands sending Tweets, Instagram images or Facebook posts to the wrong audience or in a way that cannot be tracked. You have to consider whether or not your social media strategy can be analyzed and who has the skills to do it?
No matter what the size of the business, it can be daunting to consider the funding, resources and time needed to create a social media team. In fact, a Go-Gulf infographic showed the majority of social media teams are fewer than four people.
On the other hand, you still need the personnel to properly manage all social media channels across the entire business. Don't look at social media as side project, but instead, as a major commitment to your marketing strategy.
Social media has the ability to unlock doors to new audiences and give you a truly unique way to engage with those talking about your brand. Companies have always tried to successfully reach younger demographics, and with 90% of those between the ages 18 and 29 on social media, it’s the perfect place for your brand to build deeper relationships.
Know Your Purpose
If you don’t have a full plan ready for your social media team, you might want to start from the beginning and ask critical questions such as:
- Who will be involved?
- What social media tools will be used?
- How can we measure our efforts?
- What’s the purpose of your social media channels?
These questions should definitely be answered as you build your team, but it’s important to know the overall purpose. Will your social media channels be used to drive engagement? Answer customer support issues? Reach new audiences? Demonstrate a successful ROI?
All of these questions are valid to businesses, but you should ultimately know why you’re taking on social media in the first place. Once you know your path, putting the pieces together will be much easier.
Plan Your Team Structure
Before you start building your team, it’s necessary to plan our your team structure. This will give you a better outline of who to hire, where to place positions and to see who leads the pack. According to a survey conducted by Altimeter, corporate social media teams have on average 11 members. This includes businesses with more than 1,000 employees.
You should ultimately decide how many team members you need based on your overall purpose. Here are a few types of employees that could fit into your social media team structure:
Content Creators
If you’re going to or already publish content, you’ll want see if those writers, SEO specialists and other content creators could be a part of your social outreach. Content marketing strategies are critical to your business and having those members work with social media engagement could be a huge success.
Content creators are important parts of your social team because they can use social media outlets to make quick, fun and engaging posts like Lagunitas Brewing Company. It might not seem like much, but thousands of eyes are on your brand in these channels.
Community Managers
It’s important to have community managers intertwined with certain social media roles because they can keep calm in even the most hostile situations. Twitter trolls are everywhere, and you need to have someone who has the patience for them.
@MattSchons So sorry about that Matt. We are aware of the situation and looking into it. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. ^RobC
— ATTCares (@ATTCares) January 18, 2016
Your company should do what it can to resolve issues and through social media, you have the opportunity to make customers feel like their voices are heard.
Public Relations
You should consistently look for ways to expand your brand and social media is a great tool to do so. Use your PR talent to reach out to those on social media to build relationships with not only customers but other businesses as well.
Once you start putting the puzzle pieces together, your team will have more of a backbone. Try to organize these sections based on business and education as well as marketing and communication management.
Determine Roles & Duties
Not only should your team understand team structure, but also the duties that will be assigned to each role. Planning out team responsibilities can be tricky no matter how large your social media team. Ultimately, you should ensure each social media team member is well versed in these areas:
- Product experts: When social media team members know everything about your products, they can easily answer or send questions to the right people. Your team should know how to answer questions quickly or be able to find someone who can.
@Keurig perfect. Thanks for the quick response!
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