Who is Managing Your Company’s Social Media?
Before my last semester of college, I worked as a marketing intern at one of the country’s top consulting firms. One of my many tasks was to manage the firm’s various social media accounts. This included the company’s Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. Having taken classes on social media marketing and strategy, I felt fairly confident in my skill set.
There were a few times as an intern, however, when my supervisor, the marketing director of the firm, would hand me articles written on social media marketing and ask that I read through them, take notes of anything we should implement, and then report back to him. To my surprise, every article I was handed stated that the number one cardinal sin businesses make when implementing social media into their marketing strategy is to have untrained employees manage their social media—sometimes that meant interns.
As you might imagine, as the company’s intern these articles were pretty terrifying to read. As the years passed, however, I started to understand what these authors had been trying to convey. Too often, companies see social media as something they should do, but not something important enough to hire an expert for. Many employers tend to think that as long as someone has their own personal social media channels, they are automatically qualified to manage their company’s social accounts. One business owner went as far as to tell me that their IT guy runs their social media accounts since he’s “techy”.
Time To Take Social Media Seriously
With over 3.4 billion people on social media today, it is crucial that business owners understand the importance of their company’s social media pages. In fact, 54% of social browsers use social media to research products before making a purchase. These social pages, when managed properly, can be the voice of your company and create an alternative route for lead generation. But it takes skill. There is a lot of research and strategy that goes into organic social media. At what time of the day should you post? How often should you post? What kind of content should you post? Not to mention, when should boosting and paid ads be implemented into your company’s marketing budget and strategy? There are no universal answers to any of these questions.
Each company has a unique audience that they target. A strategy that works well for one company, won’t always work well for another. All of these decisions are determined through thorough research of the market and, a lot of times, by trial and error. Once organic social media marketing has begun, the efforts need to be watched, recorded, and studied in order to see if any changes need to be made. Managing social media is so much more than writing a clever post or uploading an attractive photo. There is a strategy involved that can only be accomplished by someone who, just like with any other skill, has studied and trained.
In Conclusion…
If your reason for using social media is to give your company a more personal voice while at the same time increasing business opportunities, then you better make sure that it is being handled by a professional—someone who has worked with social media marketing before and has learned the tips and tricks. Think about the business you work for and ask yourself these questions: Who is managing our business’s social media? Who is behind the voice of our business’s social presence? Is it one of the young fellows from the IT department? Or is it a trained professional who has the knowledge and experience to hold such an important responsibility? For your sake, and your business’s, I hope it is the latter.
McCain is the founder and VP of Client Services at Set Fire Creative. When he isn’t busy helping his clients grow their business through digital marketing, you will most likely find him with his nose in a Stephen King book, eating spicy buffalo wings, hanging out with his wife and Blue Heeler Ozzy, or listening to Guns N’ Roses—sometimes all at the same time.
