How to Build an Elite Social Media Team

This is an edited excerpt from The 10 Principles of Effective Social Media Marketing.

Social media management has expanded and become more complex as more companies rely on this medium for their marketing strategy. When internal marketing teams do not meet the standards, team members can fall through the cracks, and the foundation becomes less sturdy. Here’s why social media teams need to be divided up better to improve workflow.

Working With Interns

It’s long been a stereotype that social media managers are interns. It’s common to see replies to popular brand posts that read “Give your intern a raise!” or “Fire your intern!” when brands make mistakes on social media. And while it may have been common for brands to put an intern in charge of social media in the early days of the medium, those days are long gone. Social media managers today are highly skilled, educated, and trained professionals, many with years of experience representing large brands online in front of millions of followers. To dismiss them as “interns” is insulting to their profession, devalues them, and needs to stop.

That said, interns do have a valuable role to play on a social media team. Interns can provide a fresh and external perspective on content and social strategy, free up your social media manager’s time by performing repetitive tasks and assist in the production of content. However, they should be working under and learning from an expe­rienced social media manager—not simply given the account passwords and told to “do social media.”

Internships provide a valuable opportunity for aspiring social media professionals to get hands-on experience and training before entering the workforce. In exchange for their labor, they are both paid (all internships should be paid) and receive valuable training and experience that will not only help them get a job but will also give them the skills to perform that job well. By giving interns free rein to run your brand’s social media channels by themselves with minimal supervision, you are doing a disservice to both your brand and the intern.

Social Media Teams and Quality Control

One of the many reasons you should have more than one person managing your social media is the issue of quality control.

Social media managers ship a lot of content, and that content is visible to a lot of people. The chances that a post goes out with a spelling error, typo, wrong link, or grammatical error is almost certain. No matter how good or careful you are, a mistake is bound to happen. Having multiple people view a post prior to being sent reduces those odds greatly. Yes, mistakes will still happen from time to time, but having at least one person review the content for quality control will prevent many more mistakes from happening.

Additionally, it’s impossible for a single person to know everything about everything. Even the most online, knowledgeable, pop-culture savvy of us has blind spots. When I worked as the social media manager at a large university, I was very comfortable writing content about the school’s academic programs, student activities, and admis­sions; however, there was one major item I wasn’t comfortable writing about—sports. Any time we had sports-related news about the university to share on our social channels, I always ran it by a writer on our staff who followed sports closely and understood how to write for that audience. Not only was he able to write on the topic in a much more engaging and interesting way, but he also likely saved us from potential embarrassment when I (a non-sports fan) may have fumbled the ball. (That’s an American football reference, right?)

Not only that, a team of one by definition can’t be diverse. Having a diverse social media team made up of people from a wide array of backgrounds is incredibly important. A diverse social team can help you prevent possible public relations (PR) crises by preventing you from accidentally stepping on cultural sensitivities, and can bring up possible issues you may not be aware of. But on the flip side of that, a diverse team can help you spot opportunities for engagement that a single person might not.

Build Your Social Media Brain Trust

Too many social media managers work in isolation. Many of them ideate, create, edit, and execute their campaigns on their own without any outside assistance other than a laborious approval process from management or clients that don’t really understand social media. They are left to their own devices without coworkers who they can bounce ideas off of, ask questions of, learn from, or even just commis­erate with.

Therefore, it is vital for social media managers to be a part of a professional community of others in their field. They need to attend conferences, join professional organizations, find online groups, and develop professional relationships with other social media managers outside their own place of work. They need to build trusted groups of like-minded social media managers with whom they can share their thoughts, aspirations, frustrations, and struggles. They need to have Zoom calls, group chats, long talks over coffee (or something stronger) with others who have been on the receiving end of the fire­hose of comments and information overload that social media managers face every day. They need to be around other chronically online creative marketers who understand the value of a well-timed meme. They need peers with whom they can discuss their jobs.

Advocate for Yourself

Finally, if you are a social media team of one, it’s vital that you advo­cate for your needs. There’s a good chance that your supervisor isn’t aware of the hours you are putting in and the number of projects you are working on. If you don’t let them know, it’s unlikely you will ever get the resources you need or be able to grow your team.

While it may add a bit to your workload, providing them with a weekly update email can go a long way to securing more resources, having fewer new projects added to your workload, and, eventually, even adding more members to your team.

These emails don’t need to be lengthy or in great detail; just give a brief update on what projects you are working on, post-performance, follower growth, and highlight wins for the week and favorable comments from followers.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask for the resources you need to do your job properly. Need a software subscription to a content manage­ment system like Hootsuite or Sprout Social? Ask for it. Need a new camera to take better photos and videos? Ask for it. Need to take a course to improve your graphic design skills? You guessed it… ask!

No one else is going to advocate for your needs. So, if you want leadership to both see the value of your work and understand what you need to do your job effectively, you are going to have to be the one who advocates for it.

Social Media Marketing Can’t Be Effective Without Effective Leadership

A Note for Anyone Who Supervises a Social Media Manager

If you employ or are in a position where a social media manager reports to you, it’s important to understand their work. If you are reading this book, give yourself a pat on the back. Far too many people in leadership roles dismiss social media as something unim­portant that doesn’t really concern them. And nothing could be further from the truth. Your social media manager is your canary in the coal mine; an early warning system that can tell you before crisis strikes. But they can also provide valuable insights from your customers that you might otherwise be unaware of. They constantly have their ear to the ground and know what people are saying about your brand, both good and bad. And, for that reason, your social media manager should be a part of your inner circle. You need to be meeting with them regularly and asking them about what they are seeing, where they think you should be going, and how to best speak to your audience.

Read the rest of the chapter and the following section on how to help your social media team in their day-to-day work from The 10 Principles of Effective Social Media Marketing.

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