You need a social media team by your side if you want to craft engaging stories and create new experiences on social media platforms. A dynamic social media team can put together innovative ideas in a way that people can easily understand and connect with. You need a great team that is ready to wear many hats, and most importantly, your social media team structure should be backed by the following guiding principles.
A few basic things to consider
Without a clear objective, your social media team can achieve nothing. People who understand goals and know what efforts are required only they can bring positive results. Another thing you need to focus on is the platforms you choose. Be ready to provide training because it will help your team learn more about the best practices in sharing information and building networks.
Keep an activity and performance monitoring system in place to see the consistency, enthusiasm, and efforts of your social media team. When you’re equipped with all the basic information, it’s time to focus on your social media team structure.
Building your social media team structure
Keep in mind that your social media team structure may not be the same forever. Most businesses don’t have the luxury of building out a social media team, but that doesn’t mean they can’t create a dynamic digital campaign. If you can’t hire more people anytime soon, foster a culture that encourages creativity. If you are a candidate, you can search for jobs on social media too. Allow your other team members to wear a social media marketing hat and earn rewards. If it goes well, apart from their regular job responsibilities, they can find something new in their role.
Your team needs to have a deep understanding of how social media platforms work. Only creative thinkers can design great digital campaigns because they know how to leverage a particular platform that can help a business in different scenarios.
A fancy job title won’t make them smart (do this instead)
Building a dynamic social media team really depends on what a company actually needs. You can assign different roles to your team members and give them a fancy titles. The truth is social media marketing is beyond tweets and Facebook posts. A real social media team does a lot more than just that. So think beyond titles.
When you assign them key roles, they must know your business inside and out. It is not just about knowing the products and services, but they should know what your brand values are and what helps your business stand out. No matter what roles and responsibilities you assign, each of your team members should have an excellent knowledge of corporate communication, crisis management, search engine optimization, consumer behavior, and customer service.
Look for people with a plan
You will find many people with dreams and wishes, but people with a plan are like rare gems. If it sounds ambiguous, here’s a simplified version for you to understand this better. In a social media team, someone who has a real content plan can turn out to be a strong player. If your team doesn’t have plans or if you don’t have people who are good planners, here’s what you should do.
Before you kick off any new social media marketing project, your team should know how different platforms work and how people interact with businesses on these platforms. Your team should have answers to some of the most important questions such as when to post, how to post, what to post, and how to respond.
Without a plan, you will achieve nothing. A social media team should know how to create, manage, and publish content across various platforms. Through monitoring and data analysis, they should be able to explain why something is working and why something is not bringing good results.
Don’t create a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ culture
Earlier in this post, we mentioned that team members should be ready to wear different hats. Multitasking is good as long as it is not counterproductive. Many social media agencies and startups take this idea the wrong way. Their team members start doing things they are not trained for. If you still do this in your company, or even if you are hiring a professional social media marketing agency, make sure your team is productive enough for people specialized in that particular set of skills.
Measurement and accountability
Those who don’t adopt a jack-of-all-trades culture enjoy the benefits of transparency with accountability in the business process. It helps team members know what they are responsible for. At the end of the day, businesses want results and when people understand their responsibility, the team, as a whole, can save a lot of time and energy.
It’s important for a team to know how their time is being spent. With the right tracking system in place, it becomes easy for them to track all the interactions they have been a part of. It can help them follow up on feedback, requests, complaints, and leads.
Measurements are important because, without them, you can’t track ROI. A dynamic digital campaign needs a strategic implementation of effective measurement and tracking tools. In a social media team, everything should be well connected. The social media team structure should be in a way that the team members can easily monitor and share updates related to trends, competitors’ strategies, new opportunities, customer behavior, rise and fall in demand, and changes in customer response.
Embrace data-driven decisions
A well-connected social media team can track and analyze data more accurately. As far as data analysis is concerned, a team’s input matters a lot because data can tell many stories about a digital campaign. Creating meaningful reports that indicate potential opportunities becomes easy when decisions are backed by data and not by assumptions. Your social media team structure doesn’t have to bring many people on board. You just need to have a clear idea of where you want to go and what you want to achieve.
Conclusion
Above all, a social media marketing team structure should align with your business needs. Your social media team should be able to design digital campaigns that can engage people and get them excited. A dynamic social media team can turn complete strangers into brand advocates and customers.