How many cooks in your kitchen?

We’ve been asked a few times recently how many people should be handling your social-media accounts. It’s a tricky one!

There are a few factors, of course – namely, how big your organisation is, how many full-time staff you have on board, and what works for you. Everyone’s different!

Social media is a big job. If you’re lucky enough to have a designated social-media or digital-marketing manager, then you can safely leave the role of content creation to this specific member of staff, knowing that they live and breathe the voice of your organisation. They know how to tell your story, and they tell it well.

It’s really, really important that your social-media strategies are clearly documented though, just in case this staff member leaves their position, or even calls in sick one day! If you’ve got a fully documented digital-marketing plan, then you can create content confidently and consistently, knowing that you won’t be posting off-brand or off-voice.

Some organisations like to divide the role of social-media management among a couple of key staff members. This can work pretty well, especially if they’re both part-time, or volunteers. Ideally, these two members of staff will work closely together to establish the organisation’s voice, and understand its audience, and create content accordingly. Done well, you shouldn’t be able to spot which staff member created which post. Job done!

One type of social-media strategy that we’re not 100% sold on is the “hub and spoke” model. In our (pretty extensive) experience of digital marketing in the not-for-profit sector, we’ve never seen this model used effectively. The hub-and-spoke model involves half a dozen staff members – including execs – having equal control of social media. While this is great for creating varied content, it’s also troublesome in attempting to create and maintain a consistent voice. It’s also incredibly hard to content plan (and you KNOW how much we love content planning), to plan advertising strategies, and to interact across different accounts. That’s not saying it can’t work, just that you should be wary of implementing this model without a lot of forward-planning and investigation.

Let us know what works for you at your organisation, and whether you’d ever consider changing – we’d love to know!