Social media is vital to increasing brand visibility and generating business growth. In 2023, nearly 5 billion people worldwide used social media. This number is only rising: experts predict that by 2027, social media will have approximately 5.85 billion users. And brands with thoughtful, targeted social media strategies often enjoy better recruitment results, higher sales, and healthy, sustainable growth.
This is why putting together the right social media team is important. It’s key to achieving success.
If you are looking to build an independent social media management team, you should think about your company’s unique needs, goals, and constraints — there’s no one-size-fits-all social media team org chart that can magically bring results. To help you get started, here are important things to know and factors to consider when building an effective social media management team.
Social media team roles and responsibilities
The roles you hire for in your social media marketing team depend on your budget and requirements. Every social media management team is unique — but there are key roles that can help you build a team that works for your company.
Social media manager
This position is a generalist when it comes to managing your social media marketing. This person creates your social media strategy, goals, and content plan. They determine which channels to use, define your target audience, and give direction to create specific content for your company profiles. This person may also manage the mechanics of getting your content posted and engage with followers in comments, shares, and direct messages.
Content creator
Some companies hire a content creator to design and execute the videos, infographics, images, and copy that goes on the company’s social media pages. At a smaller company, this person has expertise in software and tools for generating content, such as Adobe. At an enterprise, the content creator may oversee a team of designers or an external agency in charge of creating the fuel for the social media strategy engine.
Social media analyst
The social media analyst tracks social media data, analyzes performance metrics, generates reports, and provides insights to optimize strategy and content. This person has insights into how to improve your social media performance and can demonstrate the ROI of your social media marketing program.
Community manager
Many teams bring on a community manager to respond to the needs and requests of customers in their social media community. This person strategically builds an audience to boost engagement and amplify the brand’s posts through shares, likes, and reposts. Sometimes the community manager also handles customer service requests, routing questions that come through social media to the right expert within your company for resolution.
The team structure depends on the size of your company. Small teams might have individuals fulfilling multiple roles, while larger teams might have dedicated specialists for each area. Many large companies organize their social media teams by network: this means individual team members are assigned to specific social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. However, since more customers are expecting an omnichannel approach to service, a networked approach can be difficult to manage.
Think about your customer experience as you build your social media team org chart. How can you position members to be most responsive to the needs of your audience?
How to build an effective social media team
Building a successful social media team requires more than just assembling individuals with relevant skills. It's about creating a dynamic and collaborative unit that is capable of combining creativity with strategy and analytics.
1. Define your goals
First, establish the goals you have for your social media marketing. Starting with the outcome you wish to achieve can help you decide on the team size, structure, and hiring strategy. Set goals that align with your overall company vision, whether that’s brand awareness, lead generation, conversion rate, or something else.
Increase Your Social Media ROI
Many businesses understand the significance of social media nowadays, but figuring out how to really boost their return on investment (ROI) through social media marketing can be a bit tricky.
2. Determine your resources
Take stock of your existing talent and budget. There may be people in your company who are suited for social media marketing or training that your existing team needs to improve performance. If you have a social media department, look for tools that can help them work more efficiently — such as Clearview Social’s smart scheduling algorithm that uses AI to find the best times for your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter posts to get the most attention.
3. Create a social media organization chart
Clarify the specific roles and reporting structure to help your team work together efficiently. There are dozens of social media org charts you can use to find inspiration. Make sure roles are clearly defined not only in relation to the rest of the team but also to the wider marketing team and other parts of the company. Team members often have to collaborate with HR, sales, product development, and customer service teams.
4. Hire where needed
No matter how you define your social media team roles, it’s important to get a range of expertise and experience to cover your tasks. Social media marketing requires a combination of project management, data analytics, and creativity and design. An effective social media team benefits from people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skill sets to fuel innovative approaches to this fast-moving medium.
5. Equip them for success
Social media teams need a foundational strategy to be successful. Building a solid social media content strategy takes time, skills, and extensive research. But with the right approach, any team of professionals can make it happen.
Tools that help social media teams succeed
With the right tools, you don’t need dozens of people to staff your social media team. Clearview Social allows you to stay lean on hiring while still getting the most out of your social media marketing.
Clearview Social makes it easy to generate and distribute social media content across your corporate channels—and have your employees amplify your content further. Social Shuffle AI, for example, can help social media teams write comments and captions for their posts. Using OpenAI, this tool semi-automates the creative process by generating a draft copy to be customized by your team.
Then, Clearview Social’s publishing tools allow you to connect as many Facebook, LinkedIn Business, Twitter, and Instagram Business pages as you would like so you can automate distribution at the optimal moment for engagement.
Rather than paying for social media channels to boost your content, you can use Clearview Social and get your employees to share your content on their personal channels. Our employee advocacy software activates your team to participate in promoting company content on social media, helping you reach your goals without adding headcount.
Clearview Social Can Help Your Social media Team Succeed!
Learn more about the Clearview Social platform and how it can help improve your social media team’s performance. Get a free demo today to see all the features in action.