The Social Media Department Of 2015

Social media KPI's, reach, channel views on YouTube, engagement metrics, unique visitors to blog, likes on content and brand mentions. A few years ago many of these expressions didn't even exist. Now they are hot subjects and important parts of a social media managers job.

But there is a big risk here that I want to pinpoint. A risk that I'm experiencing myself and that I see a lot of fellow community managers and social media team members facing and that is to get too caught up in these metrics.
We're still in a period of time where the social media departments often are not getting the right resources and right long term investment that's necessary for everyone to do their job well. The results can be creative people trying to do the creative work but faced with lots of other (important) tasks.
But should a blogger or a web designer do business analytics? Should a graphic designer do a P&L report? Should a customer service representative do Excel spread sheets about forecast projections?

My point is, that I think many social media departments are facing a difficult situation. Social media is a hot subject and most companies know they have to do something, and as much as possible, for as little resources as possible. Nothing new here.
The risk though, is that the creative blogger moves away from what he is good at, doing things that he is not good at, and the result is devastating. Less content in less quality and reporting eating up his time.
If the company is asking one person to do everything, the risk is that nothing will be done with excellence.

How do I see the optimal social media department of the future?
Let's imagine a medium size company, 100-200 employees.
Social Media usually falls under either marketing or communications but let's say the department head is the Social Media Director. Responsible for the team, reporting to the stake holders, calculating budget e.t.c.

1.) The community manager. Depending on the size of the company and how many languages need to be covered there could be the need for 1, 2 or 10 community managers.
The community manager is responsible for interacting with people, answering questions, searching for conversations and pitching the brand in the right way at the right time. Working closely with the customer service department. Maybe even having a second person in between, forwarding the complaints/issues/subjects that need to be adressed.
The community manager is sophisticated social media listening tools social media listening tools and reporting to the Social Media Director/Digital Director.

2.) The Social Media Manager being the strategist, doing strategical planning for the company's social media actions. Researching, planning and contracting the right tools, applications and services to execute the campaigns together with the community manager, being in charge of setting up contests and campaigns.
Also being a content strategist the social media manager should work closely with the bloggers of the company. The social media manager works closely with marketing, product and retail to integrate all campaigns in a timely manner.



3.) The Social media analyst, reporting to the stake holders about important metrics. Working closely with the agencies/services contracted to report on overall development. Working closely with the community manager and social media manager to optimize all channels for best business results. The social media analyst should also have access to listening tools but rather than being focused on Twitter or Facebook development, he/she should be looking at the website conversions and traffic.




4.) The blogger. This person could be external, or it could be a team of company bloggers.
5.) The SEO and link-expert. Working closely with the bloggers.
6.) The ad manager. Setting up Facebook ads, Promoted Tweets, working with SEM and Display marketing.
7.) The web programmer. Helping out with blog programming, being a consultant for services. Do we really need to hire an agency to develop this app or can we do it ourselves in-house?
8.) The online PR manager. Doing blog outreach. Having the online contacts, being the brand ambassador. Posting on other blogs, contacting influencers, setting up co-operation deals, finding the win/win situations.


Let's hope we're going in this direction so that everyone can focus on what they are good at, and therefor optimizing the time and results.



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