Recruit your team, define the roles (Give staff a voice! Part 4 of 10)

Social Media is marketing so they will do it. 

Nah, Social Media is all Tech so they will do it.

Wait, we are raising money right now so let the Fundraising team do it.

Nobody steps up, takes leadership and establishes a rule book, so eventually something bad happens or there are conflicts in what gets posted. Then all collaboration breaks down and one person or a small team controls everything. All posts have to be approved and everything gets filtered. In some ways that may seem appealing. And if that is the accepted culture in your org, then you may as well stop reading this post because you won't be enabling anyone...

But if you are ready to collaborate within defined roles with the same playbook, then read on.

First document who will be on the team, heck maybe even have tryouts or an application process. There are a number of ways to go about this. You could collect everyone that is interested and then determine what role and permission they will get. Or you could establish the structure and roles, then identify the people to fill them. Another approach would be to start small with some experienced players and grow as you learn what works.

But the key is to know who will play each of the roles.

• Listening- who will be out there actively scanning for what is being said about your org, cause or brand
• Monitoring- who will watch your channels for questions, comments, problems, inactivity, etc.
• Managing- who will keep the tools working, identify tech changes, administer permissions, etc.
• Planning- who will create the content calendar, define themes, focus the communications, define content frequency, etc
• Posting- who be creating the content, keeping the pages updated, etc.
• Promotion- who will spread the word about your social media efforts, run contests, create custom pages\content

And there may be more roles, but that is a good start. You might enjoy this article from the Content Marketing Institute to dig deeper.

Once you have the team and the roles then you need a Playbook. The glue that will hold this together is a content calendar (editorial calendar). As possible to supplement this content calendar there should be content templates. As the themes and business goals are defined, you can create standard text, flyer formats, images and other reusable content for others to pull from.

Here are some awesome articles on creating an editorial Calendar and process:
How To Create the Online/Offline Editorial Calendar - Razoo
DIY TOOLS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT - Amy Sample Ward
11 Editorial Guidelines Every Business Blog Needs - Hubspot

10 Steps to a More Successful Blog Editorial Strategy - Content Marketing Institute

In my next post I will talk about the Comment Escalation Chart and how to make people comfortable with responding.