The pillar of any effective social media marketing success is amazing documentation and processes. You need proper documentation since social media is very dynamic and involves various decision-makers. You must have guidelines and processes in your social media strategy. This will guarantee that your plans and posts are consistent on different platforms. This documentation must be done before you get started with social media.
Ask what kind of processes and documentation you already have for communication and marketing. Some things to consider here include your PR rules, your branding, and tone of voice guidelines. Create strategies from these guidelines that will be suitable for the dynamic and spontaneous channel.
You may create a social media checklist as you strategize for the sake of the organization. Let’s take a look at the important examples of documentations, like conversation calendars and community guidelines.
Documentation of Community Guidelines
Community guidelines are crucial for the management of your communities. The same goes for privacy policy and terms and conditions especially if the community is on behalf of a brand. These documents allow you to set the tone for the community. It’s also helpful for them in case someone misbehaves toward them within the community. Community guidelines dictate what is and what isn’t, such as hate speech and discrimination. Profanity and inappropriate content must also be prohibited. The documentation of community guidelines may not completely avoid undesirable behavior. But they are a useful basis for removing members and comments.
Don’t make these guidelines too intimidating. They should be friendly and parallel to the tone of your actual brand or community. Community guidelines may start with your brand’s mission followed by the guidelines. Use numerical form while enumerating each guideline. Some examples of statements may include:
- We rely upon our community members to publish subject matters that are significant and reverent to the community.
- Refrain from sharing your personal information on our Facebook wall and comments. Instead, send us a message for your safety.
You may also include a list of what is deemed inappropriate in bullet form.
Documentation of Content Plan
The content plan for your social media campaign is also important for planning the conversations within the community. They are also helpful as centralized documents that guarantee every department’s awareness. Documentation also ensures the integration of the communications no matter what kind of content and community strategy you have.
You really want to make web-based media content that resonate with your crowd base. This will assist you with coming to a greater amount of them and support interactions. They should be relevant, interesting, significant, and shareable. Consider your content pillars when planning your content for social media. This will help you establish a solid structure and beginning to follow.
A content calendar is also necessary. To begin, plot everything that your community may find relevant. Dates, anniversaries, national events, and community events planned by your organization are just some of them. Reporting is another purpose of your conversation calendar. You must be able to monitor every interaction and response to all of your planned posts. This will assist you with concluding which presents are more engaging on the individuals. It also provides insights on which is most interacted with, best day and time to post, and frequency of posting.
Planning the conversation without making it too scripted keeps the momentum. This is also the most critical when you are still building your community. Remember to balance this plan with spontaneity.
Your conversation calendar can include Monday-Friday cells with things like “theme”, “Facebook”, “Instagram”, and “Twitter” under. This will help you plan across various channels
Protocol for Communication and Escalation
You need a communication and escalation protocol for internal purposes. This document helps everyone be aware of how to handle social messages. Everyone can appropriately respond if they can consult the communication and escalation protocol every time. Large organizations will need this because several people may interact on social media for the brand. This may lead to inconsistencies and differences in tone and content. It’s also important since various departments have a say in your social media presence.
This document must include the following:
- Predicted messages or frequently asked questions, including the right response. This should incorporate both enlightening and negative situations.
- How to know whether a message is positive or negative. It should have a flagging system for comments that are urgent too. For example, positive comments involve satisfied customers and loyal consumers. Negative comments are those that are offensive, dissatisfied, and unnecessary. Urgent messages involve abusive comments that require immediate attention. You must also be able to determine neutral messages like basic questions, facts, etc.
- crisis management in case your social media account experiences a brand crisis.
- Guidelines on how to respond. This should involve standard messages, response rate, and the brand’s voice and tone.
- Messages that require signoff or more consideration also need an escalation plan.
- Relevant stakeholders’ contact details.
More Documentation for Protocols
All of these must be part of the communication and escalation protocol in case a brand attack occurs. When this happens, it’s easier to handle because you have a guide to look back to. Make sure to act immediately to show that you are listening to your dissatisfied customer. This will also make the brand look attentive to everyone’s needs. You don’t cherry-pick the positive comments and delete the bad ones. Acknowledge everything that is being said about your brand. Then, react accordingly.
If the attack is true, you can send your side of the story in the same friendly voice of your brand. Try to take the conversation offline and apologize to the customer. However, if the attack against your brand is false, send them proof that they are wrong. In the same friendly voice, ask them to remove the comment. Then, offer to keep them updated about your products and services. If the consumer does not respond to you, add a comment.
Remember that brand attacks are better than when all the feedback is neutral. If your brand keeps playing safe, no one will bother talking about it soon.
© Image credits to Steve Johnson
Posted in Social Media Marketing
