How can a brand management leader build a social media presence for their team?

Encourage team members to share relevant content, engage with industry influencers, participate in discussions, showcase team expertise, and leverage social media platforms to amplify the brand management team's visibility and expertise.

To build a social media presence: Establish Goals: Define objectives and target audience for the team's social presence. Consistent Branding: Maintain consistency in tone, visuals, and messaging across platforms. Engagement Strategy: Encourage active participation, sharing valuable content, and fostering interactions.

-Strategic Platform Selection: Emphasize the importance of strategic platform selection based on the brand's goals, audience, and content style. -Tailor to Brand Message: Highlight the need to align the selected platforms with the brand management message, style, and format. -Visual Identity and Creativity: Use platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter for showcasing visual identity and creativity. -Consistent Brand Voice: Stress the significance of maintaining a consistent brand voice across all selected platforms and channels.

Select the social media platform that will best help you achieve your goals and where you can find your target audience. Why? Because each platform comes with its own unique features, content formats, and algorithms. Understanding these differences, along with how your target audience behaves on different platforms, will help you choose the right platform to shine.

Consider: Target Audience: Understand the demographics & online behavior of the target audience for each platform. Goals: Define the goals for the brand's social media presence (increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, etc.) & choose the platforms that are most aligned with those goals. Comp Analysis: Where are your brand’s competitors seeing success? Start there. Resources: Consider the human/financial resources available for managing the brand's presence. Choose platforms that the brand can consistently engage with. (Ex: You and your team may love Tik Tok, but if your brand isn’t willing or able to support the type & frequency of content needed to succeed on Tik Tok, you’ll come across as irrelevant.)

Planning is key to building a successful social media presence for your team, and that's where a content calendar comes in. First, understand your target audience's aspirations and pain points, then draft content pillars addressing these concerns and goals. Maintain structure and consistency in your messaging. A content calendar helps you plan when, how, what, and where you post your content. It also helps you track your content and optimize it for better results.

You need to keep tabs on your success metrics to understand what's working and what isn't. At the start, identify the metrics you want to track and how you'll measure them. Then, as you implement each step of your social media strategy, evaluate and iterate, optimizing what works and eliminating what doesn't. Remember, robust, up-to-date data might be all you need to achieve social media success as a brand manager.

In order to promote employee advocacy and use their networks to really spread the brand's message, team members should be encouraged to share company content. This strategy helps to a strong workplace culture, humanises the brand, increases credibility, and expands the brand's reach. Employees become powerful brand advocates when clear guidelines are followed to guarantee consistent messaging.

One thing I've found helpful is to write a question or challenge in a way that outlines an objective and doesn't allow for misinterpretation. Is this about building a social media presence for the company/brand? Or about incorporating the right tools and strategy to allow the team to use social media appropriately? Surely a marketing team's social media presence in and of itself is immaterial (it ain't about you). A short answer otherwise, look up "brand ambasadors" - employees, not paid spokespeople/representatives.

Cultivate Authentic Engagement. Beyond simply scheduling posts and monitoring metrics, prioritize authentic interactions with the audience. Encourage your team to actively engage with followers through comments, messages, and discussions. Foster a genuine and relatable online presence by responding promptly to queries, participating in industry conversations, and showcasing the human side of your team. Leverage user-generated content to strengthen community connections. Authentic engagement not only builds a loyal online community but also contributes to a positive brand image. It's the human touch that transforms a social media account from a mere broadcasting platform to a dynamic space for meaningful interactions and relationships.