{"id":58488,"date":"2012-05-31T04:43:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T08:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acscreative.com\/acsblog\/?p=38"},"modified":"2012-05-31T04:43:58","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T08:43:58","slug":"driving-social-media-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/?p=58488","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Driving Your Social Media Efforts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Social Media 101 author, <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbrogan.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Chris Brogan<\/a>, once blogged, \u201cSocial media is a set of tools and tactics that people use as part of their larger business communications efforts. \u2026 What are people doing taking titles like \u201c<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>social media management<\/strong><\/em><\/span>?\u201d To me, this is a scary thing. Why? Because it\u2019s like being the fax manager or the email manager. You\u2019re naming yourself after a tool.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But if your business is just starting to incorporate social media into a conversational marketing strategy, finding a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>social media marketing firm<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>or establishing a point person to spearhead your efforts can make all the difference between \u201cmerely functional\u201d and \u201chighly successful.\u201d Let\u2019s look at the type of person best suited for a <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em>social media management<\/em><\/span><\/strong> role and the responsibilities that person must tackle to successfully drive your social media efforts forward. <!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>Who\u2019s Best for the Role of Social Media Managment?<\/h3>\n<p>Whether you decide to tap an existing staff member, hire out for the position or work with an outside <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em>social media marketing firm<\/em><\/span><\/strong> to manage your social media efforts, you need to focus on people that bring specific attributes and skills to the table.<\/p>\n<p>For example, you definitely want to find someone who is passionate about your business and equally passionate about using social media to enhance customer relationships. Experience using social media\u2014and using it well\u2014in daily life is also an advantage. Other desirable attributes include:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"lists\">\n<li>Inside-out knowledge of your company, products, services and customers<\/li>\n<li>An understanding of your business goals\u2014and an appreciation of the roles marketing, PR and customer service play in helping your business reach those goals<\/li>\n<li>Ability to organize, lead and inspire a team<\/li>\n<li>Tech savviness, coupled with a zeal for engaging people<\/li>\n<li>Helpfulness, caring and the ability to look at things from another\u2019s perspective<\/li>\n<li>Ability to handle a fast pace\u2014and stress\u2014effectively<\/li>\n<li>Discipline to stay on top of multiple demanding projects<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In terms of necessary skills, your ideal social media manager must be able to think strategically to determine what to engage and invest in today to develop business for the future. Strong writing and communication skills are also a must, and the ability to build and retain relationships and foster trust in your company is crucial. Because your social media manager will handle a variety of projects and cross-functional teams, demonstrated project-management and people-management skills are important to look for. Finally, your social media manager will likely spend a lot of time training and mentoring others, so finding someone with effective training skills is imperative.<\/p>\n<h3>You\u2019re Hired\u2014Now What?<\/h3>\n<p>A social media manager\u2019s job responsibilities can vary greatly, depending on factors such as company size, your organizational structure and the scope of your social media strategy. For example, perhaps your marketing director will determine your overall social media strategy, so your social media manager\u2019s role will be to implement that strategy throughout the company. Or, if you\u2019re a small business, the social media manager might wear numerous hats, from strategist to implementer to social networking ambassador.<\/p>\n<h3>But, job responsibilities typically fall into one of following five categories:<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"lists\">\n<li>Strategy. Strategy includes devising and communicating the direction your business will take with respect to social media. It also might include analyzing what\u2019s already being done, organizing and streamlining existing practices and planning how to integrate tactics into existing job roles (e.g., marketing, PR, customer service) within the company. Strategy also might include establishing a social media policy or setting up guidelines for communicating effectively through social media channels.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.acscreative.com\/web-presence-getting-started\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Content Creation<\/a>. At the heart of social media is content, whether in the form of conversations, blog posts, podcasts, videos, Tweets, webinars and the like. Don\u2019t look for your social media manager to \u201cdo it all\u201d\u2014but do expect that person to set up and manage the procedures and people necessary to ensure that your company produces compelling content consistently and reliably to fuel your social media efforts.<\/li>\n<li>Listening and Engaging. Social media is all about conversations and conversations are all about listening and engaging in the exchange of observations, ideas, sentiments and opinions. People converse with people, and your <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>social media<\/strong><\/em><\/span> manager will ensure that your staff is inspired and prepared to actively listen and meaningfully engage with customers through social media channels.<\/li>\n<li>Measurement. Setting up and monitoring analytics to measure the impact of social media initiatives on your business goals is another important aspect of your <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>social media<\/strong><\/em><\/span> manager\u2019s job. Don\u2019t skip this less-than-glamorous responsibility\u2014establishing measurement tactics from the get-go will provide valuable information to shape your future strategy.<\/li>\n<li>Training. Your social media manager\u2019s job is not to take away individuals\u2019 responsibilities for online communication but to help them use social media effectively in their jobs. To that end, your social media manager might need to train people in using specific platforms and tools, social media etiquette, how to carry on a conversation, how to connect conversations to your brand, ways to handle negative interactions and similar topics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Drive Your Business Forward<\/h3>\n<p>Integrating new communications practices into your business via <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>social media<\/strong><\/em><\/span> is a necessary step your business can take to stay competitive in today\u2019s markets. Finding the right person or agency to drive your efforts and ensuring that person or agency has the necessary skills and authority to carry out their responsibilities is an important first step to successfully putting social media to work for your business.<\/p>\n<div class=\"cta-container\">\n<div class=\"cta-left\">\n<h3>We&#8217;re here when you&#8217;re ready!<\/h3>\n<p>As website design, architecture and Social Media experts, ACS Creative can help create, manage and monitor all of your social media needs. Contact us today for a free consultation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"cta-right\"><a class=\"cta-btn\" href=\"\/contact\/\">contact us<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social Media 101 author, Chris Brogan, once blogged, \u201cSocial media is a set of tools and tactics that people use as part of their larger business communications efforts. \u2026 What are people doing taking titles like \u201csocial media management?\u201d To me, this is a scary thing. Why? Because it\u2019s like being the fax manager or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,3,6],"class_list":["post-58488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","tag-business","tag-content","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acsredux.acscreativedev.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}