resourcing social media strategy
5 Questions About Resourcing a Social Media Strategy
I’m attending the Canadian Public Relations Society conference in Regina. Lots of great PR practitioners here, many of whom work for municipal and provincial government, and other large organizations.
A common question keeps popping up. How does my organization resource an online social media strategy?
The question is understandable, given that many marketing and communications teams are working with reduced budgets and increased demands. Here’s the thing, an online strategy is not a bucket to be filled.
Every online strategy should be designed to match the internal resources (e.g. the available time and skill set of your existing team) and/or external support (e.g. budget to hire content creators or strategists). There is no point sketching out a comprehensive social media plan that will chew through content faster than you can create it.
Here are five questions to ask before designing your online strategy:
1) Who is the person in-house, or a subcontractor, to lead the online initiative? How much time do they have each day or each week to manage the project.
2) What is the skill set of the project lead? Does the strategy need to allow time for training, either formal (training by an experienced strategy team, workshops) or informal (via free webinars, books, reading online).
3) Are there others who can contribute content? What time do they have available?
4) What are the objectives for the online campaign? If the goals are too ambitious for the available resources, consider developing a multi-phase plan. Appeal to management to gradually increase resources if realistic benchmarks are met along the way.
5) Is the person or team running the online strategy empowered to be responsive? Are they authorized to answer questions and engage with target markets? When a question is asked that requires information from another department, or a language translation, how fast can it be acquired?
With answers to these questions in hand you, or your strategy team, will be in a much better position to design a digital strategy that sets everyone up for success.
Good luck!
Moyra
Tags: resourcing social media strategy, Social Media, strategy
