Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning podcast. I got that wrong already. But this is why you do it right? Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. My name is Melanie
And I'm Esther
and today I started and today we're going to be talking about managing a brand online with a team. So Esther, you're a team?
Well, I'm one person in a team. Yes. Yeah, I'm here at IPA group we have a team of ten. I think we're up to nine people who work with us and help us out. So, yep. Knowing what to ask your team to do and what they can manage online in terms of your social media is very important. So even though there's ten of us, not everyone has access to the social media and not everyone posts on social media.
Now, this came about what's happened to both of us quite recently. But this came about this week because I was approached by somebody who had a very large team, actually, and really wanted to consolidate their presence online. And it got me thinking there must be other businesses that maybe got two or three people. It doesn't have to be a very large team that have lots of different voices and not sort of building a brand persona. And then we've talked about brand personas before, but bringing it out into a team is quite important. So where do we start, Esther?
Well, first of all, I would start with knowing what your brand voice is. So is it serious? Is it fun? Is it you know, if anybody else was to jump in in your place, would they know that it's still you or would they think it's still you or they know straight away that it's somebody else? Now, I know you do a lot of training around this, Melanie, but I and you and I also run accounts for other people. We run their social media. And the first thing we have to do is get into their head. You have to know what how the person speaks, what they talk about, what topics they're interested in, and basically even how they would write it. You know, if they're from the south of Texas and they say y'all, they probably write y'all as well, you know, so those those things would have to come across in in the writing on social media. So finding the voice, finding the person, the persona, having it as part of your grind, that would be your groundwork. Having you know, like I said, is it really serious? Is it, you know, life and death sort of stuff, or is it fun and upbeat and uplifting?
But do you have to stay like that all the time, though? I mean, if you've got a really serious brand, can you ever have a laugh?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, you definitely can. And I mean, we've seen that recently with the Weetbix uh, the brand of that. If you haven't seen Weetabix don't. It's really, really disgusting.
Weetabix and black beans look up online, Weetabix and baked beans. It's hilarious.
It's really good. But every single brand got them, got on board with that and they brought out their fun site. OK, so it's not all about being serious all the time. OK, there is a time and a place to have your fun site in your laughs. Now what I would recommend is that you first decide who's going to be in charge of the whole thing because on your social media
So a few things now, so you have a pen persona.
Yeah.
And somebody in charge.
Yes. Right. So the person who's in charge will have admin access over all, you know, social media platforms. So say we're talking Facebook and you've got your absolute admin in the person who claims the page and things like that.
That's the one ring.
Yes, right. And then out of those come they you know, everybody else that gets out onto the account. So then if somebody was to. Be sick or leave the company or, you know,
Good point yeah.
Would it be easy enough to remove them as being admins if they were off for a long, extended period of time or if they stepped away from helping with the social media or running the social media and started in a different part of the of the company? So those would be things to think about before you do it. Who would you put in charge? That one person? That one? Because if you have more than one, then it's going to be a while. But I would do this. No, but I think we should do that, you know, and it's a back and forth and you waste a lot of time and effort and resources. So just have that one person that you could put in charge. And if it ends up being you being the head of the company, let it be you as the head of the company who says yay or nay to the topics and the themes and the posts that are going out. Now, you can then with your team of, like you said, twenty, twenty, twenty three people, then divide and conquer. Right. So who's going to do the images? Who's going to make videos? Who's going to show their face for the company?
Who's going to respond?
who's going to respond, who's going to schedule, who's going to find curated content, who's going to be online? You know, all these different things have to be thought out before you even start posting anything
And then have a full back as well, because, as you say, people become sick. Go on holiday, leave the company that happens to.
Yes.
So, yeah, you've got to have a fallback as well. But this so much management involved, isn't that. Oh, well, you've got a team and it doesn't really matter if you've got three people or twenty odd people, you still need things in place to manage that team. So as as you have a team, Eshter, tell us how you would use and we're not dropping names here because they're giving us any money.
No,
it's just what she currently uses to manage her team.
Yeah. So in the past we've used things like Asana and Trello and things like that, and now we're using infinity. So it's starinfinity.com, I want to say. And it's really good because then you can put in your kanban boards and you can put in your calendars and you can put in Kanban Kanban that right. So your lists basically so it's doing
Then why don't you just call it a list?
Because they've got a fancy name, so call it by its fancy name Kanban go look it up.
But it makes no sense.
Well, I think it's the person who invented the lists because you can then move them. Once you've done something, you can move it from the doing to the done.
Like Kanban done. Sounds like something you'd get out of ticket with.
There's Kanban boards. There's lists like just normal lists, like what Melanie and I would look at if we're when we're deciding what to talk about next. It's like, let's go to the list and then you can assign topics to each person or you can assign tasks and dates and different things and then follow up with messages inside that. So it's all in the one place and it's all then accessible. If somebody else comes in, then you don't have to go. "Oh yeah, I was writing that on a piece of paper and let me just go and look for it in my twenty three thousand notebooks that I have on my desk", you know. So it's all there and it's all ready. So if somebody else comes in or somebody leaves and it's easy enough to manage that part with the project management.
I like the fact because she says we've got this infinity section where we work together and we like to take off, podcast we've recorded and we've put dates when it's going to go out. And
yeah,
it's rather cool when we've got like weeks and weeks and weeks of ideas up in advance and it keeps them move around as well.
And it keeps a semi organised
for us,
for us. And it's the satisfaction of taking it off as well, isn't it, of just going. Yes, that's done. Yes, we've done that. OK, but yeah, I think being organised is half the battle. So if there's somebody that's more into the design and more into their images and things like that, or they find it like, that's not one of my strengths. I am not an image finder or a graphic design. Yeah. So, I mean, that's that's why we have a graphic designer on our team. But the graphic designer wouldn't have access to public to the social media in order to publish stuff or to promote stuff. And then that leads onto another thing. If you're going to be running ads, who's going to have access to that?
Exactly
right.
Because going to be responsible for reporting all, you know, all the responses to your ads or to your social media in general.
Yeah. So it's a huge I mean, a lot of people might think, oh, it's just just Facebook. It's just Instagram, you know, it's just social media. But once you get in, you're starting to pay for things like ads. Then it become serious.
Yeah, well, it's just a time to think about forward planning now we do bang on about strategy a fair bit on this podcast, and it's purely because it's so essential. We're not suggesting you strategize for the next year. In fact, if anything, I would recommend you don't know. But look at strategizing or building a framework. It doesn't have to be a full blown in and out, up and down strategy for the next three months. But it needs to be a damn good framework that you can work for and be accountable for.
Yeah,
And I mean, we would normally do longer strategies. In fairness, we would normally do longer strategies. But because of the current climate, it's just it's not viable.
No, but you can have things in place. You know, like we've talked about this before, daysoftheyear.com and knowing what certain like promos and things that you're going to have coming up, if you have a launch date, then you promote that launch date and you stick to that date. It's not as if you're going to be using the same promo then three weeks after the launch date and going, "oh, yes. Oh, yeah. By the way, we launched already. Did you miss it?" You know, so if you've got things that you know are coming up, then you can use those. But I think first and foremost, when you're setting up your team, it's all about trust.
Amen.
Alright, I mean, we're talking at the minute of people who already have a team. But if you're sitting there listening to us and it's just you, you will eventually and we know it's ninety nine percent probable that you will outsource something. And the first thing that usually goes is your social media, so when you outsource that, you're putting that into the hands of someone that you trust.
Well, that's the idea. And it's you've got to remember that the power that you've enabled people with as well. So once they leave, you're going to make sure that they were moved as well. Accesses is taken away.
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Remembering to do that will see it view a big headache later.
Well, I think we covered that fairly well. I just wanted to, you know, enable some larger brands. I do know, listen to us built some real functionality to their strategy, help them build their team and some will understanding. And I knew the best person to bring on board with this was yourself.
Pleasure to be here.
I'm here every week.
That's it for today. Guys, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.
Bye for now.