Social media is a powerful platform for communication and brand awareness. Business leaders understand it’s a necessary tool to engage their customers and nurture their brand’s visibility. In addition to connecting your organization’s brand with an audience, social media has become the leading way we network.
New business deals, recruiting opportunities, and important professional relationships happen because of and through social media. Maintaining a social presence and nurturing networking connections takes time and energy. And if you’re a manager, executive, or start-up founder with a busy schedule and heavy workload, you may not have the time to manage your accounts.
You can delegate your personal social media management—and parts of your organization's social accounts—to your executive assistant.
Top Social Media Tasks to Delegate
Outreach. Our doubles regularly help their executives with contact management. Networking and contact collection are mostly done online. Many executive assistants will use LinkedIn to connect their executive with people they're scheduled to meet. These contact requests often don’t require personal messaging, making it a straightforward task for your assistant to complete on your behalf.
Research. Your executive assistant can amplify your outreach by researching companies or professionals in certain industries you’re interested in. If you’re an HR leader, for example, your assistant can look for LinkedIn groups, Twitter or Instagram accounts with large followings and/or interesting content. In other words, your assistant can expand your networking circle.
Management. Your assistant can easily cover basic management of your social media accounts. This is especially helpful for individuals with multiple accounts across several platforms. A CEO and Founder of a tech start-up working with Double compiled a list in descending order of potential social handles for his company. His double (executive assistant) managed opening the accounts, compiling the log-in information, and even began following relevant accounts to start generating a social presence.
Response. Social media does require social interaction! While you may not want personal messages sent by anyone other than yourself, your assistant can help with basic responding. A seasoned consulting executive working with Double leverages her executive assistant to respond to potential new business messages on LinkedIn. Most of the messages she receives are introductions to set-up quick calls. Her double has a messaging template and takes care of responding and scheduling.
Sharing. Small companies will sometimes have their executive assistant help with actual posting or building social media posting calendars. While marketing experts are necessary to build out and grow a company’s social presence, some very early-stage start-up founders leverage their assistants to retweet, share, or like relevant posts to get the ball rolling.
Tips for Delegating Your Social Media
1. Create brand guidelines Even if your executive assistant only manages your personal social media account, it's important to discuss your messaging approach. Social media platforms sometimes have a casual tone, which may not be appropriate. Talk with your assistant about what good messaging looks like and what to avoid. You can even create templates for basic messaging to further guide your tone.
2. Come up with a simple social media plan Consider what you want to accomplish with your online presence and share that with your assistant. If you want to focus on growing your followership, for example, have your assistant focus on engaging, sharing, and liking. The uses for social media are vast, so honing in on your goals and communicating them to your assistant is key.
3. Choose your channels Not every brand or every professional needs a presence on every single social channel. If you’re just starting to delegate your social media, choose one or two channels that mean the most for your goals. You can always add more platforms and tasks as you and your assistant become comfortable with the work.
4. Review customer service Similar to brand guidelines, you need to give your assistant an overview of customer service messaging if they’re communicating to your customers on behalf of your brand. As most customers reach out to brands for issues, the person responding to those inquiries should be well-versed in handling customer service replies.
Delegating the maintenance of your social media accounts to your executive assistant will no doubt save you time. It will also help you grow and maintain a networking circle that can benefit you greatly in the long-run. Your executive assistant can help with your social media goals, ensuring you stay on brand and connected.