Michelle Krasniak - Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies

No matter who does the bulk of the work — your staff members, contractors, or a combination of the two — always monitor your program randomly but regularly. In addition to getting routine reports on the results, log in to your accounts for a few minutes at various times of the day and week to see what’s going on. Most dashboards make it easy for you to review posts on your social media in one convenient place.

A good social media director should have an extroverted personality, at least in writing. This person should truly enjoy interacting with others and take intrinsic pleasure in conversation and communication. You might want to look, based on your chosen tactics, for someone who can

Write quickly and well, with the right tone for your market.

Listen well, with an ear for your target audiences and their concerns.

Post without using defamatory language or making libelous statements about competitors.

Communicate knowledgeably about your company and your products or services.

Recognize opportunities and develop creative responses or campaigns.

Work tactfully with others, alerting them when problems or complaints surface.

Articulate the goals of social media well enough to take a leadership role in encouraging others to explore its potential.

Analyze situations to draw conclusions from data.

Adapt to new social media and mobile technologies when they arise.

Learn quickly (because this field is extremely fluid).

You usually can’t just add social media to someone’s task list; be prepared to reassign some tasks to other people.

Depending on the size and nature of your social media effort, your dream team may also need someone with production skills for graphics, podcasting, or videocasting, or at least for producing and directing the development of those components. Although this person may not need extensive graphical, photographic, presentation, or data-crunching skills, having some skills in each of those areas is helpful.

Hiring 20-somethings (or younger) because they’re familiar with social media may sound like a good idea, but people in this age group aren’t as likely to be familiar with business protocol and sensitive to business relationships as someone older and more experienced. You might need to allow extra time for training, review, and revision.

Before implementing a social media plan, speak with your employees to invite their input, assess their level of interest in this effort, evaluate existing skill sets, and ascertain social media experience. Consider all these factors before you move forward; by rearranging task assignments or priorities, you may be able to select in-house personnel to handle this new project.

Leave time for communication, education, and training both at the beginning and on an ongoing basis.

Think about using professionals for the tech-heavy tasks, such as podcasts, videocasts, or design, unless you’re going for the just-us-folks tone. Professionals can get you started by establishing a model for your staff to follow, or you may want to hire them for long-term tasks such as writing or editing your blogs for consistency.

Many advertising agencies, PR firms, search engine optimizers, marketing companies, and copywriters take on social media contracts. If you’ve already worked with someone you like, you can start there. If not, select social media professionals the same way you would select any other professional service provider:

Ask your local business colleagues for referrals.

Check sources such as LinkedIn and UpWork. If appropriate, post your search criteria on your site, blog, social media outlets, and topic-related sites.

Request several price quotes. If your job is large enough, write and distribute a formal request for proposal (RFP).

Review previous work completed by the contractors.

Check references.

Even if you’re the only person involved in social media marketing at the beginning, write up a few general guidelines for yourself that you can expand later. Figure 4-6 shows a sample social media policy; you can download other examples from http://socialmedia.policytool.net .

Courtesy of Ellipsis.Digital, a division of rTraction Canada, Inc.

FIGURE 4-6:A basic social media policy may be enough to get you started.

Most policies address the social media issue both in terms of what employees are allowed to do on behalf of the company and what they aren’t allowed to do. For example:

Employees may not be allowed to use personal social accounts on company time.

Some trained employees may be allowed to post customer support replies on behalf of the company, whereas others are responsible for new product information.

For additional information and examples, see the resources listed in Table 4-3.

TABLE 4-3Social Media Policy Resource Sites

To increase compliance, keep your policy short and easy to read. Try to focus on what people can do rather than on what they can’t do.