Building a Social Media Team: The Project Manager

As the use and expectations of social media grow in the enterprise, so does the amount of work that’s necessary to realize goals. Somebody has to manage that work or it will quickly spiral into uncoordinated threads that consume time and resources. In our series, Building a Social Media Team, we have looked at the community manager and social strategist. Now we will examine a role that exists to ensure what the community manager and social strategist envision actually happens — on time and on budget.

Getting Things Done

Many businesses that decide to invest in social underestimate the amount of work required for their social programs to be successful. Even modest social efforts focused on marketing often require coordinating several people, departments, external vendors and dates. The increasing use of social media and growing realization that more than a few Facebook posts are necessary to achieve business goals has caused the number of opportunities for social media project managers to increase dramatically in the last few years.
      
Although this role may have different titles across organizations:

• Social media manager
• Social media program manager
• Social media project manager
• Social media program lead
• Social program coordinator

the responsibilities are similar. Social media program managers must understand business goals, be able to run multi-campaign and project programs, measure social media impacts against business objectives, and perhaps most importantly, effectively communicate.

Communication skills are essential for all project management, but it is especially vital for those people that manage social media teams. The very nature of social media is “social.” Project managers that don’t understand the importance of two-way communication and working collaboratively will not be successful.

This doesn't mean the technical aspects of project management are not important. A report by the Altimeter Group found that most companies lack formalized social media processes. A lack of process makes it more difficult to respond in a crisis, manage employee behavior and consistently implement social initiatives. Project managers with an ability to establish formal processes can play an important role in helping create, implement, monitor and measure the performance of social programs.

What organizations want to accomplish when it comes to social media can vary and so can their needs. However, social media project managers should possess several core characteristics:

• A passion for social media — If a candidate believes the term tweet is just a sound birds make, look elsewhere for someone to manage your social media program.
• Friendly, patient and responsive.
• Detail oriented and timely.
• Comfortable working with creative and technical personalities that may be neither detail oriented or timely.
• Not overly confident in his or her social media skills — This can lead to the project manager attempting to control the shape of social media programs instead of managing them.
• Excellent team builder — Listens to team member concerns, resolves conflicts, encourages feedback.

Great social media project managers may possess many additional qualities, but having this core set of attributes provide a solid foundation for success.

The Circle of Success

No matter what type of social program an organization is pursuing, a strong, competent social media program manager is critical.

It is interesting to note that the relationship between social media and project management is not just one-way. Social media can also make it easier to manage projects. Vendors have introduced a new breed of social project management platforms that leverage social mechanisms to improve project communication, information sharing and collaboration. These tools allow team members to interact more naturally and provide more visibility into the actual work that’s occurring in the project. 

Does your organization have a social media project manager? What did you learn filling the role? We would love to hear your feedback.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Discussion Point: From Data to Decisions - Real-Time Analytics Support the Customer Experience

Every organization captures data — social media analytics, customer interactions, website traffic and other metrics, the list goes on. That the amount of data collected is growing exponentially is no surprise, that technologies are emerging every day to help us capture and analyze this data is also no surprise. But how are these analytics and data support tools changing to help better support the customer experience and what can we expect from these technologies in the next few years? That's the question we asked our esteemed panel in today's Discussion Point.

 The Question

How are analytics and decision support tools changing to meet CXM/WEM demands today & what key changes do you foresee in the next two to three years?

The Responses

Cathy McKnight — Digital Clarity Group

A founding partner and Principal Analyst with Digital Clarity Group, Cathy has a passion for working with clients to maximize their potential for success and profitability by helping them find the right-fit digital content management technology that will increase employee engagement and efficiencies. As an analyst, consultant, strategist, speaker and writer on topics related to digital content technology, employee engagement, and social media, Cathy is a strong advocate of the concepts of communities both within and around the enterprise.

Until quite recently, "analytics" in the context of WCM was almost exclusively about what was happening with the website itself: How many visitors arrived? What pages were viewed? For how long? This data was rarely available immediately nor did it need to be, since it influenced decisions and changes that would be implemented over days, weeks, or months. With the shift to CXM/WEM, analytics need to deliver insights — rapid and actionable insights — into the profiles and behavior of the visitors to the web and the performance of the content assets. So, in the first instance, it is very important for end users to understand this significant transformation in the way vendors talk about "analytics."

That said, collecting large amounts of data on behavior and performance is relatively easy. And analyzing that data, with the right tool, shouldn’t be difficult. Mining the insight and value from the data is the hard part. CXM/WEM data is now largely a real-time commodity and real-time data must be analyzed with extraordinary speed to create maximum value. The analytics and decision support tools have to become better at finding and identifying the useful nuggets almost a quickly as the data is being generated and captured, and then being able to integrate and merge that real-time data with historical and supplemental data from across the organization to provide the full value it has to offer.

Different emerging channels require different types of analysis, so analytics tools will have to adapt to accommodate, understand and integrate new channels as they evolve, appear and are adopted by the consumer. As the value of analytics ultimately lies in its ability to inform correct decisions that produce business value, feedback and verification features will become increasingly important. For example, the ability to define key performance indicators (KPIs) within the tools and base both real time content deployment decisions as well as strategic customer engagement strategies on the measurements across various channels and audience segments, will be an important functional feature. 

 

Continue reading this article:

1 2 3 Next Page >

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com