Successful social media communities require strong leadership behind a careful, organized strategy. If you’ve decided to invest in a social media consultant, analyst, strategist, or anyone else with the word “social media” in their title, keep in mind these thoughts as you move forward with executing your plan.
Here are my tips for how to work with a social media manager.
Choose the Right Person for your Social Media Manager
Remember that this individual’s personality will largely determine your company’s social media voice, so choose carefully. Qualities that make for a successful community manager include a desire to be helpful, credibility, the ability to be brief and concise, creativity, a sense of humor, fearlessness, and a strong background in business, communications, marketing or journalism. If you need help with interviewing, I’ve put together my Top Interview Questions for Social Media Managers here.
Educate your Internal Decision Makers
Social media managers can not operate in a silo. One of the biggest challenges for any company entering the social media spaces is to educate the decision makers about the dynamics of culture that surround social media communities. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok all have unique online cultures, some overlapping, that require keen understanding and strategy. Before that first post, bring together your decision-makers in marketing, sales, customer service, and yes even front line operations, and have a conversation with them about your intended goals. Brainstorm with them for ideas on engagement, and what you hope to build by using social media. Decide what is realistic, and what will be required to succeed.
Understand Your Audience
You’ve heard this before, but it’s worth repeating. Know who you want to connect with, where they are, and what they look like. Age, sex, location, scale, interests, focus, all impact your success. It doesn’t pay to have a huge following of social media marketers if you’re trying to sell shoes, or encourage support for a foundation. This isn’t to say that social media analysts don’t occasionally buy shoes, but you get my point. Share your website demographic data with your social media manager as the first step in this process. Allow this person access to your customer service and sales team so they can gain a better understanding of pain points in your business.
Map Responsibilities
Decide who will be responsible for your campaign strategies, calendar, and goals. Is this person part of a larger marketing department? Be sure to keep them involved in all campaign and content planning, including print and video production.
Provide the Necessary Authority
Once your strategy is in place and you’ve chosen your social media manager, give them the authority to get the answers they need quickly. Nothing can bring down a good social community faster than a lack of response to sincere questions and concerns. Without the authority to respond quickly, or without cooperation from the entire organization, the social media manager is left hanging. Remember, this is your company’s voice and customer-facing portal. Make sure your manager has the support he or she needs to keep the trust you’ve worked so hard to build.
Lose the Fear
Please don’t restrict your community manager to conversations only about your brand. Who likes to converse with someone who talks about themselves incessantly? Yes, your social media accounts exist to build brand awareness, build sales, and develop leads and support around your brand; however, remember that people engage in an activity because something is in it for them, so make sure you’re providing something of value to your fans. Don’t be afraid to let your hair down a little bit. Reach out and see what you, through your social media pages, can offer your followers. What do they care about? How can you provide that to them? Don’t be afraid of looking vulnerable or a little silly. This isn’t traditional marketing, this is a conversation.
Don’t Count, Measure
Don’t judge your social media manager strictly by the number of followers they bring in. Stop obsessing about vanity metrics and instead check click-through rates, referred traffic, and the quality of engagement on your pages. Who are your followers? Do you have a strong core group of fans and followers that reflect the type of community you’re trying to build? Are they interacting? That’s what counts. If you place emphasis on vanity numbers you’re incentivizing your community manager to focus on the wrong target.
If you’re ready to learn more about how to work with a social media manager, I’m here to help. Contact me or check out my social media consulting services to see how I can help you reach your goals.
Consulting | Coaching | Communicating 
Sue, I really like this one. I think the overriding point to be taken from this is if you’re going to use social media, don’t do a half-a$$ed job of it. Put yourself out there, and be a vital part of the community. Two-way conversation is the foundation of social media – and that conversation can’t always be “buy from us!”
Social media authors need the authority and freedom to engage in conversations about the things that are on the minds of customers, potential customers, and sometimes even competitors. Companies can draw an audience by contributing something useful to the online community, especially when it’s not entirely self-serving. Communication that always focuses on making sales is just a less despicable form of spam.