How to Set Up the Roles and Responsibilities on Your Team

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Introduction

To effectively execute your social media strategy, it’s important to develop a set of defined roles and responsibilities for each member of your team. 

Audit Social Media Channels

Before you start, first review who has access to your branded social media channels, including any third party apps through which you granted access. It’s a best practice to grant direct access to just a few select employees so your accounts can stay secure. A tool like Hootsuite can help you manage your social media profiles and activity without the need to share passwords. If you find that everyone from the intern to the owner of the company has access your social networks, think about changing your passwords and sharing them only with those who’ll be directly involved in executing your social media strategy. 

Assign Roles and Responsibilities

While the titles of the following positions may differ, determine who will fulfil these key roles: Social Media Director, Social Media Manager and Social Media Coordinator. In smaller companies, one person may perform the responsibilities of all these roles. The Social Media Director will typically be involved in high level planning and have final approval over social media budgets, campaigns and strategies. The Social Media manager will plan and oversee the day-to-day execution of the social media strategy and will manage campaigns to ensure all elements are running smoothly and deployed on time. 

The Social Media Coordinator will typically be in charge of publishing content such as tweets and Facebook posts, monitoring engagement and responding to questions and comments. Some companies choose to set up a schedule that shares the responsibility for monitoring and engagement among multiple people throughout the week, including the weekend. You can also decide to assign responsibility on a per network basis - while one coordinator takes care of Instagram activity, another will manage Twitter.  Lastly, you’ll want to outline who will be responsible for creating content such as blog posts, photos and videos. Depending on the size of your company, this content may be created by your social media team or in conjunction with your marketing department or agency. 

Future Activity Preparation

In addition to the above roles, it’s important to plan for times of high volume social media activity, such as a highly-anticipated product release or negative commentary from a prominent community member or media. To prepare for this, you may want to consider training additional employees on your social media strategy. These team members should be well versed on your social media policy and processes so they are able to jump in and assist with a crisis, an unexpected departure or a prolonged absence of key personnel. As you move towards wider adoption of social media within your company, consider creating a social media training workshop that you can run once a quarter to familiarize employees with your social media strategy. 

Looking for more? Checkout our blog and learn How to Write a Social Media Policy for Your Company