We think the answer lies in making sure your staff are ready and your business has social media as part of its digital marketing strategy for the coming days, weeks, months, and years. Nothing could be more focused in these times of lockdowns and tiers!
Social media should have its own strategy within any business, whether it is to stay away from it or spend a massive budget ensuring that you are all over every channel. This is where the problem comes in; trying to strategize when you may not be sure where and when you need to be in this realm.
As you can see from the diagram below social media marketing should become the focus for the future success of a company. Once trained on how to make maximum use of all of the platforms available online, employees will become an even more valuable business asset as it will increase their performance and productivity.
This is why social media training should be seriously considered by all companies for them to have the most informed staff possible.
As the diagram illustrates social media should play an integral part throughout your business development processes, through planning, building the foundations and delivery of your messages.
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Why you should seriously consider social media training
If you are considering Social Media seriously, there are two approaches. One approach is to engage with a digital marketing agency, who immediately provides you with the required skills on tap. The second approach if your budget doesn’t stretch to that is to…
TRAIN! Not the passenger type, but the learning type.
There are a number of reasons why marketing and communications training makes sense in these current times…
1. Staff development
Maybe you are working towards an ‘Investor In People’ status or pride yourself on the manner in which you help to develop your staff. Either way training them in social media means that you can harness their existing skills with newly found Social Media marketing skills, to truly enhance the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy.
2. Staff morale
In these uncertain times, what can be a better indicator of how much you value your staff than resourcing some training for them, showing them that you value them and want them to be a part of things going forward.
3. Flexibility
Most training of this sort can take place online over Zoom or MS Teams. You don’t need to fork out for expensive nights away in hotels.
4. Ownership
If you train your internal teams, moving forward, you will have complete control over your social media channels. There is nothing better than motivated, loyal staff, who know the culture and values of your brand. So when it comes to representing your business in the online environment your branding is consistent and correct.
5. Engaging mindset
Rather than just throwing things at your customers and expecting things to stick, trained social media managers will engage with the target audience and listen to what they have to say. This could provide invaluable feedback about any products and services, ultimately helping to shape the future of the business.
6. Ongoing support
Any decent training providers will not just take you through the theories and best practices, but they will also help you in the long run. They will be there to answer questions and engage with you. Show you how to get the most of your social channels. At Astute, in all that we do, our first aim is gain an understanding of your business and what is important to you. This ensures a truly targeted training session maximising your chances of success.
7. Social media training online
In these current challenging times is it also worth noting those facilitators that can provide online training sessions so that you do not have to worry about social distancing in a training room. If you can do it from the comfort of your own home, even better!
So what can you do now?
Review what you have now! This means looking at what you are doing on social and what resource you have. Who in the team shows an interest in social media, who keeps pestering you that you should be on it?
Look at doing a social media audit and understand where you are. Does your website design reflect your branding and the way you will be positioning your business on the social media platforms.
You then need to put someone in the driving seat. Talk with them about where they feel their strengths are in terms of social media. That way you can identify weaknesses and where training will be helpful. For example:
- Do they know how to write an outline social media strategy?
- Do they know how to compose a content calendar?
- Do they know what KPIs to set?
- Do they know how to make sure all of the above is in line with business goals?
If you need help with anything to do with social media or digital marketing in general, then Astute Media Ltd can also help you there. We have been in business for over 30 years and we have very experienced social media team you can talk to.
Simply talking it through with others can often help to make things clearer! When you have identified what your staff need to improve their skills, check out the training courses available at Astute Media and discover how we can help you to help yourself.
They are all half-day interactive courses with a maximum of six delegates per course. As you will see we have courses that will improve their knowledge and expertise, whatever their current social media abilities. To book courses to learn more about our services, contact Bob Mountford.
