Do You Have the Right People on the Bus for Social Media?

When I consult with businesses to develop a social media strategy, one of the most common questions I’m asked is about how to staff for it. It’s a critical question to answer. Following is a condensed excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0 where I devote an entire chapter to this important topic of staffing for social media marketing.

Having the Right People on the Bus
Successful social media marketing requires people who understand it, embrace it, and know how to work within the culture and technology. People need to understand the lifecycle and the types of community involved in social media to better understand the opportunities and the risks.

Roles should not only be well-defined and documented, but they should be discussed in depth. Everyone on the team must be on board with his or her roles and responsibilities. Then, the heavy lifting begins. In some cases, heavy lifting has been in place for some time, but now you are in a better position to turn it up a notch with better clarity of roles. Ongoing discussions about roles and responsibilities should occur as your social media plan matures. Changes may be needed as your plans evolve.

However, what if you realize you don’t have the right staff for social media marketing? The fact is some people just don’t understand social media. Sometimes the barrier is demographic, but most often, it’s just an “I don’t get it” attitude. Worse yet, some may resist it for any number of  reasons. There are still many people who are stuck in the traditional marketing paradigm, and they are not ready to shift to the new social media paradigm.  Don’t fret—the laggards will eventually get on the social media train because the forward momentum of the culture and the technology will sweep them along. The real problem is this: what if they’re holding you back today? If you face that scenario, here are some ideas to consider.

Give It Time
Don’t force everyone to jump into a social media strategy overnight. An overnight commitment with a take-no-prisoners mentality can produce corporate culture shock. You run the risk of becoming a maverick, which can trigger counterproductive results. The best way to win people over is to approach them gradually with small but highly visible wins. Assess the people on your team and determine who is best suited to contribute to your social media strategy. People have strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. It’s your job to recognize who may embrace social media and who may shun it.

People who embrace social media tend to be social. If this sounds a bit trite, hear me out. Being social doesn’t necessarily mean being gregarious, boisterous, or the life of the party. Social people are self-confident people, even if quietly so. Their self-confidence may be limited to a specific area of expertise, but they are confident about something. I’ve noticed that some people who might otherwise shun a public social setting are often very social in online social media situations. The key is to recognize the personality attributes of the people in your organization, as well as to recognize their domains of expertise and passions, and then convince them to dip their toes in the social media waters. Asking someone to display his or her expertise or passion in a way that helps your organization meet its strategic objectives is giving that individual an opportunity to shine. For some, it’s a new opportunity he or she may embrace willingly. Find the people who will embrace these opportunities and recruit them to your team. If necessary, move people around on your team. Along the way give people new opportunities where they can achieve tangible results and be recognized by peers and management. People who like to write and create content about specific topics and have some level of creativity or technical acuity are good candidates for your team. The bottom line is this: if you don’t have the right people on the bus, your social media strategy will not go very far. Defining the roles of the people on your team is my next point.

Definition of Job Roles
At some point, it will be wise to redefine job roles so that they reflect your commitment to a Marketing 2.0 strategy. If you consider social media marketing additive, to which employee’s plate do you add it? This will be different in each organization. In some companies, the CEO embraces social media by blogging or being active in a social network. This is a best-case scenario, because the CEO can set the tone for the rest of the organization. In most cases, you’ll need to allocate time away from one activity in order to allow time for social media marketing activities. In the beginning, always start small. It may or may not be too difficult to decide to cut back on some activities that don’t yield results. Don’t continue doing something just because you’ve always done it that way or because it always produces the same results. You do know this is the definition of insanity, don’t you?

Social Media Staff Requires a Blend of Skills
Social media staff skills require a blend of creativity, writing, organizational skills, analytics, and teamwork. A commitment to a social media plan requires a formal review of people’s job descriptions and in some cases revising job descriptions to reflect allocation of their time. A social media plan should leverage the individual talents of staffers while orchestrating them to work as a team to achieve results. As your social media strategy evolves, so should your staff’s skills, titles, the way they spend their time, and the way you recruit new team members. In the years to come, social media skills will be prominently displayed on resumes. In fact, they already are. Many hiring managers check candidates’ activities on the web to assess their subject matter expertise based on how proactive they are as a blogger and social networker before even considering them as a viable candidate.

In my book, I describe the difference between a chief marketing officer’s (CMO’s) job description a few years ago versus today. For a deeper dive into this topic and numerous case studies on social media marketing, check out Marketing 2.0. Your comments on this topic are welcome below.

@berniebay