6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team Social Media Markeng 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team from Awareness, Inc | Creators of the Social Markeng Hub 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team So you’ve decided it’s me to get serious about social media, and you’re excited to begin building a strategy and a social media team. Whether your team is diving in for the rst me, or restructuring an exisng strategy so that it becomes more eecve, you should aim to answer the following quesons for your team. 1. Why are we engaging in social media? 2. Who should be part of our social media team? 3. Where should our team focus our eorts in social media? 4. What social media content should we monitor and create? 5. How should our team produce content? 6. When and how oen should we produce content? This whitepaper aims to help markeng decision makers develop a strategy as it relates to team workow. It also includes ps for maintaining and evaluang your strategy. 1. Why are we engaging in social media? The answer to this queson will drive your team’s strategy and help you to idenfy the appropriate team members to execute it. Some goals might include: • Increase brand awareness and buzz • Increase sales numbers and leads • Resolve customer service issues through social channels • Gain followers and fans • Communicate more eecvely with users about your brand • Learn more about what users think of your brand Once you have a list of goals, you can begin to idenfy the best people to help you accomplish them. Be aware that this list may result in objecves that touch mulple departments and job funcons. T oday, 22% of companies report they are “just geng started” in social media, 31% say they’ve been “doing this for a few years”, and 43% have been doing social media for just a few months. The majority (86%) of companies say they do not plan to outsource their social media eorts. Two-thirds of them spend 6 to 15 hours per week managing social media. - Source: SocialMediaExaminer.com 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 2. Who should join our social media team? Anyone, from the CEO to the intern, can potenally be involved in your social media strategy. However, there are three common places to recruit talent for a social media team: • The markeng department: This is the obvious rst stop for social media. If your company has an in- house markeng sta, they should already be abreast of the latest social media trends, and be given the resources to execute sound strategies for engaging with consumers and creang quality content. • The call center: If your company already has a team that handles customer complaints and quesons, they should connue to perform this duty, with addional social media training. They should also be encouraged to help the company develop new ways of serving customers using social media. Your call center team may also be movated to parcipate by the fact that social media that allows companies to post useful info and for customers to help each other solve their problems—which actually decreases call center workload. • An outside public relaons rm or agency: Companies big and small oen bring in addional help to gain experse and access to relaonships their company does not currently have. Once you’ve built your team, you should pick a team “captain.” Industry experts agree that most social media iniaves should have a single manager who acts as the gatekeeper for all social media communicaon, though he or she may have other dues within your company. He or she may manage mulple team members who execute your social media strategy. There may also be more than one team manager in each company: for example, one for each brand, industry or geographic locaon. The popular site Yelp.com uses this model to great eect, retaining a community manager in each city who monitors and responds to the ongoing conversaon around its brand, engages with users on message boards when appropriate, and promotes events using messaging and newsleer features, so that both the website and the real-me events it organizes are always buzzing with engaged users. “ There’s quite a few ways to measure “return” - but investment is just what you put in.” - Mark Goodman, Editor-in-Chief, Go2 Media “ Don’t leave it up to the intern! Nobody’s too old to learn social media skills. It’s great when it’s collaborave inside and out.” - Anne Holub, Web Communicaons Specialist, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning I n a recent poll of Fortune 500 companies, over 40% say increasing brand awareness is a top goal for their social media team. Increasing leads (15%) and driving an increase in sales (13.8%) come next. Only 7.2% say their main goal is to learn more about user behavior. - Source: Flowtown 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 3. Where should our team focus our eorts in social media? You’ve likely heard the answer to this one before: it’s wherever your audience is already talking. This may be in more than one place: today, people spend their days having business-to-business conversaons on LinkedIn, planning their social schedules on Facebook and raving (or complaining) about their consumer products on Twier. So how can your team monitor this decentralized, world-wide conversaon as a team? You can split up the work in a few dierent ways: • By industry: If your markeng team already specializes in covering a few dierent industries, they should monitor the inuenal blogs and Twier users in those elds. • By brand: Companies with mulple brands should assign dedicated social media team members to those brands • By competor: Companies should monitor specic competors and idenfy trends in how they are acng/reacng. • By social media network: If your team has a diverse range of ages or interests, some may be more familiar with one networking site than another. For example, some employees may unfamiliar with the convenons of LinkedIn or YouTube, but are already experts at using Facebook or Flickr. Save me and training resources by assigning tasks accordingly. Your team’s goal should be to stay abreast of what users are saying about your brand, and to begin to look for ways to join the conversaon in a useful way. Social markeng soware can be useful in this regard, as it allows for keyword searching, comment tracking and other monitoring tasks across mulple plaorms. Once you begin listening carefully to the conversaon, ideas will likely naturally present themselves to your team members. The team leader should regularly solicit, collect and vet these ideas. Which brings us to our next queson. “ Never spread yourself thin. Find out which social networking sites make sense for your company or client, and then gure out the best way to integrate.” - Jessica Frank, Digital and New Media Strategist, Antler Agency “ One of the most important things for any enty entering social media is to look at how their brand or category is being discussed already. Without a listening strategy, you can’t contribute in a meaningful way or add value.” - Richard Cherecwich, Account Execuve, WIT Strategy 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 4. What social media content should we monitor and create? Your team will need to brainstorm ideas that will help, entertain and engage your users, not just push new deals or products. Ideas for content may come from every corner of the company, from the CEO to the folks in the call center. Your team’s task will be to discuss and decide which ideas suit your strategy. Quesons to ask when veng ideas It’s unlikely that every great idea you have is possible for your team to execute. Your team should look at the following for each idea before beginning a project: • Does this accomplish one of the primary goals we set in the beginning of this project? • Do we possess the me, talent and money now to create and promote this content, without a hitch? (Or do we have the opon to hire outside help if needed?) • Will it be possible to measure user response to this project in a way that proves ROI? Once you have a list of ideas that meet the above criteria, it’s me to discuss the nuts and bolts of content creaon. 5. How should our team produce content? Your team must develop a workow process that allows your team to sck to its goals, create great content and measure the results of that content. Every company’s workow will be dierent, but all successful workow processes will designate the person (or people) responsible for: • Conceptualizing ideas • Assigning content • Creang content • Eding content for accuracy and tone • Approving content for publicaon • Uploading and publishing content • Ensuring content is being published as assigned • Promong content across mulple channels • Responding to user feedback on content • If necessary, mediang conversaons between users on content • Measuring user response to content Your team leader should play a vital role in all of the above, but it may not be realisc to expect him or her to do it all. It may work best to split up the task list by department, and charge the team leader with keeping each department informed of the others’ eorts. Some examples of task distribuon might be: • You charge your markeng team with monitoring brand-based conversaons and creang blog posts, which are approved by the COO, while you leave responding to customers up to the customer service team, and meet regularly with the team leader to discuss each department’s progress • You assign the content creaon to the creave department, charge the team leader with eding and posng all content, ask the engineering department to handle gathering metrics on user response, and share all informaon by email 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com • You require that every member of the team log in to social media daily and generate a memo on their area of experse and possible content assignments, which will be circulated, assigned and approved by the team leader Of course, in some small companies, there may be one person doing all the work. Using a social media tracking program is very helpful in this regard; if you’re an art-school grad being charged to deliver analycs from three dierent social media networks, smart soware beats a messy Excel sheet. What if we’ve never created content before? You may also have some inial issues to consider besides your task list. These might include: • Establishing a company voice: The Wall Street Journal and Rolling Stone both report on polics, but they do so quite dierently. What does your team want to sound like? Once your collecve voice is established, how will your team leader maintain consistency between mulple writers? Discuss this with your team. • Creang levels of permissions for dierent users and departments: If you are using sensive company informaon, it may be necessary to create dierent levels of permissions for your team. For example, your social media strategy may require the help of outside freelancers who should not see company data, or have the ability to respond to comments. Or you may use interns who should not have administrave abilies. Many social media soware programs allow for dierent user sengs to solve these issues. • Establishing a company social media policy: Where does your social media strategy begin and end? How much social media use on company me is appropriate? Is your team familiar with the social media norms of each network and how they dier? Do they know who’s responsible for responding to a comment, a queson directed at a top stakeholder or an irate customer? Aer all, as Rich Cherecwich of WIT Strategy notes, “The last thing you want is for an employee to argue on behalf of your brand and have that scue make the news.” Developing a policy for your team that addresses these issues is imperave. • Discussing troubleshoong strategies for worst-case scenarios: This relates to the above. Many marketers fear social media because it is more dicult to predict and control than tradional media. How will your team handle worst case scenarios, such as customers who post negave or profane content on your site, security breaches, errors in your content, budget cuts or sudden turnover within your creave team? Make sure that your team knows the answers to these quesons before the rst post goes live. • Balancing social media dues with other dues within the company: Unless you have a company with dedicated social media sta, it’s likely that your employees have other things to do besides create social media content. Discussing the role it will play in their daily triage of tasks will help each employee to get the job done. This relates to our next queson, which is “ Not all experienced [employees] will possess social media savvy … even the most terric ‘Tweeters’ and procient ‘Facebookers’ among your sta will need to be trained on your corporate social media strategy. [Companies should] also review social media norms, and the specic culture and rules of each social media site in which agents will be interacng with customers.” - Greg Levin, Internaonal Customer Management Instute 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 6. When and how oen should we produce content? Aer you have decided on a workow that distributes tasks appropriately among team members, you should aim to create a content calendar, with deadlines and tasks outlined for each project. Your team’s overall goal should be to produce great content as oen as you can, with the resources you currently have. That said, the social media world is always changing. So resist the urge to cling to a six-month old strategy that’s not working, or conversely, to abandon ship on a social media project that has not yet existed long enough to gather useful metrics on user response and ROI. Instead, aim for a middle ground, in which your team develops a social media strategy that has: • Deadlines that will challenge your sta and keep content mely, without making unreasonable demands on their me or energy • A workow that allows enough me to properly complete each step of the process • Regular meengs to review upcoming projects and user response to past projects • A set beginning and end date for your strategy, aer which your team will evaluate ROI and make any necessary changes to workow and calendar Here’s an example of a how a content calendar might address workow. Say your company’s working on a new promoonal video. Your content calendar will outline: • Who will create the video from beginning to end • Who will post about the video on Facebook and Twier • Who will respond to comments about the video • Who will generate reports about the trac and response to the video • Deadlines for each task Tesng, tesng Once your team has seled on a suitable task list and workow process, it is recommended that you create several pieces of test content using your new system, place them in mockups as they will appear to users, and crique them with your company stakeholders and social media team. Not only does this ensure you’ll nd the leaks in the system, but it will also help you to create a content stable to pull from in the future, when news may be slow. For this reason, you should choose topics that will always be relevant to users. News editors call this evergreen content. Examples of evergreen content might be lists of ps or resources that may be useful to your users, engaging interviews or proles. As you test your content, your team should consider these quesons: • Does our workow allow plenty of me for each person to do their best work? • Is every person comfortable with his or her assigned role in the process? • Does our content have a unied tone and voice that is engaging and in line with the company brand? • Can we consistently create content with the same quality and tone? • Are we creang content that we or our friends would like to read and share? 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com Aer the launch: maintaining your strategy Aer you launch your social media strategy, you and your team will sll have important work to do. You will need to monitor the following: • Is your team staying on-message and true to the goals of the project? • Is your social media team too small to execute these goals? Too big? • Are the outlets you’ve chosen the right places for this content, based on user response? • Is the content you’re creang consistently geng done, to the best of your team’s abilies? • Is your workow sustainable? • Are you producing content frequently enough to make a mely impact on the social media conversaon around your brand? Gathering informaon about the above across mulple social media plaorms can be dicult. A soware program may help you to obtain solid numbers so you can make adjustments and evaluate progress. Note: During this me, your team should focus on execung and monitoring, rather than dramacally tweaking, your strategy. And again, don’t stop before you’ve nished tesng! Social media is always changing, but any me your team invests in acquiring new skills and engaging with customers will be me well spent. Inevitably, your team will experience some hitches along the way; your team leader should collect and save any ideas for improvement for the nal evaluaon. Evaluate your social media strategy So now, it’s been a few months and your team has (hopefully) been having fun exploring the world of social media. You’ve encountered some new informaon sources that have deepened your understanding of what your company has to oer, and in turn, your team has added some valuable content and perspecve to the social media space. It’s me for your team to evaluate your strategy. Your team should reassess the issues you discussed in the beginning: • Did your team stay on-message and true to the goals of the project? • Is it me to make changes to your team roster? • Should (and could) you expand your listening and content creaon strategies to include new social media outlets? • What was the overall response to your content? Did users like it? Interact with it? How could it be improved? • Did everyone understand their roles in the project? Did work get completed? • In the future, could you post more frequently? Respond more quickly? Again, you will want to come to this conversaon armed with hard numbers and keep the focus on specic goals accomplished and ideas for renement. Social media is sll in its infancy, but thanks to constant improvements in technology and user savvy, this new froner is quickly becoming an established and measurable method for increasing business, buzz, and even job sasfacon. In fact, you may be surprised at the creavity, exibility and enthusiasm of your team when it comes to execung your social media strategy. Now, all you have to do is keep the momentum going. About Awareness Awareness is the leading provider of enterprise-class, on-demand social markeng management soware (SMMS) for marketers to publish and manage social content, engage with their audience and measure the eecveness their social media acvies across mulple social media channels. The Awareness Social Markeng Hub is built upon Awareness’ experse with some of the world’s leading brands and markeng agencies including MLB, Sony Pictures, Comcast, Likeable Media, Associated Press, Cox Communicaons, Mindjumpers and American Cancer Society. hp://www.awarenessnetworks.com ©2011 AWARENESS, INC. 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Contact Informaon Awareness, Inc. 25 Corporate Drive, Suite 390 Burlington, MA 02451 United States Tel: 1 781-270-2400 Awareness Canada 5050 South Service Road, Suite 100 Burlington, ON L7L 5Y7 Canada Tel: 1 866 487 5623 Fax: 1 905 632 4922 . 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team Social Media Markeng 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team from Awareness,. Creators of the Social Markeng Hub 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media. Source: SocialMediaExaminer.com 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 2. Who should join our social media team? Anyone, from the CEO to