So you’ve finally taken that big step and hired a social media manager to handle your online brand but how can make sure that the relationship is a fruitful one?
Many individuals and companies hire social media managers with the expectation that they no longer have to be involved with all things social media oriented. Adopting this type of attitude is bound to not only cause frustration for both you and your social media manager but also sabotage your brand’s online goals.
When you hire a social media manger, you are hiring someone to take over the daily day-to-day functions required to have a growing social media presence. However, there are several actions that your social media manger requires from you in order to be successful in achieving your brand’s goals and expectations.
#1: Clear Goals
The first action that your social media manager requires from you to be successful is a clear vision of what goals you and your brand are trying to achieve. Without this important information, you are leaving your social media manager to decide for themselves what you need. This requires time and can cause misunderstandings between the two of you should the social media manager choose a goal that wasn’t what you were hoping for.
Now, having said the above, many social media managers prefer to do a full assessment of your brand’s current social media presence before they agree to work for you. This assessment is usually presented to you in the form of a social media proposal.
In this proposal, they will outline your brand’s current social media stats and suggest some goals to focus on to start with. Your job is to review this proposal in its entirety, make any changes, and return it signed and approved to the social media manager. This provides a clear picture of where your brand is and what the first steps are to achieving success as a team.
#2: Access To Brand Resources
Before your social media manager can begin their work, they need to have access to specific brand resources in order to be successful. They will need log in credentials to all of your brand’s social media profiles as well as any social media tools your brand may already be using.
Your social media manager will also need to be able to have a way to contact not only you but certain members of your team such as graphic designers, web developers, and any in-house people that can help them if they have any questions or challenges regarding technology and answering followers’ questions or concerns. Many organizations use platforms such as Asana, Trello, Skype Chat, Zoom, WhatsApp, and others so that everyone on the team can stay up to date and in touch with each other. Your social media manager needs to be a part of those organizational platforms to be effective for your brand.
Other resources your social media manager will need access to are any graphics, pictures, videos, and logos that belong to your brand. These are required in order to keep your social media profiles in alignment with your brand.
#3: Teamwork
Every single member of your brand must work together as a team to help achieve the brand’s goals. This includes working together with the social media manager. Social media is a team effort and without teamwork achieving brand’s goals can be an uphill climb.
Asking the members of your team to be active on the brand’s social media pages may seem like a small thing but it can produce huge results. Make sure that everyone on your team has liked the brand’s social media pages. Ask them to like, comment on, and share the brand’s social media content.
By doing this, you are helping your brand reach people that it may not normally be able to reach and in doing so you help your social media manager achieve the brand’s goals more quickly.
Another reason it’s important for your team members to follow your brands social media pages is to help find inconsistencies or errors and make sure they are fixed quickly. Social media is a fast-paced game and social media managers are human beings who make mistakes just like you. Many times in the process of creating and scheduling content, engaging with followers, and making taking care of all the daily social media tasks, typos and mistakes happen. Social media manager love to know that there are extra eyes helping them keep the brand consistent and as perfect as possible.
#4: Patience
Social media is an art form, not a science. It takes time to get specific results and each brand is different in what it needs and what it takes to achieve its results.
Also, social media is a constantly changing organism that requires constantly changing techniques. This means that what worked last month, last week, or even yesterday, may not work today. Most time achieving specific results requires patience and a constant stream of trial and error learning.
Social media changes for several reasons including updates and changes in the overall social media platform by its creators, changes in a platform’s algorithms, changes in the laws that oversee the way a platform is run, and overall changes in usage and attitudes of the platform’s users.
Many of these changes are not predictable and all of them require brands and social media managers to experiment with content, scheduling, and how they engage with followers to get the results they’re after and all of this takes time and patience.
So, give your social media manager time to figure out not only what works for your brand but also what needs to be adjusted in order to get the results you’re after, every time there’s a change in the platform that affects their work.
Using these four steps will not only create a mutually successful relationship between your team and your social media manager but it will also create a social media presence that achieves and exceeds your brand’s goals.
