Turning Employee Talents into Social Media Management Strategy

We’re all looking for the new, biggest, best and instant way to get more followers, fans, and subscribers for our businesses. The problem is, when it comes to social media marketing success, businesses concern themselves more with the quantity of followers than they do the quality of the conversations the business is generating. Too often, businesses ignore the simple step of turning inward for help when it comes to this marketing medium. Failing to recognize individual personal gifting within a company can seem like a simple oversight, but it can translate into serious missed social media marketing opportunities as a result.

How do the personal, God-given gifts of your team translate to a well-rounded, engaging social media campaign? Before answering this question, you must first understand what social media really is: a multi-channel online forum for businesses to eliminate the disconnect between brands and end-users. A disconnect with your audience means less-likely repeat purchases and less-likely referrals over time. Social media allows businesses to create relationships and conversations, as well as the ability to stay fresh, current and interesting…if it’s done well, of course.

Best-selling author Erik Qualman says, “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” This is an area where many struggle, and therefore search for outward remedies for resolution. Not to say that outsourcing social media shouldn’t be considered, but take a look at the resources you already have on the payroll before signing a contract. You might be closer to a management solution than you thought.

One key component to engaging social media campaigns is diversity. The same old calls to action are instant turn-offs for followers who are looking for rewards and excitement. This is where you can really tap into your team’s gifts, because everyone has their own strengths and interests they can lend to the campaign. Here are some tips for holding a social media management meeting with your staff:

• Introduce the concept of team-managed social media, letting the staff know that you would like them to play a part in the campaign operations.
• Go around the room and ask each person to state their strongest skill set, such as writing, photography, statistics, motivation, encouragement, community service, athletics, networking, etc.
• After identifying individual gifts, converse about how they can be translated to the business. The “photography buff” can be in charge of posting a weekly picture they took in the office, the writer can compose a blog post for the website, the motivator can post an inspirational quote, the networker can post about an event they will be attending, etc.
• Assign each individual a day of the week they are in charge of creating a gift-based post, using a service such as Hootsuite to syndicate the message to all of the company’s social media profiles at once.
• Make each team member in charge of monitoring their respective posts for comments or feedback. Ask that they issue reply responses when necessary.
• Meet with your team on a monthly basis to review post reporting (also generated by Hootsuite) in order to determine the posts that fans engage upon the most. Use these reports to find out what followers like, and what they don’t- then refine the campaign based on those results.

If you have employees, you have social media managers. With today’s free and easy-to-use technologies, it’s easy to make several employees in charge of managing social media platforms without compromising personal profile privacy. By asking for a collective effort from your team, you eliminate concerns about campaign efficiency. It shouldn’t take each contributor longer than 5-10 minutes on their scheduled day to come up with something to share.

The result of asking employees to use their individual gifting to help the company may certainly be a blessing in disguise. Social media marketing done right must have a human element; what better human element to have than the people who are on the front lines of your business on a daily basis? Take the stress out of trying to do it all yourself and let your team jump in. Chances are you’ll begin to see increased follower engagement and maybe even increased employee morale. We aren’t designed to succeed individually as well as we are collectively, so let your teams shine and start making quality social media conversations.

eMedia Insiders offers Management services on a case-by-case basis for select clients. To submit a management inquiry, please fill out the contact form on our website.

Looking to help train your team on social media? Check out our new April/May 2012 training schedule on our tour page.