What Does A Social Media Manager Do…?

“The best leaders… almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.”
Tom Peters

The above just got sent out to the 100 or so employees of CORE Education as an attempt to introduce their new social media manager and my approach to the role (YouTube version).

Like any newbie I’ve been busy for the past month acting like a sponge, taking it all in, finding out who’s who, where are the opportunities, the needs, the toilets, and stuff like that. Now it’s time to earn my wage.

This morning I presented the above to the exec team along with other initial ideas of social media adoption, exploration and management. One of the things they agreed was allowing me to share on this blog the whole development and implementation phases of what I’m doing here, the likes of which will include :

  • baselining—creating a clear benchmark plus track and review process of social media activity and its impact relative to the overall aims and goals (quantifiably and qualitatively plus some other big words)
  • gamified training—skilling up the employees in a funky, systematic way (using game theory as a model)
  • ambassadorial networks—finding and establishing champions and creating hubs of knowledge around them (especially relevant as our colleagues work nationally across nearly 30 different geographical locations)
  • creating a social permaculture—basically working myself out of a job in the next two years whilst ensuring sustainability
  • productising our approach—hoping to transfer the learning and successes across to MediaSnackers at some point to package and sell on further

Over the coming months this is what will appear here and would love to hear from you, especially if you’re a new or established social media manager, head of digital content, director of educational technologies, online communication leads, chief bloggers etc. on your approach, pitfalls, mistakes and successes. Does the above sound like a good ‘start’?

Big thanks to the picture takers : plindberg, cousinali, vatobob, jb-london, x-ray_delta_one, kurtxio, azrainman, andrewmorrell, simonehudson, melissaadret, redroom, rosauraochoa, neilrickards, olpc, dantaylor, torley, birgerking, _fabrizio_, booleansplit, 40006794@N02, 94801434@N00, findyoursearch, markwalker, pip_r_lagenta, ref, gareth1953, jaako, 25023895@N02, ryanr, bossco, chrisdlugosz.
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The Gates Foundation | Inspiring The Grant Givers

gatesfoundation

This time last week I was in Seattle delivering some social media goodness to the Education programme team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I presented for 90mins on the shift of the media landscape (with particular attention to young people) and explored how social creates many opportunities to engage with a wider audience. After that I lead a 90mins roundtable with the senior exec team to talk strategy adoption, and finally a half days training to about thirty of the staff (at their newly opened campus).

The feedback was positive:

It was a good day.

There was lots of discussion with individuals / groups about how they could use some of the ideas / platforms directly in their work—here’s a few of the ‘big’ ideas shared :

  • it’s more reveal than conceal—a challenge to share the process not product of the organisations endeavours;
  • be human—the brand is so well known it has a danger of becoming faceless through some of its communication;
  • engage—I challenged them to think about the following : what if all you could do was comment on other content out there (adding weight and value to it) rather than creating your own? This would in part enable more directive messaging plus leave lots of digital breadcrumbs;
  • play—how, as an organisation, are they creating the time and space to learn by stealth

Obviously, all of the above could apply to many sectors / organisations / brands.

Personally, the biggest takeaway was that size doesn’t matter when it comes to exploring the social landscape. Sure, the context is slightly different between clients but the aims and mechanics are the same. It comes down to one thing, your appreciation and insight to anything is greater increased if you become an active user rather than a passive observer.

My function is to either move people closer to that outcome and / or lower the barrier to entry (based on their attitudes and ideas to embracing it).

It was an stupendously humbling experience to work with a collective with brains / pedigrees the size of planets and here’s hoping I get a return invite…

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