6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team Social Media Markeng 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team from Awareness, Inc | Creators of the Social Markeng Hub 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng 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 exisng strategy so that it becomes more eecve, you should aim to answer the following quesons 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 eorts in social media? 4. What social media content should we monitor and create? 5. How should our team produce content? 6. When and how oen should we produce content? This whitepaper aims to help markeng decision makers develop a strategy as it relates to team workow. It also includes ps for maintaining and evaluang your strategy. 1. Why are we engaging in social media? The answer to this queson will drive your team’s strategy and help you to idenfy 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 eecvely 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 idenfy the best people to help you accomplish them. Be aware that this list may result in objecves that touch mulple departments and job funcons. T oday, 22% of companies report they are “just geng 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 eorts. 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 Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 2. Who should join our social media team? Anyone, from the CEO to the intern, can potenally be involved in your social media strategy. However, there are three common places to recruit talent for a social media team: • The markeng department: This is the obvious rst stop for social media. If your company has an in- house markeng 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 creang quality content. • The call center: If your company already has a team that handles customer complaints and quesons, they should connue to perform this duty, with addional 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 movated to parcipate 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 relaons rm or agency: Companies big and small oen bring in addional help to gain experse and access to relaonships 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 iniaves should have a single manager who acts as the gatekeeper for all social media communicaon, though he or she may have other dues within your company. He or she may manage mulple 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 locaon. The popular site Yelp.com uses this model to great eect, retaining a community manager in each city who monitors and responds to the ongoing conversaon around its brand, engages with users on message boards when appropriate, and promotes events using messaging and newsleer 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 collaborave inside and out.” - Anne Holub, Web Communicaons 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 Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 3. Where should our team focus our eorts 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 conversaons on LinkedIn, planning their social schedules on Facebook and raving (or complaining) about their consumer products on Twier. So how can your team monitor this decentralized, world-wide conversaon as a team? You can split up the work in a few dierent ways: • By industry: If your markeng team already specializes in covering a few dierent industries, they should monitor the inuenal blogs and Twier users in those elds. • By brand: Companies with mulple brands should assign dedicated social media team members to those brands • By competor: Companies should monitor specic competors and idenfy trends in how they are acng/reacng. • 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 convenons 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 conversaon in a useful way. Social markeng soware can be useful in this regard, as it allows for keyword searching, comment tracking and other monitoring tasks across mulple plaorms. Once you begin listening carefully to the conversaon, 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 queson. “ 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 enty 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 Execuve, WIT Strategy 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng 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. Quesons to ask when veng 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 opon 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 creaon. 5. How should our team produce content? Your team must develop a workow process that allows your team to sck to its goals, create great content and measure the results of that content. Every company’s workow will be dierent, but all successful workow processes will designate the person (or people) responsible for: • Conceptualizing ideas • Assigning content • Creang content • Eding content for accuracy and tone • Approving content for publicaon • Uploading and publishing content • Ensuring content is being published as assigned • Promong content across mulple channels • Responding to user feedback on content • If necessary, mediang conversaons 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 realisc 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’ eorts. Some examples of task distribuon might be: • You charge your markeng team with monitoring brand-based conversaons and creang 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 creaon to the creave department, charge the team leader with eding and posng all content, ask the engineering department to handle gathering metrics on user response, and share all informaon by email 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng 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 experse 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 analycs from three dierent social media networks, smart soware beats a messy Excel sheet. What if we’ve never created content before? You may also have some inial issues to consider besides your task list. These might include: • Establishing a company voice: The Wall Street Journal and Rolling Stone both report on polics, but they do so quite dierently. What does your team want to sound like? Once your collecve voice is established, how will your team leader maintain consistency between mulple writers? Discuss this with your team. • Creang levels of permissions for dierent users and departments: If you are using sensive company informaon, it may be necessary to create dierent 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 administrave abilies. Many social media soware programs allow for dierent user sengs 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 dier? Do they know who’s responsible for responding to a comment, a queson directed at a top stakeholder or an irate customer? Aer 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 scue make the news.” Developing a policy for your team that addresses these issues is imperave. • Discussing troubleshoong strategies for worst-case scenarios: This relates to the above. Many marketers fear social media because it is more dicult to predict and control than tradional media. How will your team handle worst case scenarios, such as customers who post negave or profane content on your site, security breaches, errors in your content, budget cuts or sudden turnover within your creave team? Make sure that your team knows the answers to these quesons before the rst post goes live. • Balancing social media dues with other dues 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 queson, which is “ Not all experienced [employees] will possess social media savvy … even the most terric ‘Tweeters’ and procient ‘Facebookers’ among your sta will need to be trained on your corporate social media strategy. [Companies should] also review social media norms, and the specic culture and rules of each social media site in which agents will be interacng with customers.” - Greg Levin, Internaonal Customer Management Instute 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 6. When and how oen should we produce content? Aer you have decided on a workow 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 oen 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 workow that allows enough me to properly complete each step of the process • Regular meengs to review upcoming projects and user response to past projects • A set beginning and end date for your strategy, aer which your team will evaluate ROI and make any necessary changes to workow and calendar Here’s an example of a how a content calendar might address workow. Say your company’s working on a new promoonal video. Your content calendar will outline: • Who will create the video from beginning to end • Who will post about the video on Facebook and Twier • Who will respond to comments about the video • Who will generate reports about the trac and response to the video • Deadlines for each task Tesng, tesng Once your team has seled on a suitable task list and workow 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 crique 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 proles. As you test your content, your team should consider these quesons: • Does our workow 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 unied 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 creang content that we or our friends would like to read and share? 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com Aer the launch: maintaining your strategy Aer you launch your social media strategy, you and your team will sll 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 creang consistently geng done, to the best of your team’s abilies? • Is your workow sustainable? • Are you producing content frequently enough to make a mely impact on the social media conversaon around your brand? Gathering informaon about the above across mulple social media plaorms can be dicult. A soware 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 execung and monitoring, rather than dramacally tweaking, your strategy. And again, don’t stop before you’ve nished tesng! 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 evaluaon. 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 informaon sources that have deepened your understanding of what your company has to oer, and in turn, your team has added some valuable content and perspecve 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 creaon 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 conversaon armed with hard numbers and keep the focus on specic goals accomplished and ideas for renement. Social media is sll in its infancy, but thanks to constant improvements in technology and user savvy, this new froner is quickly becoming an established and measurable method for increasing business, buzz, and even job sasfacon. In fact, you may be surprised at the creavity, exibility and enthusiasm of your team when it comes to execung 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 markeng management soware (SMMS) for marketers to publish and manage social content, engage with their audience and measure the eecveness their social media acvies across mulple social media channels. The Awareness Social Markeng Hub is built upon Awareness’ experse with some of the world’s leading brands and markeng agencies including MLB, Sony Pictures, Comcast, Likeable Media, Associated Press, Cox Communicaons, Mindjumpers and American Cancer Society. hp://www.awarenessnetworks.com ©2011 AWARENESS, INC. 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Contact Informaon 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 Markeng Team Social Media Markeng 6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Markeng Team from Awareness,. Creators of the Social Markeng Hub 6 Steps to Building and Managing a Successful Social Media Markeng 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 Markeng Team www.awarenessnetworks.com 2. Who should join our social media team? Anyone, from the CEO to