Lately, there has been a flurry of discussions and questions on scaling social media so here's my take on a key question that seems to be on many minds.
Question: How do I set up a social media department for my company and what is the typical org structure (with roles & responsibilities)?
Let me start off by saying, there is no typical organization structure for a social media team or department, since companies set up their internal org structure based on business needs. Ideally, you want to plan out and budget for resources in advance so you're not struggling to scale your social media activities. However, the reality at many medium to large-size companies is that social media is often initiated within one specific functional group like customer service or PR and the resources are not fully dedicated to social media but over time, these are shifted over from traditional investments and/or added as needed.
If your management is serious about allocating resources for a dedicated social media team, that's great news! There are agencies who can audit your organization structure to help assess your social media resource needs. But if you're working on a tight budget (as most of us are), no worries, here are 4 simple steps to get you off to a decent start.
#1 Define your new team/department's objective and scope:
Social media has implications for a wide variety of functional areas from marketing to customer support, and even HR. So start by defining your team's role along with a clear statement of the team's objective. Simply put, define your team's reason for existence and what specific business need it will solve. The scope does largely depend on whether your team is aligned to any specific functional group like marketing or the team is going to structured as a centralized pool of resources that supports the entire organization.
List all the groups/departments that your team will support and level of support you'll provide them. Remember that the way each functional group uses social media is different so take these differences into account while developing your overall plan. For example: The CS team will use social media differently than the PR team, so make sure you don't underestimate the resources needed to support these different needs.
#2 Pull together a plan of deliverables and resource needs:
Clearly outline this new team's responsibilities and deliverables in as much detail as possible. List specific deliverables, frequency. and timelines where ever possible. this is critical because this will help you define how many resources you'll need to deliver on what you've promised. Also bear in mind that while people resources are key for any social media team, but don't forget to include dollar resources as well for expenses related to resources, tools or external agency resources. One good way to create your estimated budget is to check with your HR, social media agencies, and contracting agencies since they can help you estimate the cost for your resource plan.
#3 Determine team roles & responsibilities:
Once you've defined your deliverables, then the next step is put together your potential org chart where the roles are determined by what type of skill set you will need to deliver on your plan. For example: If your plan is to deliver 6 social media training sessions on a weekly basis to all the functional groups, then you will need a) content (develop in-house or externally), b) media for delivery and recording of the sessions and c) someone qualified to lead the sessions. Based on the plan, some typical roles on your team would be social media trainer/s and training/educational content producers. Having clearly defined roles will help you hire talented folks with the right social media skill set rather than generalists aka social media "experts".
#4 Define your KPIs:
This part is often overlooked but is very critical to the continued success of your team. It's fair to assume that you may not get all the resources that you ask for and that the need for resources will only grow along with increase in social media adoption. So make sure you've defined your success metrics and planned for future growth by including clear milestones. These will help you prove the value of this new team and help you make the case for more resources as needed.
Hope you found this information helpful. Let me know if there's anything else you would add as you're planning out your social media team.