Effective marketing is about meeting your prospects where they are by delivering the right message at the right time through the right channel.
In today’s digital work, that means you can’t afford to ignore online platforms on which consumers obtain information, research products, look for recommendations, make purchases, and more.
Here’s how to assemble a world-class social media marketing team to cover the various aspects of the discipline, so you can optimize all the online touchpoints at your disposal:
Hire the Right Roles
The first step is to define your ideal team so you can hire the right people. Define your business objectives and design a social media marketing strategy to help you decide what aspects that you need to focus on.
For most businesses, there are four main components of social media marketing to cover: social platforms, strategy, content and conversions.
The key roles you should look for include marketing strategist, social media manager, content creator, data analyst, and technical specialist.
Also, all team members should have basic marketing skills, such as an understanding of design and copywriting, to ensure high-quality output regardless of the channels used which will ultimately help with stronger internal communication.
Don’t Overlook Soft Skills
Marketing is a highly collaborative discipline. An employee needs to function well in a team environment in order to contribute and thrive.
While hard skills and technical abilities are important for getting the job done, soft skills such as interpersonal skills, critical thinking, collaboration skills, and time management skills are essential for long-term success. The latter may be the most important in all aspects from internal communication and to improve customer perception.
Successful remote team members have to be able to avoid distractions and focus on the task at hand to keep productivity high. Their health, diet and sleeping habits all affect work performance. During the interview process it’s important to uncover how they manage inter personal relationships, health and their workload to determine if they will be a successful remote team member.
Set a Solid Foundation
For any marketing team to succeed, you need to set business objectives, identify key performance indicators (KPIs), get clear on your brand identity, and define your audience (e.g., by creating buyer personas) to make sure everyone is on the same page.
This key information should be documented and shared in a centralized location easily accessible by all team members. Marketing objectives and KPIs should be clearly communicated so everyone is working toward the same goals. Meanwhile, tracking and reporting should be set up to ensure accountability.
Provide the Proper Training and Guidance
Social media marketing is a fast-evolving discipline. Provide your team with ongoing education and make sure they receive continuous training on the latest methodologies and technologies.
As with any customer-facing roles, you need to support your marketing team with the necessary guidance and scripts so they can provide customers with the most relevant content or offers at the right time. For example, supervisors can use live chat coaching tools and scorecards to offer timely feedback and improve performance.
Implement the Right Marketing Technologies
Having the right tools and software is the key to effectively executing any digital marketing strategy. These applications can help your team analyze data, deliver a personalized customer experience, and streamline internal workflows so you can increase the ROI of your marketing budget.
Some of these technologies include a customer relationships management (CRM) system, a customer data management platform, a website analytics application, email marketing software, a social media management tool, a business process automation software, a project management platform, and more.
Design an Effective Onboarding Process
There are many moving parts when it comes to running social media marketing campaigns, so it’s important to have efficient processes in place to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Also, set clear expectations to ensure that team members understand what needs to be done so they’re empowered to take initiatives proactively.
In addition, with the advance in cloud-based communication, collaboration, and marketing technologies, more people are working from their own devices whether at home or on the go. It’s important to provide the necessary IT support from the get-go so employees can enjoy more flexibility while becoming more productive. We’ve found the best training and onboarding tool to be Waybook.com.
A key component that’s often overlooked during employee onboarding is to make sure that they’re accessing your systems and customer data from secure connections at all times. Given the high cost of data breaches, make sure that everyone who has access to your customers’ information (e.g., on a CRM platform) is following the proper endpoint security protocols.
Final Thoughts
A world-class team is essential for designing and executing an effective social media marketing strategy to help your brand stays current and relevant in today’s online world.
To do so, you need to hire the right people with the right skills, give them the proper guidance, and make sure that they’re set up for success with the right technologies.
Matt Shealy is the President of ChamberofCommerce.com. Chamber specializes in helping small businesses grow their business on the web while facilitating the connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
