Should You Have Multiple People Managing Your Brand’s Social Media?
Unless you’re just getting started, social media management is a big, time consuming job. While the majority of marketers claim to spend 1–5 hours on social media marketing every week, they’re likely part of a bigger team — and some marketers end up spending more than 40 hours per week on social media.
With all that time invested, you may be tempted to recruit multiple people to the brand’s social media account; for example, you might give Alice, Bob, and Cheryl equal administrative rights to post to your company’s Facebook page and respond to messages. That way, no single person is responsible for the entirety of the work.
But is this a good idea? Should you hand over the reins of your corporate accounts to multiple people at the same time? Let’s think about the pros and cons.
The Advantages
There are some major advantages to this approach:
· Faster response times. Healthy social media followings depend on reasonably fast interactions. If a user submits a message to your brand, they expect a response within a few hours — even if they send a message after hours. Having more people on your social media team simultaneously means a higher chance that someone can respond to these messages right away, which can result in a reputation boost — everyone loves responsive, communicative brands who prioritize customer service and interaction.
· Division of labor. You’ll also split the work of the campaign among multiple people, so no individual is overwhelmed with tasks. This is especially important for bigger companies, where managing social media accounts takes dozens of hours of work every week. Team members can also alternative after-hours duties, and rotate “off” periods so nobody burns out.
· Specialization. If you have multiple people on the same account, you can turn each team member into a specialist, rather than having a single “generalist” take care of all the responsibilities. For example, you can have a team member dedicated to answering incoming messages, a team member dedicated to taking pictures and video, and a team member dedicated to writing responses and ensuring posting schedules are met.
· Brainstorming. The effectiveness of brainstorming is anything but consistent, but as a general rule, the more minds you have working together on a problem, the faster you’ll be able to solve it. Having multiple people on a social media account allows for more collaboration, which can result in more creative ideas and new experimental approaches for your campaign.
The Disadvantages
However, there are also some downsides you’ll want to watch out for:
· Redundancy. There’s a significant chance that two of your social media team members will attempt to do the same thing at the same time. For example, if your brand receives a message, two team members could simultaneously attempt to answer it. At best, you’ll waste time in this scenario, and at worst, you’ll create an awkward and unpleasant experience for the follower in question.
· Inconsistency. It costs nothing to post on social media, so you might have your team post as often as possible. However, if your team members are inconsistent with one another, it can make your brand sound disorganized. For example, if one of your teammates posts light-hearted messages many times a day, and another one posts serious, long-winded responses occasionally, your followers will get two very different messages about the personality of your brand.
· Mistakes. It’s human nature to make mistakes, and you should be prepared for some mistakes no matter who or how many people are working on your campaigns. More people working on the same account means there’s a greater chance for mistakes to be made overall.
· Security. Finally, having more people on the account means the security of your account decreases. More points of access means more potential points of infiltration. Plus, if any of your team members become disgruntled in any way, they could feasibly take over the system with relative ease. Exchanging password and login information may also become a point of vulnerability.
Making the Call
Obviously, there’s no clear answer as to whether this approach is worth the risks; it largely depends on the nature of your business and the types of people you have running the show. If you decide to split your brand’s social media efforts between multiple people at once, pay close attention to the following areas:
· Better training. For starters, you’ll need to ensure every member of your team is adequately trained on your social media marketing standards. Each team member should be intimately familiar with your brand voice, and know the ins and outs of each platform under their control.
· Clear policies and procedures. You should also formally document standard operating procedures for each of your social accounts. How often do you post on each platform? What types of things do you post? Who is responsible for them? How fast should you respond to users? Documenting these regulations formalizes your approach, and also gives your team something to reference in times of uncertainty.
· Regular communication. Finally, you’ll want to use the right communication tools to keep your social users in contact with one another. That way, you avoid redundant actions and missed opportunities. Make sure your team remains proactive in announcing actions, making requests, and delegating or accepting responsibilities.
With these statutes in place, you can prevent or mitigate most of the downsides associated with multi-user management. Still, there are advantages to each approach, so use your best judgment and don’t be afraid to switch if things aren’t working out.
