How not to lead a social media team

Want to make life unnecessarily difficult for your social team?

Here are 7 sure-fire ways to do just that (and what to do instead).

1. Tell them to write a strategy, then disappear

Give someone a deadline, tell them you need a social media strategy by next month, and wish them luck.

Even better - offload the job to the most junior person in the team because they “do the socials”.

Writing a strategy includes making difficult organisational choices - who you are trying to reach, what you’re trying to achieve, what you will prioritise, what you won’t do, and how much risk you’re prepared to take.

Managers and leaders need to be involved in making those decisions.

You don’t need to hold the pen on the strategy, but you need to help shape it, clear any obstacles, involve the right people, and get outside help when the team needs it.

And once those decisions have been made? Get out of the way.

2. Ask to approve everything

Nothing says “empowered team” quite like sending every post to three managers for sign-off, effectively begging for permission to do their job.

Once you have a strategy, with clear expectations and sensible guardrails, let your people cook.

You don't have to personally like or even understand their ideas. If they think something will work, let them test it. 

Your job is to create an environment in which good judgement can develop and flourish.

Then, when something occasionally goes wrong (as it will), absorb the heat from above.

3. Leave the numbers to the social people

There are lots of things you don't need to know about the day-to-day mechanics of social media.

Performance isn't one of them.

You should know what your team is trying to achieve, how they are measuring it, and whether things are getting better.

That means understanding more than follower numbers and monthly reach.

Look at both leading and lagging measures, understand what “good” actually looks like for your organisation, and hold people accountable for the things they can genuinely affect.

If you're managing a social media function but can't explain whether it is performing well, you've outsourced too much of the job.

4. Only intervene when you want them to tone something down

I hate most approval processes because they are overwhelmingly one-way streets, where the manager only pipes up when they want to pull things back. 

That sucks. 

If you're going to intervene, it shouldn't always be to pull things back. 

Sometimes your job is to ask, can we go further? Can we make it funnier? Could this be a series? Why don’t you try the weird idea you’ve been talking about?

Approval processes should encourage putting the pedal to the metal as much as slamming on the brakes.

5. Never actually do any social media yourself

You may not have to write posts or respond to comments, but do it anyway. 

Not often, but every now and then, get stuck in managing a feed for a few hours. Remind yourself what it feels like to actually push publish, nervously watch the comments arrive, then decide how to respond.

It is remarkably easy to forget how exposed some of this work can make you feel when you've spent a few years sitting a level or two above it.

And then sign that response off with your name - own it.

6. Let committed people work all the time

Good social teams care about their work, and they care about each other. 

That’s good, but can easily turn into checking comments after dinner, messaging each other when they see something interesting, and keeping half an eye on the feed on Sunday morning.

It is the manager's job to prevent this.

If that means having a dedicated, paid, after-hours system or simply turning off comments between 5pm and 9am, do what you need to do.

You can’t just say “just switch off” to people who care deeply about their work and their audiences - you have to design the work so they actually can.

7. Treat every bad day like a crisis

There will be brilliant posts and terrible posts. There will be days when everyone loves you and days when the comments section turns into a dumpster fire at a toxic waste plant.

Keep it in context, and create space to talk about it.

Debrief difficult moments, laugh about the absurd ones (so many), work out what you can learn (if anything) then quickly move on.

There is enough pressure to perform with all the constant audience feedback, in-your-face platform metrics, media attention, and internal reckons from people who think they know social media. 

Don’t add to that.

Your job is to absorb some of that pressure, restore a little perspective, and make sure a bad day on social doesn’t become a bad week for the person running it.

Want to lead social better?

Your team may understand the platforms better than you do, but you’re still responsible for the direction, decisions, resources, risks and results.

That’s hard if you’re not sure what good looks like, what the numbers actually mean, what questions to ask, or when to challenge the team and when to trust them.

That’s why I created Leading Social Media - a private programme for communications managers who want to understand the work, make better decisions, and lead their social media team with more confidence.

Check out the course here, or get in touch to see if it’s right for you.