The Human Connection in Social Media Marketing
Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes
Today if a company or organization isn’t active on social media, it’s like in the year 2000 when a company didn’t have a website.
The major difference is, back in 2000 the website was usually outsourced or assigned to one or two people and was – in the best case scenario – used as an informational outlet.
Today, social media isn’t an informational tool. It’s a human-to-human engagement tool.
Most organizations don’t seem to get it.
Who Is Responsible For Social Media Engagement?
Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” talks about not only having the right people on the bus, but also having them in the right seats.
Just like how you wouldn’t want a lawyer diagnosing your cough or your doctor representing you in court, you shouldn’t have sales people engaging people on technical issues nor should you have technical people engaging people on product.
A Simple Example – Religious Center
A religious center is composed on several committees:
- Youth Committee
- Board of Trustees
- Executive Committee
- Onsight Logistics
- Community Outreach
- Events
- Hospitality..
just to name a few.
There should be at least one person from each of those groups that is actively engaging people. You don’t want the social media rep for the youth committee to be addressing parking issues (ie: double parked car in front of entrance). At the same time it makes sense to have someone from community outreach that has an outgoing personality to be managing the center’s Facebook page.
If the religious center has a blog, someone from each committee should be blogging about their respective areas of activity and expertise. You’ll be surprised as to the level of involvement you’ll get from your social media team.
Keep in mind, with responsibility comes accountability. That which you inspect, people on your team will respect.
Bottom Line
If you want to successfully engage the target community using the tool of social media, understand that it’s not a one or two man job. Your team should be made up of a number of people from different departments/divisions who each have a forte that the community will appreciate and benefit from.
If one person is doing the work, it can take massive amount to time away from that individual. However, if you have a team of people being involved then all it takes is a commitment of a couple hours a week at most.
Category: Public, Social Media
