No matter what size your social media team is, a successful social collaboration process will save you time, keep your current customers happy, and help you expand your social media potential. Yesterday, we hosted a live online panel of social media professionals to give expert advice on how to organize your social media team, and share effective social collaboration tips. To recap, we’ve gathered 5 best tips given by the experts, along with the recording of the panel below.

5 Social Collaboration Tips For Social Media Teams

Your social media team isn’t just in the marketing department

Social media management is a team effort and it shouldn’t only live in your marketing department. The panelists emphasized how social media is used across their organizations in many different departments. From Marketing, to Customer Support, to the Sales team. Your social media team should act more like a social army for your company. Learn how to scale social media strategy across the entire organization, as well as make brand advocates out of your employees, in our latest series of Scaling Social guides.

Companies are leaning towards Facebook for customer support

Everyone in the panel agreed that Twitter is the top network for collaboration within the team,  because of its real-time interaction capabilities. The panelists also noted the fact that Twitter sees the highest volume in incoming messages. However, Facebook turns out to be the best channel for customer support collaboration because it allows customers to engage through private messages and the Facebook Wall, and for customer support teams to effectively respond to customer support queries.

Take the time to plan out your social media team

Map out how your team is going to look on paper first, whiteboard it, and speak to those people you’ve added to your plan to make sure that it’s clear to them. Jaime Stein has given the example of his own work—he structured Hootsuite’s teams around functional areas like Social Marketing, Community, Support, Social Selling, etc. This allows each team to effectively divide and conquer social media assignments to make sure there isn’t overlapping on any social communication. When using team collaboration tools such as Hootsuite Assignments, make sure to assign the right permission level to each team member to avoid any social media mistakes.

Your company doesn’t have to be huge to need a social media management tool

Your social media team needs a social media management tool the moment you start receiving numerous Tweets to your corporate account, or if your brand wants to have a stronger social media presence. Some small businesses think that because their company isn’t big yet, they don’t need a tool to manage their social media. But, in reality, the minute your social media presence outgrows your resources, you need to make sure you have someone or something to help manage it. Plus, as a small business, time is incredibly valuable, and a social media management tool helps you streamline your social media process and save a lot of time.

Be prepared for busy periods

You need your social media team the most during busy periods for your industry. The Toronto International Film Festival organizers have to prepare themselves for the festival days in advance. They set up their team, where they have a maestro who oversees everything and assigns messages to the rest of their team members. For an event marketing company such as TicketLeap, it’s crucial your social media team is prepared with a social media dashboard during events in order to demonstrate a tangible social media presence. This helps make sure no Tweet is left unanswered.

Learn more from our experts in the recording below:

Disclaimer: This is a live panel. The views and opinions expressed in this video are solely those of the panelists. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Hootsuite.

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