HELP: Social Media team, with no experts

[rulesforrebels]

Sit down with some decision makers to come up with a general brand image and tone, what’s acceptable and what’s not in terms of language sensitive topics etc. Also see how the rest of the company will tie in ie will you do giveaways feature other employees etc. I’d focus on YouTube instagram and a blog. Maybe diff networks depending on where your audience or customers are

[cpomme]

Hey! Marketing department here.

I have no degree in this, but I do have hands-on experience in this as I’ve been a content creator for years and now currently working as a marketing associate.

First, congrats! on being the one in charge of social media without having a pre-existing Marketing foundation!! Meee too!!! I am literally just working with one other person and it’s my boss. It’s wild.

I just wanted to reach out and say you’re not alone in that aspect, but to also hopefully help with some methods that I’ve learned.

In terms of teams, it is indeed important to have one. PR, analytics, social media—they’ll have to work together in order to really promote the company. The key is organization and communication.

Once you’re able to establish a team, it’s essential to create a systematic workflow within.

I have more I can tell you, but hopefully someone with more expertise can chime in. Feel free to DM me if you’d like to know more! Good luck!

Edit: OH and as you are establishing a foundation with fresh guidelines, write them out along the way so you have something to look back to and improve if need be.

[tacklingfuel]

Set up analytics — not all services can get insights retroactively (for example: planoly for Instagram) so look at some example social media content managers and see what works for this company / budget / accounts.

Evaluate the existing content — what “works” and what doesn’t? On-brand vs. off-brand content. Look at engagement insights if you can to see trends of new followers and user comments.

Decide your types of posts — this helps establish a process for scheduling and collecting content. Example:
• mon/wed/fri owned content (blog/ website)
• tues industry content (repost)
• thurs advertisement (your product/service

Find your allies — who is consistently sending in the best content? Who wants to be involved. That’s a good place to start. Then look for the content that you need and identify who has that info internally.

It’s hard to maintain a consistent tone/style and schedule with a disjointed team of content creators and posters, so if it’s possible, maybe you could do the posting after collecting and curating content. A single leader is important to achieve growth.

[issareddit]

Hi! Digital & Social Media Masters degree holder here. I work for a company that has a large social media department. I will say that it will be hard to keep par with what other companies are doing on social media to attract younger customers without having a young team. By now, a lot of people that have graduated in the past 1-4 years have a fair amount of social media experience and/or training and can wear a lot of hats if need be. I don’t know the size of your company and scope of work the social team would have to undertake but I think a fair skeleton crew should consist of 2 (or more) people with PR/writing experience/expertise, a creative/designer, someone with marketing/strategy experience, and an analytics/data person if the social media expert does’t have the knowledge to work advanced analytical data tools. I would assume most people having studied social media in college would know their way around the platforms’ native analytics. You would then scale up from there depending on the size of your business. I hope this provides some insight. Just my 2 cents!

[doesnotcompuke]

Hi there! I’ve been working in marketing for a while and I think besides hard skills, pay attention to the office culture, structure and politics in your workplace.

think about how to best frame your ideas to your coworkers to get them on your side. Avoid fighting them, avoid talking down to them. It must be intimidating or even terrifying for those 40 somethings to make decisions based on what they know (or don’t know), and they might feel genuinely flustered, but are uncomfortable expressing their lack of knowledge. They may also feel threatened. Be kind and open.

Be the person who is kind, and an expert source of social media knowledge, and share whenever you can. This way you will make yourself an extremely valuable member in the office!

This is actually an incredible opportunity for you to put stars down in your CV, so take it!

The best part is they’ve already recognise the importance of social media marketing, that’s half the battle won. Some companies under staff their teams and refuse to direct resources to produce results on social media – that’s a lost battle.

Prepare a document, or presentation for your coworkers once you’ve sounded out what is the top most urgent need for the company. Perhaps a 5 step plan, for each phase, etc. It’s hard to comment without knowing the specifics.

This requires that you speak with them and understand the stake holders, decision makers, and the worker who holds influence in the power group. Once the stage is set, a collaborative atmosphere will automatically set your plan in motion. Minimise resistance.

Bottom line, be kind, be the source of knowledge and expertise, and you will be on your way to leading! Get those resume stars!

[Arubaspirit]

To Provide Justification for Advertising on Social Media:

Look for industry data to show how brands are being affected by social media organic and paid reach or others such influences.

Senior Leaders Care About :

New avenues for revenue

Cost savings and efficiency

Competitive advantage

Protecting brand reputation

Customer satisfaction

If you speak in these terms, they will definitely feel like they need to invest more into a team for this. They want to see the actual numbers

Good luck!

[CondorPerplex]

You are making a leap here that in order to achieve the goal (attract and build trust with a target group) you need to get more people involved. I think what you need to achieve this goal through social media is a good plan that you can probably make yourself, having been an intern in this field. Also, I am getting the sense that you want to leave the posting to a variety of colleagues: big mistake.

[DontOwnABrush]

Hello! I’m also the solo marketing/PR/social media/email marketer on our team. My only additional comment – everyone else has said so many great things – is issue a monthly team email. Very grass roots but it has helped me. Towards the end of every month, I reach out to the team asking what they’d like to have included for the next month. While some things may be brought to my attention randomly here and there, any content I receive ahead of time helps me to plan out.

Good luck. You’ve got this!

[ThatGirlDee]

This annoys me, I am a social media expert with over 7 years experience in digital and social. I freelance and most big corporations I have worked in ( which include some really big names) have someone with little experience or training in charge. It just adds to the general idea that anyone can do social media, which isn’t true. Brands should be hiring experts but they don’t want to pay expert prices for social media professionals, it’s disappointing.

[chattachomp]

Hi, marketing lead here. Congratulations on the opportunity to gain experience and advance your career. There’s great advice on this thread, so without being too repetitive, define your strategy, lay out your tactics, then execute.

Strategically, how will social media advance business goals? What reporting will demonstrate that social media is achieving them. At the highest level, businesses care about revenue and competitiveness. It can be tricky attributing lift to social media, so you’ll need to rely on proxy metrics like user counts and engagement. You’ll likely need to pull data from a social media management tool (more below) and your website (Google Analytics). The latter is critical if you sell product via ecommerce, as volumes and sources for traffic and revenue will be metrics you’ll want to measure. Put together a strategic plan of the goals you will achieve and report against. Then get buy-in from the top.

Tactically, certain tools with help you with execution and control. If you don’t have a brand style guide, develop one. Even a basic guide that lays out brand voice, swatches, fonts, etc. will be of great benefit to you and the company. There are decent templates online. Again get buy-in. With the agreed upon guide and strategic document, you can better direct employee generated content and shoot down proposed content that falls outside of tolerance.

Create an editorial calendar, develop content, and schedule it for posting. In terms of daily management and reporting, Buffer, Hootsuite, and CloudCampaign. You may decide to let users continue to propose content. If so, use the system to prevent them from posting without your approving their posts.

You will learn as you execute. Research best practices, test campaigns and tactics, and listen to your audiences. Six months from now, looking back, you will be proud of your progress. Good luck!

[sonalisrivastava]

Hi,

You can let me know your queries along with that ping me your company existing social profile link or at least the website, I’ll be happy to help you with this.