Social media can be a time consuming activity which can at times be extremely frustrating as your fans are not engaging, or worse, you don’t have any fans with whom to engage with. One way to get started is to get all of your staff within your business to support your social media activities. Though this is often not as easy as it sounds either!
Detailed below are some ideas on how to create an internal social media plan which will help encourage your internal social media blockers to jump on the social bandwagon.
1 – Define your objectives
Firstly, what do you want to achieve from having a social media presence? Are you using it as a tool to build the awareness of your brand, are you using it as a customer service tool, or are you looking to use it as a sales tool and increase your revenue by 50%?
By clearly defining realistic, clear and measurable goals, your internal staff will be more motivated to contribute to achieving these goals.
2 – Who will be on your social media team?
Social media is a science in itself. The following roles need to be considered when devising a social media strategy:
Community Manager – Publishes content across all social media platforms and acts as the voice of the company by liaising and communicating with customers, media and key influencers.
Strategist – As with any form of marketing, a clearly defined strategy is required for social media which complies with the objectives and goals of your business offline.
Content Manager – creates and develops all content and visual content across social media platforms and all digital platforms.
Analyst – Measures the success of your social media through predefined key performance indicators.
Social Media Coordinator – communicates with all other staff in the business for the purpose of gathering content and informing all staff of any social media developments of interest.
The above tasks can fall onto one person or many persons for the purpose of collaborating on content and strategies which will appeal to your target audience. Social media is in itself a full time job so it is important that an adequate amount of time is allocated to social media.
3 – Develop your strategy
Once the appropriate person(s) are in place, there are a number of questions which should be addressed, such as:
What goals and objectives do I want to achieve?
Who is my target audience?
How often should I produce content and what should the tone of the content be?
How can I incorporate our online and offline business and business strategy?
As a result of answering these questions, guidelines on how best to utilise social media for your company will develop, which will contribute to the team working together as a collective whole for the purpose of achieving the specified goals and objectives.
4 – Have team meetings
Social media communication meetings are a superb way of ensuring that all staff are on the same page, as well as on keeping them on their toes! Making each person responsible and accountable for differing tasks and actions will ensure that content is consistently developed, published, analysed and monitored across the board.
Brainstorming during these meetings can be an excellent and creative environment for developing, tweaking or adding onto the existing social media strategy. All ideas should be welcomed, no matter how outside of the box they may appear. The trick is to ensure that all ideas which are used will conform to the businesses social media guidelines. The only boundaries in social media are ideas.
Happy socialising!!