Create a Consistent Social Media Presence with the 7Rs
In the last post, we talked about research, readiness and realistic goal setting. In this post, we’ll chat about resources, retraining your staff, representatives and reviewing your plan.
Resources: Social media isn’t free. It requires time, people, and IT resources to get the job done well and right. Does your ministry have a written plan that allocates resources to the specific, needed daily/weekly/monthly tasks associated with each of your social media objectives? How long can you afford to commit the resources? What happens if you don’t achieve the objectives in the time frame you’ve allocated?
Retraining: You may have to teach some old dogs new tricks! Or you may have to teach some youngsters appropriate business processes. Either way, some training and retraining will be key. You should roll out both in person and online communication that helps your employees and volunteers understand why your ministry is doing it, what they will see online, how it will help and what their role is. Don’t forget policy and procedure training, too!
Representation: Don’t forget that every employee who is front-facing (either on a blog, on Twitter, on Facebook) must understand the goals. There needs to be brand consistency (yes, even ministries have brands!) across all social media platforms. That doesn’t mean that the same person needs to try to handle all outlets, but it does mean that the tone, message, branding should be similar on every platform. Again, written, clear communication and objectives help achieve this.
Review: Finally, a social media plan isn’t really a plan at all if it is not written, discussed, disseminated and regularly reviewed. We encourage our clients to review their objectives and metrics once a week. Here at Professional Mojo we do it daily at 9AM EST. Every day. Every week. Social media is fluid, and you must keep close tabs on it.
In summary, the 7 Rs of social media planning can get you moving in the right direction for your ministry, but only if you consider the output a living and breathing document that you will review regularly.
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