Finding Specialist Support

Most companies are usually very good at what they do. i.e. if you are a plumbing business, you are great at plumbing. However, in order to have a plumbing business, you also need the tools, skills, and resources to be able to do the accounts, project management, HR, business management and marketing (including PR and social media). In general, one person can not obtain all the skills and maintain them to a high level. So most businesses have employees for the core operations and for more specialist activities hire in professionals such as a social media coach who are only needed for short periods of time.

Social media is one such area which is fast becoming more complex and more technical if you are to drive awareness, get more engagement with prospects and customers and, in the case of online businesses, increase sales (social selling).

Social Media Coach

If you haven’t hired a social media coach before, here are a number of activities your social media coach should be covering:

1. Establish your business objectives and the goals you want to achieve. Articulating what you want to achieve and what you want from your company’s resources to help you reach your goals. This helps you to establish a clear direction so that you can put in place social media activities that can be measured.
2. Calculate your return on marketing investment (ROI). What is the point of spending valuable resources such as time, money and effort if it isn’t being measured? How do you even know what you are doing is even working? You need to know that what you are doing is winning! Your social media coach should be able to help you understand what your goal is and whether activities such as increasing engagement, growing your target audience or increasing web traffic are working by looking at your return on investment.
3. Do not focus on social media follower count. Having more followers is great but if it is not generating more for the bottom line, is it worth it? Quality not quantity always wins. Your social media coach needs to help you hone your target audience.
4. Help you streamline and make your social media efficient. Your social media coach is usually outsourced which means there is someone inside your company needing to do the work. Therefore streamlining and making your social media publishing on multiple platforms needs to be efficient and cost effective. There are many free tools and services online which you can use. Secondly, there is more social media out there than just Facebook. For instance, LinkedIn is one of the largest NetWorking platforms which is being underused by many.
5. Your social media coach should be regularly speaking with you on your social media. Social media changes constantly and quickly. You should be having regular conversations on what activity you are doing and how it is performing. Chances are you will have to adjust the technique if plan A isn’t working properly. Using social media as part of your marketing mix means you have to be constantly testing, measuring and adapting your plans.
6. Your social media coach is Yoda. Jokes aside, your social media coach is your teacher and your teacher is expected to be up to date with the latest industry knowledge, tools and statistics. If you want to learn and understand something or try something you’ve seen and liked: ask them! It’s their job.
7. Empower your employees and make them feel proud. Your social media coach should help you make your employees be your business’ biggest fan and shout about how awesome you are online. Giving them access to logo’s, freedom to take pictures and promote a positive working culture will not only help your marketing but your company culture too.
8. Be sociable. Remember social media is designed to be sociable with other human beings through the internet. Many companies forget this. Listen to what your customers are saying and join in the TWO-WAY conversation. The important thing to note is to be professional and authentic. If you are not true to yourself, then people will notice it and not trust you because you are hiding something.
9. Listen, plan, react. Your greatest feedback is your customer feedback. Don’t worry if you receive negative feedback. Quickly deal with it at the time and then review your systems and processes so that it doesn’t happen again. Remember, social media management is another business process at the end of the day.
10. Your social media coach should lead the way. Before you engage a social media coach check out their social media. E.g. type in their name and company name into Google. What do you see?

For more information on how I can help you give me a call on 0333 050 9053