Social media marketing expertise – Recognize the gap
How often do you find senior marketers being asked to approve social media campaigns from interns but know less about the topic compared to the intern? This often happens. Have you seen or experienced it?
I am a social media marketing expert. Every day I read about the very latest trends and updates from a curated list of experts in X (Twitter). I read blogs posts every week and create dashboards and reports as a part of my job almost every day. Therefore I can imagine that in many companies it must be hard for managers to keep up to date when they work in other areas of the business.
Social media marketing expertise is not easy to acquire when you are a manager working in a busy non-digital role, especially if you do not have any active social media accounts of your own. Above all it is important to recognize this gap if your scope includes approving social media campaigns.
Social media marketing expertise – close the gap
There are several ways to close the expertise gap.
- Hire an agency with clearly defined roles, scope, and of course evidence of social media marketing expertise, because there is good and bad out there.
- Recruit or arrange to have support from an existing expert located somewhere in your organization.
- If you have an in-house social media expert or team, find out how they plan to expand the coverage of the social media expertise in the company. Maybe there are courses that you could join. If they host a regular update meeting; JOIN IT. Most social media teams have plans to increase the skill set and to measure the effectiveness of their training and/or learning plan for the company.
- Self learning is a good option if you have the time. There are super useful webinars out there, blogs, podcasts and I have also a podcast designed for this exact purpose – the “Just Add Social” Podcast. There are also part time college courses/online short courses. Therefore starting up at least one social media account to get involved is an option. For instance, start by following and reading, and watching what happens. No need to feel the pressure to create content right away.
If you are a manager and find yourself in this awkward position. Being asked to approve social media campaign plans and activities that you feel are completely out of your scope. You need to recognize the expertise gap and do something about it.
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