SOCIAL – How To – Social Media Management

Purpose of this How To Guide: To help a Social Exec understand how to execute the Task “Social Media Management”.

Applicable to: Social and Paid

Customers: All with social media

Timescale: To be completed before the task due date

Splitting the Management Budget

Clients who subscribe to social media management on a recurring monthly basis should have this templated in Accelo.

For those clients with 2.5 or more hours management per month, this should be split into at least two tasks – Social Media Management MB (Month Beginning) and Social Media Management ME (Month End). You can also use 0.5 hours or more from this allotted time for Social Media Optimisation (See How to Optimise Social Media Guide).

For those with less than 2.5 hours, this should be one ‘Social Media Management’ task that spans for the whole month and the due date is within the first 3 days of the new interval starting. They can also have social media optimisation from their management budget if it is seen to be worthwhile but doesn’t need to happen monthly.

Management of Social Media Advertising (not their spends) can also come from their Social Media Management budget or from other services that a client subscribes to. (See How to Optimise Social Media Accounts).

Schedule Duration

For those clients that have a Social Media Management MB and Social Media Management ME task, the MB task should be assigned to be started and due on the interval start date so that it runs from the first day of the interval until Day 17 of the interval. The ME task should be created to start and be due on Day 14 of the interval and run until 3 days into the new interval. This is so that there is an overlap and prevents clients going without posts for prolonged periods.

Clients who just have a single Social Media Management task each month should have a start and due date of Day 1 of the interval to ensure that it is completed on the first day and prevents clients from going without posts for prolonged periods.

What to Include in a Schedule

Social media schedules should contain a variety of post types, especially if they are platinum.

You should use a range of posts based on the below unless it conflicts with a client’s Do’s & Don’ts Document:

Slideshows (See How To Create A Slideshow)
Articles from around the web
Pieces of PR they have been featured in
Blogs from their site
Custom Images (See How To Request Custom Images)
Polls
Carousel posts
Video

You should speak to the rest of a project team, especially for Gold and Platinum clients, to see if they have any assets from around the web that can be utilised.

For Platinum’s, you should refer to their campaign plan before beginning your scheduling to ensure that you are following the theme that has been outlined for the client.

Scheduling Tools

We currently use Hootsuite for the bulk of our social media management, but some of the functionality means that we will have to schedule natively every now and then.

On Hootsuite, all clients should have their streams and networks connected to Hootsuite so that we can schedule ahead of time

For scheduling natively for the various networks, you will need to use the following:

Facebook on a customer’s Facebook Page (make sure you are posting/scheduling through Business Manager if they have it)
Tweetdeck
Google+ (live)
LinkedIn (live)
Instagram (live) – use the social media tablet
Pinterest (See How to Manage Houzz and Pinterest)
Houzz (See How to Manage Houzz and Pinterest)

Quality Control

For Platinum clients, you will need to follow the Quality Control process.

For Gold and below, you will need to follow the Proofreading process.

You should not schedule directly to a network or Hootsuite without it being proofread/QC’d through Accelo beforehand.

For your schedule to be Quality Controlled correctly, you will need to include:

Images you are using
Links to sources you are using
The text exactly as it will appear on the network

Platinum Campaign Plans

The first two weeks of a schedule for a client is included in their monthly campaign plan using an Excel document.

This should be the final schedule for a client to approve and include a different tab for each of the networks they are being scheduled for.

For the next two weeks, this can be contained in an Excel or Word document based on the client’s preference.

White Labelled Clients

Some clients are white labelled as a company has outsourced their work to us.

This means that we should not:

Get in touch with a client directly (unless expressly told otherwise in writing)
Link their accounts to anything that shows SQ Digital are managing their accounts e.g. our Facebook Business Manager or Hootsuite
Send schedules on SQ headed paper
Do anything that would show the end customer that we are involved in their marketing efforts

We will often have separate logins (in LastPass) and a point of contact for us to get in touch with for approval.

Ad Hoc Work

Sometimes we may be asked to do some Ad Hoc work for a customer, such as they have been nominated for an award or have an image they would like for us to share.

If this is a one-off post, you can log your time against the Social Media Management (MB/ME) task.

If it requires more than a 5-minute post, or happens on a recurring basis, you will need to speak to the Account Manager about reallocating the budget to enable for this e.g. take time from their Content Management for a specific campaign, request an upsell, or have a specific Social Media ‘Ad Hoc’ templated into their Monthly Contract on Accelo.

Considerations

When creating a schedule, make sure you consider the following to ensure that once they have been quality controlled they are posted exactly as they will appear:

Word/character count
Hashtags for relevant networks (Twitter and Google+)
Custom Image Wording (premake them if possible – see How To Request Custom Images)

Logging Time

It is important that we budget for, log, and allocate our time effectively for a client.

As a general rule of thumb, you can create around 8 unique posts per hour.

Make sure that you leave enough time after creating a schedule to upload to the relevant scheduling software (Hootsuite or natively). This usually takes around 10 minutes (based on 1 hour of schedule and 2 networks).