17 Jul Important Steps for Creating Great Social Media Workflow
Let’s be honest – how many times have you said to yourself: “I’ll log onto Facebook just to check my messages” or “Let me check what’s new on Google+ today” and saw that you had just lost an hour and a half doing absolutely nothing? The internet can be the greatest time waster in the world! It represents a black hole, filled with information that can easily suck you in and get you lost. But, what should you do if your job IS THE INTERNET?! For example, if you are working in a widespread branch such as social media marketing or search engine optimization (SEO), you cannot let yourself to get lost in time like that.
During the development of your social media strategy, you must not overlook the most powerful and most neglected component of it all – organized workflow. Having something that sets the rules of engagement for your team (OF NINJAS!), increases productivity and minimizes the risk of losing clients.
Lack of coordination will put you on a slippery slope and make your whole team trip over each other. The end-result will lead to customer dissatisfaction and that is something you cannot allow.
The definition of social media workflow
This is a flowchart designed for senior staff which helps them decide what is OK and what is not OK for them to respond, what are the priority levels and which members should focus on the situation. A social media workflow represents a series of simple steps created to raise the efficiency of your staff and minimize the overlaps. You can find an example for a simple but efficient social media workflow chart here.
As for any other marketing business, you need to have a prepared crisis response tactic and protocol management. This way, your front line staff will prioritize your conversations and share the work appropriately with your team. The response chart is just a visual presentation of your work protocols and management and it should be presented to every member of your team.
Workflow organization of your team – a few simple steps
Step 1 – Start your work early in the morning
Everyone knows the wise saying: “Morning is smarter than the evening”. It is for the best that you start your work early in the morning. After a whole day at work, facing different problems in both business and social life, it is unwise to do any work in the evening. Besides coffee and breakfast, there is nothing much you do in the morning. Create a good biorhythm and go to bed early to wake up early. In my experience, creativity and productivity are combined then.
Step 2 – Share the work with your team
During your work period, you must have encountered some overwhelming tasks. This is what teams are for. Sometimes, the mere volume of a task is a good enough reason for you to decline the offer. Arrange a meeting with your team and divide the task in simple parts, so that the task can be finished quickly and efficiently. Just think of what was your biggest word count written in one day. Now multiply that with the number of your team members. Now multiply that with the number of your workdays in a week. Now, does that look to you as a WHOLE BOOK!?
Step 3 – Team Meetings
Team meetings twice a day are important! Whether you will have a face-to-face meeting or an organized Skype conference, or a Google+ Hangout, it is important to stay in touch with all of your team members. This refers to one meeting at the beginning of the work day and one at the end. Daily reports will help you generate a list of all the work that has been done and everything that is pending. Keeping simplicity at its finest will set your mind at ease and will give you enough room to devote yourself to your social life more.
Step 4 – Don’t push your team too far
If you are telling me that you haven’t experienced mental blockage at least once in your life – you sir, are a liar. There is a time in everyone’s life when they get so overwhelmed with problems and tasks that they just… block. You want to be a great team leader? Be there for your team; keep track of their work and their behavior. If you see that your team member is weary or has experienced mental blockage, warn him to get some rest and give him a few days off. By avoiding this, you will lower the productivity and efficiency of the whole team. It only takes one loose chain. When writing articles just because you have too, you will most likely end up with lame content and satisfied customers.
Step 5 – Diversity is actually good for you and your team
To be honest, no one can write 20 articles on one topic without paraphrasing. If you are writing for the same customer for a few months, you can easily be fresh out of ideas and angles of approach for the topic. Switch tasks between your team members. After someone has written 30 – 40 articles on one topic, pass the assignment to the other team member. This way, you will have diversity of content and topic approaches and will end up with long term business relations with your customer. This is also good for your writers, being that they are building a great tower of information on various topics which they can implement in many other topics.
Step 6 – The reward system
After a job well done, reward both yourself and your team. Make a team meeting and vote about the reward. Whether it is office improvement or an arranged event, it will greatly improve the efficiency of your team. These rewards do not have to be big but the mere recognition of a job well done will hold the morale of your whole team, which is needed in order to keep a great workflow between you and your team.
