Find out what will be expected of you if you're doing social media management in your PR role. Plus there's seven tips every social media manager should know.
If you've been tasked with managing social media accounts for your client or business PLUS you have PR tasks to complete, your hands will be full. This episode gives you you some direction on creating a content calendar, how often you should be engaging with your community, how to handle trolls and abusive comments plus why you should keep an eye on your competitors' social media accounts. My sidekick for this episode is Naomi Ross from Sydney Design Social.
WHAT ARE YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES WHEN MANAGING A SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT?
Content calendars. None of this last-minute posting, thank you very much. If you want to communicate your key messages effectively and ensure your content is constructive and appealing to your audience, then you should be planning it at least two weeks in advance. Not sure what your content should include? Head back to the Creating Social Media Accounts episode for a recap. Don't forget, you'll need to run your calendar of posts past your manager and client for approval so ensure you leave enough time for collecting feedback and updating it in
Monitoring accounts. If you work at an agency and are managing social media accounts on behalf of a client, check with your manager to see what level of community engagement was outlined in the agreement. At a minimum, you should be checking the accounts twice a day (morning and afternoon) to respond/engage with comments and monitor reviews
Reporting. There's another whole episode dedicated to this coming soon but ensure you set aside time the first week of each month to compile an analytical report on the previous month's activity, engagement and results
“The more you engage with a post, the more Instagram and Facebook reward you by feeding your posts to your audience in the future”
Listen to the full episode on The PR Pod podcast for more tips on managing social media accounts. You'll also find this episode on your fave podcast players, just search "The PR Pod".
RESPONDING TO NEGATIVE COMMENTS
Address this in your strategy stage. Brainstorm what kind of negative comments the brand/company could possibly receive and rank them in order of severity. Create responses for the more simple comments, have your client/manager approve them and then get permission to provide these responses as and when is needed, without requiring sign-off each time. For the more serious situations, agree on who you need to alert when those comments come through and who will provide approval/guidance on the response
Consider what is an appropriate amount of time to respond. If you have a negative comment sitting there for a week and it's not been addressed, that reflects poorly on your brand/company
Use negative comments as an opportunity. If there are some issues with your brand or product or how people are interacting with it, you'd want to know, wouldn't you? Use this as an opportunity to make your offering better and don't look at it as a personal attack
Take any serious issues offline as soon as possible. Find out more information via email or direct messages
Acknowledgement. Your community follows your social media accounts because they like your brand. So, if there is a major issue, they want to see the brand acknowledging that and have reassurance it's being managed
People are allowed to have a difference of opinion. If you have released a product that someone doesn't like and they comment as such, that's ok. If you're noting a larger number of people than normal with the same opinion, it's worth passing on to your manager for future production/offering development.
Blocking, deleting and hiding posts is appropriate IF someone is not adhering to the community standards outlined by the social media platform. Do a google and you'll find out what these guidelines are
WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR COMPETITORS...
Use them as a benchmark. Take note of their growth and engagement each month and if it's stronger than yours, review what they're doing and you're not. Facebook actually allows you to add competitor pages in so it makes it easy to do this. Head to Insights on your Facebook page, find Pages to Watch and go from there
Speaking of benchmarks, there's Industry Social Media Benchmark Reports out there. Take a look, they may prove useful
7 TIPS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT SUCCESS
Don't take comments personally. And don't respond in the heat of the moment. Always respond with the brand's best interests at heart. Take a step back from the issue and assess it. If in doubt, run your proposed response past a team member or manager
Be an excellent communicator. Whether it's providing your manager/client with the next month's posts to review with ample notice or being diligent with efficient and timely responses to posts, always be on the front foot
Be planned and have a strategy. Each post should be there because you want to achieve a specific goal, not just because you can't think of what to post
Be creative. If you don't have a lot of content or imagery, you're going to have to be particularly creating with writing different copy for the same message
Be adaptable. You may have very carefully planned out the next month's content and the day before you schedule it all in, the client announces they're no longer offering a particular product or service so you have to wipe out half your posts and start again. Sh*t happens. Sigh, and get on with sorting out a solution, pronto
Attention to detail. Your spelling and grammar is so important as it reflects badly on the brand if there's regular mistakes popping up in posts. If you're tagging in anyone else, make sure you're tagging in the right accounts
Only have one account to manage? Take a look at Facebook Creator Studio. It's free and you can manage Instagram and Facebook from the same account
If you feel comfortable with the social media side of things but your client is still a little tricky to work with, check out the Working With Clients episode.