Whether it’s the first time or the tenth time you have brought a social media consultant into your business, it’s important that you prepare to make sure everyone is successful.
There is the idea that social media consultants should work within a silo, but I assure you that if you leave them off onto their own, they will fail. A great social media program starts by getting the consultant fully integrated within the organization. They have an idea of what is going on in every part of your organization and have access to everything they need to create content that is true to who your organization is.
What does this all look like in practice and how can you set it up for your future social media consultant? Let’s take a look.
Organize your media
This should be a no brainer. So why I have I walked into so many organizations with their media nearly unfindable? Some organizations didn’t even bothered giving me access to any of them because there were too many in too many places.
Before anything, you need to get all of your media in a central place and have it organized so that a new person can find what they are looking for. Be sure it’s a system where you can add keywords, so your consultant can search easily and narrow it down to exactly what they need.
Having no assets available for a new consultant is setting them up for failure. Throwing all of your assets at them without them being searchable is not much better.
Set expectations
Get the broad strokes of your goals down. How do you want your social media program to affect your organization? Do you want more dollars to come in? Or is there something else? What does success look like for you?
I have so many clients who start off wanting to do social media because everyone is doing social media. They have no idea what success looks like. Be different. Come up with real business objectives for your program so your consultant can focus on coming with ways to get there.
Stay away from coming up with goals like engagement and reach. Those are symptoms that a social media consultant can diagnose, but it doesn’t really tell you the whole story of what is going on. I can get tons of engagement and reach, but that doesn’t mean that it will do anything for your organization.
Put together need-to-know information
A great social media consultant will spend the first part of your contract doing research and gathering all of the information they need to be able to create goals and a plan before they even post. Start them off on the right foot.
Put together a manual for them to understand who your organization is. I usually have to look at the website to gather this kind of information. It can be super time consuming. If a client had this kind of information put together in a manual, it would save a lot of time. In addition to the facts about your organization, it should include your targeted audience(s), voice, customer journey and anything you know that your fans and followers love and why.
There is an added bonus to providing this kind of information to a social media consultant. I personally would take all of this and still do some spot checks. What does that mean? It means I would look at what you’re telling me and show you anything that is contradicting that in your online marketing materials. So you will get another set of eyes making sure you are putting your best foot forward online.
Have a set of frequently asked questions
You know what gets asked the most, so have a set of answers ready for your social media consultant. This will make those first few days when they take over smoother. They won’t have to ask you every single question that comes up and your fans will get quicker answers.
And while you’re at it, have the direct contact listed for different categories of questions. Although I like to only have one primary contact for my client who tracks down the answers to most questions, there are situations where we need to get an answer quicker than that allows. So knowing who to contact will make it faster to get that answer to a fan who simply can’t wait.
Have a crisis plan
Look, it would be great if crises never happened. But even the best laid plans can have problems pop up.
What is a crisis? What is the process for when this happens? Who should be on communications about the crisis? Write all of this information down. Then no time is wasted when a crisis does happen. And with the way things can snowball quickly nowadays, every second counts.
You can prepare and prepare for a social media consultant, and it still probably won’t be enough. Every consultant has their own style and what they like to have done prior to taking over on an account. But if you do what’s above and spend a good amount of time listening to your consultant, you will be in great shape to get started quickly.
How have you prepared for a social media consultant?