Social media management has grown far too complex to fall solely in the lap of an intern, or for marketing leaders to “just get something out there” and sporadically post when they have time.

Instead, it requires a dynamic set of complementary skills and expertise, plus more time and effort than ever before that even a dedicated social media manager may find difficult to manage. To truly capitalize on the growth opportunity social media presents your business, you should consider building a social media team.

You can start building an all-star social media team by answering these four questions:

• What’s the purpose of your team?
• What skills does your team need?
• How should you structure the team?
• How do you hire new team members?

In this guide, we’ll dive into each of these questions to help you learn what to focus on as you build your team, how to develop a strong team culture, and how to measure performance.

Define the purpose of your social media team

Social media marketing goals, roles, responsibilities, strategy, and deliverables vary from business to business, which is why it’s important to understand exactly how your team will work with your existing teams.

A broad definition might be that the primary role of a social media team is to grow the business by strategically publishing content, including ads, and engaging with the target audience on various social media platforms.

However, there are many functional areas that your social media team can be directly or indirectly responsible for, including:

• Customer service: Social media teams often play the role of customer service reps, addressing issues, answering questions, and solving problems to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Content creation: The team is responsible for creating a variety of engaging and informative content – from blog posts and infographics to videos and interactive polls. These should be tailored to the specific platform and audience to maintain relevance and interest.
• Crafting engaging moments: One of the main goals of a social media team is to create content that sparks discussions and shares. This could mean crafting clever posts, engaging visuals, or capturing spontaneous moments that have the potential to go viral and significantly increase brand visibility.
• Lead generation: Social media can be a potent tool for generating leads. By posting valuable content, hosting webinars, or running contests and giveaways, the team can attract and engage potential customers, driving them towards the sales funnel.
• Social listening: This involves monitoring and analyzing conversations about your brand or industry on social media. By identifying trends, sentiments, and potential issues, the team can gain invaluable insights and adjust the marketing strategy accordingly.
• Community management: It’s not enough to just post content — the team also needs to engage with the audience by responding to comments, encouraging discussions, and building relationships. This helps in nurturing an active and loyal community around your brand.
• Crisis management: From dealing with negative comments to handling PR disasters, the team should be adept at managing crises promptly and professionally to mitigate damage and maintain the brand’s reputation.

Most businesses foster cross-team collaboration to tackle these complex challenges, so it’s important to onboard individuals who are comfortable working with others across your organization, and that are willing to expand their areas of expertise.

Align social media with your company mission, vision, and brand

Social media needs to align with your company identity — otherwise the message can get a little lost. There should also be harmony with your goals as this helps you determine a suitable team size, structure, and roles.

The importance of aligning your social media with your company’s mission, vision, and brand is underscored by the fact that 75% of social media users conduct market research on these platforms. In other words, three out of four users will likely learn about your brand for the first time via social media.

For example, if you’re a technology startup focusing on the younger demographic, a tone that’s playful and innovative will likely resonate with your target audience. This is crucial since a large percentage of your potential customers are forming their impressions about your brand based on what they see on social media.

An independent sweet shop might opt for a quirky, fun tone to showcase its unique products and create a distinct brand personality. Given that a substantial proportion of potential customers are likely to discover the brand on social media, such a tone could set it apart from competitors.

Ultimately, your social media tone should be a reflection of your brand’s personality, catering to the preferences of your target audience, a significant portion of which uses social media as a research tool.

Identify the skills you need

Once you’ve established your social media goals, you’ll have a better idea of the skills required to execute your strategy. For instance, if you’re focusing on community building, you’ll need to hire people with good relationship and networking skills.

Here are some of the skills your team may require:

• Leadership, organization, and team management.
• Content creation, including writing, editing, and graphic design.
• Advertising expertise on various social platforms.
• Customer service and support.
• Communicating with internal and external stakeholders.

It’s about finding the right mix of soft and hard skills in your team.

Soft skills are those intangible ones like leadership, teamwork, and excellent communication. These are important to keep the team humming along and for liaising with other parts of the business.

Hard skills, on the other hand, are all about the technical stuff. We’re talking about creating killer content, navigating different social platforms, and having a knack for customer service.

It’s perfectly fine if everyone doesn’t have every skill right off the bat.

That’s where training comes in. There’s a ton of fantastic resources out there to level up your team’s skills.

LinkedIn Learning and Hubspot Academy are great for getting up to speed on everything from digital marketing to content creation. Google’s got you covered for SEO and analytics. And if you want to ace advertising on specific platforms, look no further than Meta Blueprint for all things Facebook and Instagram. Adobe’s training resources are also a must for anyone keen on graphic design.

With these tools at your disposal, your team will be all set to take your brand’s social media presence to the next level.

Review your budget and resources

You know what you want to achieve and what you’ll need to achieve it, but do you have the budget and resources to accomplish everything?

It’s important to be realistic about what you can achieve given your resources. Make sure your company is right behind your social strategy by allocating the proper budget and resources.

Labor costs are typically the lion’s share of your budget — good people deserve good pay, right? But don’t forget about other costs. Sure, most social media accounts are free to set up, but there are paid options like Twitter Blue offering extra perks that might come in handy (plus any budget set aside for paid ads on the social platforms).

As for tools, you’ve got a wide range to pick from. You can make use of free programs like Canva for graphics or even Da Vinci Resolve for video editing, which is a great alternative to the pricier Adobe Premiere Pro. But remember, paid tools often come with more features and support, so it might be worth it if you have the budget.

In-house social media teams vs social media agencies

Before we go any further, we need to distinguish between in-house and agency-driven social media teams.

Social media agencies collaborate with brands to provide social media services. Depending on the company’s size and requirements, the social media agency can scale its team accordingly. For instance, one team could serve two or three small brands, but larger accounts may require the equivalent of two or three teams.

In-house social media teams are formed according to the company’s size, structure, and emphasis on social media. ‌For instance, a startup might have one content creator responsible for social media, email marketing, and blog content.

On the other hand, a large enterprise might have multiple teams for different objectives such as brand awareness, community building, and customer success. Mid-sized companies sit somewhere in the middle and typically have one person per role.

Identify who should join your social media team

When planning your social media team, you’ll need to consider the roles and responsibilities based on your business requirements, goals, and budget rather than a standard template.

Here are the main roles you may require for your social media team:

Social media manager

Depending on your organization, the social media manager may be titled brand/project manager or head of social — but the bottom line is that there’s an overall team leader.

A social media manager can wear many hats, especially if it’s a small company, where they may be involved in publishing content, replying to comments, and analyzing results.

But they also need to take a high-level view of social media when setting the strategy and planning for the team, and they need to know the brand inside out.

Main responsibilities:

• Develops strategy.
• Plans campaigns and creates content briefs.
• Sets team goals and deadlines.
• Developing brand and product awareness.
• Makes sure the team functions properly.
• Keeps in touch with the key stakeholders.

Content creator

Content is at the center of social media.

Depending on the company size, you may have multiple content creators such as a copywriter, a graphic designer, and a photographer. There could even be a content manager to coordinate the resources. In smaller companies, you may have to employ one multimedia content specialist who can cover copywriting, graphic design, photography, and videography.

Main responsibilities:

• Collaborate with other content creators.
• Create and curate content.
• Schedule and publish the content on all applicable platforms.
• Come up with new ideas and angles.
• Stay on top of industry news.

Paid acquisition manager/advertiser

The paid acquisition manager works alongside content creators to build advertising programs on various social networks. They set, monitor, and adjust ads so that the team can maximize every campaign budget.

Your advertising specialist needs to understand how each social ad platform works, what types of content excel on those platforms, and the budget required to accomplish your goals.

Main responsibilities:

• Create ad content or assign it to relevant content creators.
• Set the target goals and audience for every campaign.
• Run A/B testing to maximize ROI.

Community manager

The community manager focuses on listening to and engaging with your audience and customers on social media. They are often considered the face of your company and play a strategic role in developing customer relationships, increasing brand loyalty, and fostering a community spirit with your brand’s biggest fans and advocates. They may also be responsible for organizing social media events like Twitter chats or Facebook Live sessions.

Main responsibilities:

• Engage in all brand conversations.
• Manage brand advocates and fans.
• Develop and maintain customer relationships.
• Increase brand visibility and loyalty.

Data analyst

The data analyst supports the team with performance insights, so you’ll need someone passionate about data and stats and also understands how they impact social media and the business.

A data analyst examines your social media metrics, such as engagement rate, click-through rate, traffic, conversions, and revenue, to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Main responsibilities:

• Study social media platforms, tools, and industry trends.
• Demonstrate the business impact of data.
• Measure the social media ROI.
• Provide reports when required.

Account manager (agency only)

Social media agencies will also likely have an account manager. They are responsible for managing the client relationship and providing regular updates and reports on campaigns and strategy.

The extended cross-functional team

As well as the core social media roles, the best brands work as cross-functional teams involving professionals from all company departments. These team members can play an important role in your social media workflows. For example:

• Product: to check the accuracy of product information.
• Sales: to check the correctness of any sales messages.
• HR: to ensure the updates are in line with company policy.
• Legal: to ensure there are no liability issues.
• Finance: to ensure there are no budget issues.
• Third-Parties: any clients, agencies, or contractors you may be working with.

How to hire your social media team

Having identified your ideal social media team structure, the next step is to hire the right talent to fill in the gaps of your needs.

Employer branding

If you want to attract ‌top talent to your team, there is one strategy you need to double down on — employer branding.

According to Glassdoor, 86% of people would not consider joining a company if it had poor social standing. Therefore, your employer branding, which is much more visible online, has a significant impact on the hiring process. However, those who have a good reputation are able to attract top talent, and 92% of people would consider a move to a company with an excellent reputation even without a salary increase.

Employer branding is how you make the prospect of working for your business truly exciting. By telling an authentic story about what it’s like to be a part of your company and work toward your mission, you can entice candidates who think, feel and strive for the same.

Social media recruiting

Social media is a simple, fast, and affordable way to target the right people and promote your employer brand.

In fact, nearly half of all Millennial and Gen Z job seekers who have work experience use social media to help them find jobs.

(Ironically, using social media avoids “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” scenario, although you may face “the chicken and egg” conundrum).

You can use LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook to publish your job openings — or go the creative route with photo and video job listings on Instagram, YouTube & TikTok.

Set up your social media team workflow

With your team members in place, you can start planning your workflows and processes.

Starting from the top, social media managers can create a social media calendar by following these five steps:

1. Define your publishing guidelines
2. Fill your social media calendar with post ideas
3. Create and customize posts for each social network
4. Review, approve, and schedule posts
5. Measure and improve on your audience engagement

A social media calendar, sometimes referred to as an editorial calendar, helps you plan and schedule your content so that you can keep your collaborators, clients, and target audience happy with high-quality and consistent content. The calendar makes it easy for everyone to see the overall timeline and the bigger picture.

Loomly Tip: Custom Roles allow you to create tailor-made sets of permissions for each of your team members in a more granular and flexible way:

Not only can you decide how your collaborators can interact with features and content inside each of your calendars, you can also limit the timeframe of the posts they can see, which is particularly useful if a collaboration has a predefined end date.

Besides setting up your social media calendars, you can also map out your social media workflows.

Organizing people to create, approve, publish, monitor, and track updates is one of the most challenging aspects for a social media team manager. But a social media workflow defines people’s roles throughout the social media publishing process.

It implements repeatable steps and deadlines for each editorial period so that everyone knows what they are doing and when to complete it.

Loomly Tip: Custom Workflow allows you to automate your team workflow with assignment Triggers and consolidate your approval process with conditional Guards.

For example, you can create a trigger that automatically assigns your manager/client to posts that are Pending Approval. And you can create a guard to prevent posts from being scheduled/published unless they have been approved, for example, by your Account Manager and Chief Marketing Officer.

Develop your social media team culture

Aside from hiring the right team members, it’s important to develop the right team culture.

Research shows that an employee’s team is fundamental to their wellbeing, engagement, and overall work ethic. When employees feel like they have a strong workplace community, the odds of them feeling like they belong increase by 785%.

So, here are four ways you can develop a team culture and ensure your team members feel safe, empowered, connected, and valued.

Develop a sense of autonomy

Trusting your team is fundamental to creating a sense of autonomy. But leaders should also encourage team members to build strong relationships with each other to increase independence.

Promote transparency, openness, and team identity

When teams have more freedom and flexibility to experiment and be creative, they feel safer speaking up in their team environment and taking risks.

If teams prioritize work and tackle projects together, for example, by using workflows in a collaborative tool such as Loomly, they strengthen teamwork, purpose, and belonging, which leads to an 58% decrease in the likelihood of an employee looking for another job.

Engage in peer-to-peer conversations

Building team culture requires peer-to-peer conversations between team members, so they can share feedback, support development, and grow together.

For example, using dedicated instant messaging channels on Slack or Microsoft Teams is a great way to foster collaboration and team spirit.

You can also create “fun” or “entertainment” channels where team members can share private jokes (think: memes and GIFs) to build team spirit.

Share the success

If you want to inspire your team to continue doing more great work, make sure you recognize their contributions by sharing success stories in team and company meetings, newsletters, emails, and social platforms.

Measure the performance of your social media team

You can measure the performance of your social media team in two ways:

• Social media metrics
• Team metrics

Social media metrics fall under one of three categories:

Post-Level Metrics:

• Impressions: This metric tells you how often your post is displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or not.
• Interactions: These are likes, comments, and shares. They give you a snapshot of how much your audience is engaging with each post.

Account-Level Metrics:

• Follower growth rate: This is all about how quickly you’re gaining new followers.
• Messages: This counts how many direct interactions (usually private messages) you’re having with your audience.
• Engagement rate: This measures the percentage of your followers that interact with your content, helping you understand the overall engagement of your audience.

Link-Level Metrics:

• Click-through rate: This measures how many people clicked on the link you shared compared to how many people saw the post.
• Bounce rate: This tells you how many people left your website after only viewing the page they landed on from your link.
• Conversion rate: This shows the percentage of people who completed a desired action after clicking on your link (like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter).
• Cost per click: If you’re running paid promotions, this tells you how much you’re paying for each click on your link.

You can measure many of these metrics using each native platform. Alternatively, an easy way to access all your analytics from across your social media presence from one dashboard use a third-party social media analytics tool like Loomly.

Generic metrics, such as efficiency, quality, and alignment, can be used to measure individual and team performance.

For instance, team success relies on resiliency, which you can measure with these five attributes:

• Direction
• Connection
• Alignment
• Attitude
• Performance

While you can measure individual team member performance with these five metrics:

• Attendance
• Helpfulness
• Efficiency
• Initiative
• Quality

Whichever metrics you choose, also schedule regular appraisals with 360-degree feedback so that you get a more rounded performance review.

Tools to empower your social media team

Navigating the world of social media can be a challenging task, but the good news is that there are some brilliant tools out there to make your team’s job a lot easier and more efficient.

Starting with planning and scheduling, Loomly is an all-star in this arena. This platform allows you to manage your social media calendars, schedule posts, and even get post ideas based on trending topics. This means no more last-minute scrambling for content or missing key posting times.

When it comes to creating that eye-catching content, you have a few excellent options. Adobe Suite offers an array of professional tools for creating stellar visuals and graphics. If you’re after something more user-friendly or cost-effective, Canva is a fantastic alternative with an easy drag-and-drop interface. For content ideas, Google Trends can show you what your audience is currently interested in, and Answer the Public provides insights into common queries and topics in your field.

Managing your customer relationships is also crucial in the social media world. CRM tools like monday.com and Salesforce allow you to keep track of customer interactions, streamline your processes, and foster stronger relationships with your audience.

In this day and age, 24/7 customer support is almost a requirement, and chatbots can help with this. Freshchat, for instance, allows you to automate responses to common queries and provide prompt customer service, even outside of business hours.

Lastly, to stay ahead of the game, it’s vital to keep an eye on what your competitors are up to. Social Insider offers competitor analysis, providing you with valuable insights into their strategies and performance.

Building your social media team in a nutshell

When you align social media with your business goals, your team can significantly impact the entire marketing funnel from top to bottom.

Identify the skills and structure you need for your social media team. Then ensure team members understand their roles and responsibilities and how they can contribute to the overall success of the business.

Remember to continually develop a team culture where your crew can grow and develop their independence and team spirit. And finally, review and measure their performance so that they can learn from their mistakes and grow stronger.