Building your social media team is about more than just gaining more people to perform the tasks of a social media campaign. You want to build a team that works together, fulfilling specific roles that both compliment and check each other. This is the best way to have both harmonious teamwork and create some truly spectacular campaigns together.
Let’s dive into a few helpful pointers on growing your social media team the right way.
Define Your Digital Marketing Goals
Start by defining a few goals. You will likely want two lists – your digital marketing goals and your goals for team growth. Your digital marketing goals can and should shape who you bring onto the team. For example, if you want a more vivid and original look to your campaigns, then a graphic artist would become a team asset. If your goal is to reshape brand reputation, then a PR specialist would make a great addition to the team.
Your digital marketing goals define the mix of skills and experience that you want to see in new team members. It can even define the personalities you are looking for to fit the company culture and the style you’re hoping to convey through social media marketing.
Fill Out Your Social Media Roles
Today, social media is too large a task to take on solo for businesses beyond startup size. The roles of your team should be defined by your brand and needs, but the following five team members are the essential elements of a strong social media team.
- Social Media Manager
- Content Creator
- Community Manager
- Social Media Advertiser
- Lastly, a Social Media Analyst
Social Media Manager
The leader and head of your social media team, the Social Media Manager keeps it all together. As a leader, they coordinate the team and make sure everyone’s efforts are moving toward the same goal. With oversight on all campaigns, the manager also ensures that every campaign is aligned with the unified brand and plan.
Your social media manager will be implementing soft skills but should have a solid background in the technical hard skills of social media marketing.
Content Creator/Copywriter
Your content creator is the engine for your social media campaigns. They are your copywriter which means writing every scrap of copy from short tweets to ebook-long blog articles. They will help keep your content unified across all platforms by adapting the best content to appear through all channels. Your content creator may be unified or split between written and graphic design.
Content creators require the hard skills of writing or design, as well as keeping up with the latest news and topics to cover. They work with the manager in campaign design to produce quality that is unified across channels.
Community Manager
Your community manager engages with the audience and needs the soft skills to do so. A community manager’s job is to engage the audience and then interact with them when comments and posts coming your way. Your community manager will need familiarity with the platforms and will likely work directly with the content creator to craft audience-engaging content. Communication between the social media team and the Community Manager.
Advertiser
Your advertiser knows how to invest your ad spend for the best ROI. They are your social media numbers person, calculating ROI on paid ad spots vs hours spent on free channels. The social media advertiser needs hard math skills and a financial background with an intimate understanding of the cost structures of social media advertising.
Analyst
Last but not least, your analyst will tell you how successful the last campaign was. Then, how to make the next one better. An analysis is now a must-have for any digital marketing venture. Your social media analyst also needs hard math skills and platform understanding, and they will likely work closely with your advertiser to find the best balance of spending methods used.
Vetting the Social Media Skills of Candidates
Once you’ve found appealing candidates to choose from, it’s time to vet. Because social media can be rocked by experienced marketers or the occasional entry-level pro, it’s important to vet every candidate carefully to both confirm their experience and their existing level of skill. It is often useful to devise practices and example scenarios to help candidates show their true problem-solving or technical abilities.
Conclusion
If you’d like to consult on your strategy for building a social media team, from finding the right people to vetting the best, reach out for a consultation.
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