You’ve developed a presence on social media, but now you need to manage that presence. Social media requires time, a plan, and effort to ensure that it is engaging and achieving its purpose. So the question is, should you go at it alone or should you build a team to help you manage your project?
Pros of building a team:
- Time. An important aspect of maintaining a social media account is participating in real-time conversation and being able to provide customer service to your audience around the clock. Having a team to manage your social media platforms means a faster response time and the increased likelihood that someone will respond during those odd hours (2 a.m., for example). In addition, it could mean you’re not responding to comments while sitting on a beach with your family during vacation.
- Content Creation. Social media content doesn’t generate itself, and managing business accounts isn’t the same as having a personal account. Your organization will need the right combination of engaging content that will keep your fan base interested and looking for more while still providing information about your organization and its products or services. The benefits of working with a group of individuals are that individuals all think differently and have different ideas. Having a team will enable you to tap into those different ideas to create interesting and out-of-the-box content, which will minimize the potential that your content will get stale.
- More knowledge. By building a team, there are more people researching and learning about specific topics rather than relying on one person’s general knowledge of everything.
- Designated Specialist. Developed roles within the team allow for people to become specialists in certain areas. These specialists can focus on staying current on trends and new resources for their specific area. You might have one person who specializes in answering comments while another focuses on answering messages and an additional person who develops and schedules new content.
Cons of building a team:
- Organizational Systems. A hierarchy needs to be put in place so that there is a uniform effort, accurate content, and everyone knows their role.
- Too Many Hands in the Kitchen. It can get very confusing if there are too many people involved with the account. Many hands can mean too much posting, overlapping posts, or unrelated content.
- Overlapping. Multiple responses for the same comment or message. You might not think this could happen, but it does. Two team members might get the notice of a comment at the same time, draft a response and click “post,” not realizing the other team member already responded 20 seconds before.
- Consistency. Differing personalities and knowledge levels among your team can result in different answers to the same question. To maintain consistency, other tools need to be put in place like a solutions library and a brand voice.
- Account Security. Having multiple individuals manage a social media account means that there is an increased likelihood that the accounts could be hacked.
- Money. There is a cost associated with building a team to manage your social media platforms. You may have to add an employee to take on the role, or if you are a small business, you might need to hire a social media firm.
- Training. If you are building a social media team with people from other departments, you may need to provide training and guidance for these team members to ensure consistency and proper use of each platform.
There is no right or wrong answer; you need to do what is right for the dynamics of your organization. Whatever your decision, make sure you have the measures in place to support your plan.
Cassandra Rowan is the interactive media and marketing manager for Girl Scouts of Nassau County.
