Those responsible for Social Networks in SMEs require organization, tools, content, strategies and training to be able to carry out their work. Do not ask your staff to take care of them without giving you everything you need.
Many SME companies do not have access to hiring Agencies or Community Manager and they must develop their own managers within the company. Although this is not the best option, the reality is that there are many cases like this.
For this reason we have compiled some suggestions to take into account, although the first recommendation would be the search for qualified specialists, consultants or agencies that can support them in their objectives.
The first is to take into account the general profile that should have the person who will take charge of the Social Networks of the SME:
- Must have communication and writing skills.
- Empathy with any type of people: pleasant or not.
- Sensitivity in the handling of information of the company and the user.
- Be permanently aware that it is not your voice or personality with which you communicate, but a brand.
- Take into account the importance of each and every one of your publications.
- Patience in sensitive situations.
- Don of people, without leaving the personality of the brand.
- Excellent relationship with all the people within the company.
- Experience in the use of Social Networks.
- Schedule availability.
Once you have located the right person for this job, you will be given a list of everything you need to do your job well.
The Head of Social Networks must know the Organization well
- Know the company. Philosophy, Vision, Style of Communication and Leadership, Values, History, etc.
- Know the product / service. What the company sells, how it does it, at what cost, what features, etc.
- Market. Who buys, what characteristics it has, age, sex, marital status, where it lives, education, work, habits, etc.
- Competition. Who they are, what they do, how they communicate, what Social Networks they are in, what they do in them, how their followers respond to them, etc.
- Business and Marketing Strategies. You must know all the marketing efforts that the company does to attract customers and position their brand. So it is also good to keep you informed of all strategies for growth or expansion of the business.
- Communication Policies. They must be well established, how you want the company to communicate in Social Networks, what is allowed, what is not, how to handle crisis and comments, etc.
- Objectives of the company in the RS. It should be very clear at this point, RS can serve different purposes: serving the customer, attention to complaints or suggestions, brand positioning, etc. Define very well what you expect from them before you begin.
The Responsible of the Social Networks must have the following Tools
- Unlimited Internet. You can not skimp on this please !! It has to be 24 hours. And 7 days a week with internet, wherever you are.
- Computer. Indispensable for your work of writing, editing and general management of contents, images and reports.
- Smartphone As I said before, it must be connected all the time. A smartphone that has a good camera and excellent data service / internet. Minimum with a 3GB plan.
- Telephone line. Indispensable to be able to locate any person in the company and so that it can locate it to keep it informed of what is required to be published.
- Software. The normal thing to start: Word, Excel, Power Point. Minimum Photoshop Elements for photo editing and another for video editing: Movie Maker or Mac for iMovie. To do audio editing you may need Audacity.
- HD video. A small and comfortable HD video camera to record events or important moments to publish. I recommend the Flip.
- Dictionary. It is indispensable to always have one close to avoid mistakes in publications.
- Management Platform. I recommend HootSuite in which you can organize all your social networks, followers lists, schedule shipments and follow up on your community. The free version is complete, but I recommend the payment is only 10 dollars a month.
- Measurement Applications. It is very important that you measure your efforts in social networks systematically, there are many applications that can help you, and each one will help you to measure different things: reputation, scope, connection, traffic, keywords, etc. We will make another post of this only since it can be very extensive. Laws are: Google Analytics and HootSuite.
- Applications in Social Networks. Optimizing the social networks in which you find yourself will be an important part of the strategy, for this you will have to integrate to each network applications that make your space more attractive to your followers. Many are free: engage
- Monitoring Applications. These are exclusively to know what happens in the network that has to do with your brand, what is spoken and how it is spoken. The tools I recommend are: Google Alerts and Socialmention.
Other important aspects to consider so that you can execute your work well the Social Networking Manager of your company are:
Contents
- Access to organization-wide information
- Development and / or access to Design / Video / Photography / Audio
- Access to all personnel ascending and descending
- Authority to generate and request to generate content
- Freedom for the conversation in Social Networks
Strategy that must be defined before starting in Social Networks (RS Plan)
- Personality of your social networking accounts
- Clear objectives for each Social Network
- Line of conversation
- Themes of publications
- Strategy of interaction with your community
- How to generate followers
- Definition of indicators
- Campaigns in Social Networks / Blended Marketing
Center of Strategy in Social Networks
- Website optimized to generate leads and then customers
- Corporate Blog to support the company’s reputation in Social Networks
- Material as a subscription incentive
- Email Marketing Platform. The ones I recommend are MailChimp and Aweber
Online Marketing Channels to Consider
- SEO. Carry out strategies that position your brand and products in the first places within the organic searches.
- SEM. Elaborate campaigns in search engines (PPC) in key times of your company.
- Ads / Rich Media. Advertising on sites of impact for your market.
- Landing Page. Strategies for attracting leads.
- Affiliates. Programs to create an online sales network.
- Directories. Although they are not very fashionable, there is no need to subscribe to all the web directories that you can.
As you will see the work of the responsible of the Social Networks of a company is very broad and requires a lot of material to work.
I hope this information will be useful, then write something about the best management, measurement and monitoring applications for SMEs and also something about the activities that should be done by the Social Media Manager.