More than a quarter of the world’s population uses social media today and that number is expected to rise rapidly in the future. The number of social media platforms is also on a constant rise, with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn no longer being the only players in the field.
Using social media to promote your brand and customer loyalty is essential for your business. And with so many people that call themselves social media experts, how do you choose the ones that stand out from the crowd? You need people who are witty, diplomatic, creative, enthusiastic, caring, and collaborative, but also with a sense of business and marketing skills. This article explains how to assemble your social media dream team, the roles they need to fill and characteristics each team member should possess.
Before You Start
Before you start searching for your social media dream team, there are 3 things to consider:
1. Define your brand
Your brand is your company’s personality. And without defining your brand you will not be able to recognize who will be the best fit for your company’s tone and voice of communication. Dove’s personality revolves around empowering women and making sure that they love themselves regardless of their size or color, as this recent tweet of theirs illustrates:
On the other hand, Denny’s aims to be different and weird, thus appealing to a younger audience. Its messages, posts and tone of voice are completely different.
Whatever your brand may be, make sure that your team understands it, and is able to communicate it on all of your social media platforms.
2. Define your social media role and strategy
Why do you need a social media team? What does your social media team need to accomplish? When starting your activity on social media channels, you will need to answer these questions. Also, make sure to understand the social media strategy you will employ to achieve this purpose. For example, you may want to have one social team that is in charge of your brand and marketing, and a different team that will only be responsible for customer care.
3. Know your budget
Budget is an important part of your social media set-up. It will determine just how many members your social media dream team will have. While companies that are just starting their business will place only one person in charge of their social media activity and content, other companies will be able to afford several members for each social media team role. For example, McDonalds’ Twitter team alone has eight Tweeters. As your community and business grows, you will be able to expand your team, thus allowing each member to become a specialist in what they do, which is a valuable asset.
The Roles of Your Social Media Dream Team
Once you have defined your brand, your social media role, and strategy, you can start assembling your team. Ideally, you will have enough budget to make sure that every social media role is attended to by a different employee.
1. Content creation
Content is the most important part of your social media profiles. It is what encourages engagement and drives traffic back to your site. For this reason, you need an awesome writer to write your posts and an equally talented designer to put your ideas into images that will beg to be shared.
Make sure that your visual assets and creative concepts are appealing, engaging and up-to-date with the latest social measurements and requirements. There is so much noise on social media platforms and companies are forced to find ways to stand out from the rest. Your content team should think out of the box, and come up with new and innovative solutions within the brand parameters. Humor, for example, is a great way to attract attention and go viral, so make sure your content team has a great sense of humor.
Oreo is known for creating amazing content. Their “Oreo Cookie” twitter account often features videos and images associated with popular culture, with their recognizable cookie as the lead actor.
2. Community management
While creating great content will make sure you attract followers, the successful community management will make sure they stay there. Your community managers are the voice of your company. To become the master of the domain, you will need to listen and connect with your community through conversations and nurture relationships with your customers.
Your community managers will need to be great listeners and responders. They will often deal with complaints and negative feedback about your company. Some of these complaints will be uncalled for, however, many will point to some area of your service that needs to be improved. A good listener will address all the issues diplomatically and report them to the person in charge of a particular segment that needs to be improved.
Since running a social media account is a 24/7 job, you will need someone who will be able to respond quickly. You would not want that nasty comment about the delayed delivery of your product to remain unaddressed for too long. Royal Dutch Airlines is committed to answering all of its customer’s complaints. It even includes the estimated response time in its Twitter header photo, which is updated every five minutes. It is caring at its best.
It goes without saying that your community managers also have to be social. Social media is, after all, a two-way interaction. You want a team who genuinely likes what they do and cares about the people with whom they are engaging. The goal of social media is engagement, and you want everyone to have a positive experience when dealing with your business and your brand.
3. Social analytics
Your social analysts also need to have developed listening skills. However, they will not listen only to people but also to data. Their job is to monitor online mentions and conversations around your brand, competitors, and anything else that is relevant in the industry. Specifically, they will analyze traffic, impressions, click-through rates on links, engagement (likes, comments and shares), and new customer signups. They will also test things like hashtags, types of content and media, message phrasing, and time of day for publishing.
One important component of your social media activity is flexibility. Your task should be to constantly test your activities and adapt your goals and strategies to the trends exhibited by your followers. You need to keep up with industry leaders and competitors on social media, and be flexible enough to recognize where they are better and how you can improve in order to outrun them.
4. Marketing
Behind the amazing content and engaging conversations that take place on social media platforms – there’s still marketing. Everything amounts to increasing the sales. This is where you advertise your products and work to increase the conversion rates.
That is why your social media dream team will also need a marketing expert. In collaboration with your social analyst, he/she will test and measure content to find out what works best for your audience. Once you discover this, use it to your advantage with the help of paid ads or campaigns. In order to avoid stagnation, refresh your activities and change your marketing strategy regularly.
5. Social media management
Social media managers regulate all the aforementioned roles, but on top of that they also act as internal social media strategists. They must be equipped with SEO knowledge, social media expertise and customer service competence. They also need to be able to recognize great written content and design. When it comes to content supervision, a manager’s task may range from anything like correcting typos before posts get published or having enough foresight to see when, for example, a funny post might offend someone.
Your media manager handles all the information collected by other team members and creates new strategies for achieving business goals. He/she will ensure that all other members successfully collaborate with one another by sharing information they collect during their activities and adapting accordingly. Everyone in your social media team should know what the other team members are doing. You may also want to collaborate with other businesses and influencers on social media thus reaching a new audience and expanding your brand awareness.
Final Considerations
Put the right people on the right platforms. Twitter needs people who are ready to think fast and respond quickly while those in charge of Facebook will have a little more time to respond. They will need to be better at research and giving more detailed answers. If someone is more visually oriented, put him or her on your YouTube platform. If you do not have the budget to be on several platforms, stick with the top one or two on your list, choosing the ones that best meet your needs and are used by your target audience.
Get started with a small goal, such as reaching a milestone of 1000 followers on your Twitter profile. Then try to get your customers engaged in conversations, and finally, get them to convert. As you grow your audience, more people are likely to click on the links you post, become engaged, and finally, become brand ambassadors.
The post How to Assemble a Social Media Dream Team appeared first on Ecommerce SEO Company.