In my third year in high school, I was elected to my first post ever.
My classmates counted me worthy to be the class captain.
And my job description was simple.
I had to submit assignment notes of every class member to the subject teacher. I had to ensure the class was in order when there was no teacher in class. And other duties teachers gave me.
I was really pumped up to do this job well.
But some classmates never submitted assignments on time, while some made parrots look tight-lipped.
Teachers said I was irresponsible in doing my job.
My classmates said I was a jerk for trying to control them.
I found myself in the middle of a rock and a hard place.
Most times, this is the life of a social media manager.
You want to achieve social media goals to please your boss (or clients) without becoming a jerk to team members.
This is even more complicated if you work with remote team members.
So, how do you execute social media collaboration to unlock your team’s productivity and results?
Read on to see 7 social media collaboration tips that work even for a team with members around the globe.
But first…
How does social media collaboration work?
Social media collaboration is the process of organizing team members to execute various tasks to achieve social media campaign goals.
Today, collaboration can occur between an in-house or a remote social media team. Sometimes, it can be between a hybrid team.
Because of the content types needed, people in a social media team have different skills to create and run social media campaigns.
In some cases, marketers use the term social media collaboration to refer to collaboration between a brand and an external party, like collaborating with influencers.
However, this guide will focus on collaboration within a social media team.
Moving on, social media collaboration becomes necessary when working with people with different skills for your social campaigns. A single person writing, designing images, creating videos, and mapping out strategy can only do so much.
Then, effective collaboration ensures you can get the best results from your carefully picked team.
Now, let’s see tips to collaborate effectively within your social media team.
Social media collaboration tips
1. Establish communication guidelines
Based on my observation and experience, I’d say at least 50% of collaboration is communication.
In fact, you need to communicate at every stage of collaboration. With proper communication, everyone knows what to do and when to do it.
However, no team stumbles on efficient communication.
You have to create communication guidelines.
Communication guidelines are rules that guide how team members communicate at different phases of social campaigns.
For example, it can define details such as:
- Communication tools/apps
- Primary uses and expectations for each communication app
- Where to get updates about social campaigns
- Feedback process for tasks
- Time for team meetings
- Dos and don’ts when communicating with colleagues
- Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about social campaigns
You can create a document that captures these details. Once you do that, share the document with every team member.
Then, ensure the document is available on your communication tools. This can be a tool like Slack or project management tools like ClickUp, Trello, and AirTable.
Of course, communication guidelines shouldn’t be so strict that members think you’re micromanaging them. Otherwise, they’ll feel stifled.
And again, communication should aid work rather than take the time members need to do their work.
With proper communication, every team member will be on the same page.
In addition to that, you can reduce the time spent creating campaigns and improve your chances of achieving goals.
Remember that the communication guidelines for your team will be unique to your needs.
So, establish communication guidelines that work for your team.
2. Define team members’ roles
What happens when you have 2 writers in the same social media team?
Does one write organic post copy while the other writes ad copy? Does one write all the copy for Facebook and LinkedIn while the other writes for Instagram and TikTok?
When you have 2 team members with similar skills, their tasks can easily overlap and cause confusion. And this can mean you, as a social media manager, will have to babysit adults in your team.
You can eliminate the headache by assigning roles to each team member according to their skills.
Common roles in a social media team include:
- Social media manager
- Writer
- Content creator (usually video)
- Designer
- Customer care rep
- Analyst
To define roles, you have to create a document that lists each role and explains their duties during social media campaigns.
And if you have multiple people in each role, you can list their names and specific tasks assigned to them during social media campaigns.
Then, you can upload the document to your project management software.
Josh Krakauer, the CEO at Sculpt, explains how the B2B social media marketing agency approaches team roles:
“At Sculpt, we believe there are five functional roles on a social media team. Those roles are strategy, content, advertising, analysis, and community management. In the early phases of program maturity, one person wears all five hats. Over time, roles are delegated to new hires, contractors, or agencies. Commonly, one person owns strategy, and content is produced collaboratively.”
After defining roles, running social campaigns in the future becomes easier. Once you create a campaign brief and deliverables, every team member knows what they need to do without being told explicitly.
When you define roles, it’s easier to hold people accountable for various tasks during your campaigns.
Another potential benefit is that you can understand a member’s impact based on their roles.
While a team ultimately works towards a single goal, team members do different tasks to achieve the goal.
So, to define roles is to give your team the best chance to achieve campaign goals.
3. Create a social media style guide
If you have 2 sisters, you can distinguish them just by hearing their voices.
But that’s even easy.
You can also distinguish the voices of people you’ve never met. For example, many people can distinguish the voices of Chris Rock and Kevin Hart.
And when you hear their voices, your brain will deliver the information it has about these people.
This is the same for brands on social media.
You need a voice that showcases your brand. However, to maintain that voice consistently, you need a social media style guide.
A social media style guide defines how you want to present various elements of your campaigns to followers.
It should define elements such as:
- Tone (professional, informal, etc.)
- Colors
- Fonts
- Values
- Topics to avoid
After creating your social media style guide, you can upload the document to your project management software and ensure every team member understands it.
However, if you manage multiple clients, you may have to create a style guide for each client (or collect from the client).
Meara McNitt, Senior Director of Social Media at Online Optimism, explained:
“It’s important to set up clear brand standards for a client. These should include tone of voice, who their typical audience is, and any key vocabulary that is important for those working on the client to understand. This will keep multiple team member’s voices consistent as one brand.”
With a style guide, every team member can create elements of your campaigns to fit the brand style.
A byproduct of this is that you’ll maintain consistency to your ideal audience.
Here’s a page in the New York University’s (NYU) social media style guide:
The guide explores voice, vocabulary, and imagery for each social media platform.
In a nutshell, a social media style guide becomes necessary if many people have to create content for a brand.
4. Create detailed social media campaign briefs
Creating a social media campaign brief is also a form of communication.
But I’ve separated it because it’s vital enough to stand alone.
A social media campaign brief is a document that contains essential information about your social media campaign, such as:
- Problem the campaign will solve
- Key campaign message
- Goals
- Audience
- Social media channels
- Content formats
- Publishing schedule
- Team members involved and their tasks for the campaign
A campaign brief communicates your vision for the campaign with team members. And since campaigns differ, you have to provide a brief for each campaign.
With a brief, it’s easier to ensure every team member focuses on campaign goals and how to achieve them.
How do you create a social media campaign brief?
You can create a Google Doc and provide the details listed above.
To make things easy, create a template you can reuse. This way, you only need to fill in details for each campaign.
Sculpt has a detailed social media campaign brief template you can use. Check it out.
A social media campaign brief helps to communicate your expectations for each campaign.
5. Prepare a social media calendar
Just like a business has a calendar of activities, a social team should also have a social media calendar.
A social media calendar contains the posts and campaigns you want to run over a period, like a month. Of course, a social media calendar doesn’t have to spell out every element of each post.
But it can indicate categories such as:
- Promotional posts
- Awareness post
- Informational post
- Ad
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Holidays or a trend
A social media calendar keeps team members focused on tasks throughout a month.
Beyond this, a social media calendar ensures a balance in publishing posts across various categories.
To create a calendar, you can use a Google Sheet. Create rows and columns and provide details about posts.
If you don’t know how to go about it, you can use HubSpot’s social media calendar template.
Another option is to use a social media management tool. You’ll find a publishing calendar in the tool.
You can add publishing briefs to dates throughout the month and assign tasks to team members.
A social media calendar helps plan your work for a period and ensures you’re on the same page with your team members.
6. Use the right social media management tool
Since teams use social media management tools, many tools have collaboration features to aid teamwork.
A social media management tool helps you manage various social media activities like publishing, scheduling, content curation, interactions with audience, and listening.
For teams, different people take care of these activities. So, these teams need a social media management tool that aids collaboration.
Here are some collaboration features you can get with the right tool:
- Create workspaces
- Set up approval workflows
- Set up permissions for team members
- Assign tasks to team members
- Communicate with team members about tasks
With the right social media management tool, it’s easier to organize your tasks for multiple clients or campaigns.
You can also automate tasks like post approvals.
That said, how do you find the right social media management tool?
Visit the tool’s features page and read user reviews.
This way, you can get enough information about a tool. And since most tools offer free trials, you can try a few before selecting one.
Here are 3 tools I’ve tried that I believe can work for your team:
- Loomly: This tool lets you invite collaborators and set up their roles. You can also set up approval workflows, assignment triggers, and interact with collaborators. You can read my Loomly review for more information.
- ContentStudio: With this tool, you can create workspaces and set up roles for a team member. You can also assign tasks and interact with collaborators. You can read my ContentStudio review for more information.
- Vista Social: Here, you can create multiple brand profiles and set up permissions for new members. This tool also lets you create an approval workflow, assign tasks, and leave notes for team members. You can read my Vista Social review for more information.
Even with the right collaboration strategy, you still need tools to execute the strategy effectively.
7. Do a regular team review
No matter how strong your car may be, you have to service it regularly. Otherwise, it may break down in the middle of the highway and put your life at risk.
The same way, you have to service human systems.
Since your social media team contains humans, it will never attain perfection in terms of collaboration.
This is why you need a regular team review.
In a team review, you can discuss with team members to see how well you’ve collaborated with team members during social media campaigns. At the same time, effective collaboration shouldn’t be at the expense of your team members’ welfare.
With the review, you’ll find points of failure in your collaboration processes. You can also find elements that need to be added to or removed from your collaboration process.
Regular team reviews help to improve collaboration and onboard new members seamlessly.
You can set up these reviews every quarter or half of a year.
Conclusion
Improving collaboration can boost campaign results and revenue for your business or clients.
That said, the best social media collaboration strategy should strike a balance between getting work done and having satisfied team members.
Use these social media collaboration tips to troubleshoot your strategy and find improvement opportunities.
Then, ensure you track the results of your collaboration strategy.
Take these steps to unlock your team’s productivity today.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. This means if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you). I only recommend tools I use and/or believe will provide value to you.
