How to create quality social media teams

The essence of social media is connecting with other people. Social media provides a number of ways to increase our personal interactions, some of them within our own organizations.

In addition to connecting with followers outside our companies, social media also provides the opportunity for internal teams to interact together to manage their monitoring and messaging programs. This also requires the development of systems to manage social media programs, which can offer creative and innovative interactive opportunities for businesses.

Creating social media teams

Teams created to monitor social media traffic and communicate with followers can comprise a wide range of staff, but they require balance. We’ve all heard the complaint that they are just a bunch of young kids managing the social media pages, and the team structure addresses these concerns.

By establishing a team with members at different levels of the organization, we solve two issues. One, we ensure the sites are regularly monitored by staff who  have routine interactions with managers, along with input on negative or controversial topics.  Two, we benefit from the greater interactions between staff at all levels.

Because it is important to monitor social media on a regular basis, you are assured that your sites are now fully monitored with the team in place, and that problems and customer service quality issues are handled rapidly and effectively with management involved.

This team structure was set up for a firm with a good sized staff to deal with client services, but even a smaller staff can set an effective monitoring and response procedure.

At Communication Concepts, we have structured social media teams for numerous businesses large and small, with plans individualized accord to their needs.

Create rules to police your sites

Once your staff structure is established, you can create the rules necessary to police your sites. Comments are a frequent area of controversy, and groups need to develop restrictions accordingly.

Nonprofits frequently have issues with comments and confidentiality. Businesses often need to deal with negative or inappropriate comments about their business. Should negative posts be removed? How long to remove a post? What is inappropriate material? Should commenters be anonymous?  How to remove offensive material?

These topics can be addressed by the team or by management, whatever is most appropriate. They can be handled in a dynamic manner over time.

In terms of outcomes, the creation of social media teams achieves a number of goals. People are able to do what they do best. Writers as writers, managers as managers, customer service as customer service. Young can interact with old. Techies with non-techies!

These teams can keep high staff involved without the obligation of constant monitoring or misdirection of resources for senior staff.

A great team builder

Finally, social media  teams can be a great team builder and customer service enhancer, as multiple levels of managers, staff, consultants and freelancers come together to respond to client needs, and structure social media procedures based on how and when to best communicate the corporate messages and images.