You might be jamming at social media already. But sometimes in business and in life we get too comfortable and our routines lose their shine. Upgrading the way you do things can come about with laser sharp focus or just by reviewing communications roles and responsibilities. In keeping with the ‘you are a magazine’ theme; this smash out is about reviewing and elevating your approach to who plays what role on your social media management team.
Social media is not a side order dish. It should be a properly engaged, thoughtfully executed strategy that the business owner or senior communications manager is heavily involved in influencing if not executing on.
Unless you have a unicorn junior who can professionally write with industry knowledge above their actual industry experience; then the content is definitely best managed by a senior communicator.
Social media is not a job that should be managed by someone just because they are more digitally savvy. Tech can be learnt. But what can’t be learnt quickly is the IP that the seniors in your business have and that compels people to hire you or book your service.
Equally, there are many senior marketers who misjudge the semantics of what is platform-appropriate. Not all social media sites are created equal. They each serve fundamentally different purposes.
You’re never better off copy-and-pasting captions from one platform to another to save time. What works for Instagram doesn’t work for Facebook, and vice versa. Often senior marketers are guilty of stripping content of personality, prose and therefore engagement, it can become too corporate.
Therefore the best approach to social media is a streamlined (not too many cooks) yet collaborative one, just like an editorial team on a magazine.
Roles on a magazine
Give or take a few roles, the editorial team on a lifestyle magazine usually looks like this;
- Editor in Chief
- Editor
- Senior Digital Editor & Designer
- Digital & Assistant Editor
- Community Manager & Editorial Executive
- Editorial Coordinator
- Contributing Editors
It’s a match and it takes two to tango.
From my experience the junior is best placed in a contributing, editorial coordinator role to content. They might be able to whip through content scheduling platforms quicker than you can login. They might be able to scout ideas and place copy, which you then finesse. They’ll also keep you in line on what is and isn’t platform appropriate, for example – emojis within reason are very ok on Instagram, even for serious, corporate businesses. Yes sir.
So if your social media is calling for a little more love, be sure to get your seniors to jump into the role (if they’re not present there already). It’s usually the quickest way to make your social efforts more effective and avoid content that flat-lines.
If you’re the owner, senior marketer, or the business development crusader with a heap of lead-gen IP; I couldn’t more highly recommend that your knowledge is imparted to help shape and edit, if not execute on content for the business you’re growing.
You are a magazine. And the best way to make sure it’s read by more people is to upgrade your collaborative approach to content. The editor and editorial coordinator; it’s a match!
By Jade Roberts.
raraPR Founder, Creative Director
Jade Roberts is the founder and creative director of raraPR, a boutique creative PR agency based in Melbourne, Australia. Jade is dedicated to changing the discourse around what PR is, how it works and educates and implements sustainable PR strategies for businesses doing good in a kind PR environment centred on mentorship. Jade is a published writer for both national magazines and retail brands and has extensive agency and in-house consumer-led PR and brand strategy experience across two decades.
