TEAM SYSTEMS: HOW YOU WORK TOGETHER
Keep everyone paddling in the same direction
Once you have created a piece of content, you need to get it seen. One of the best ways to do that is through social media, but whether you’re a small group with volunteers or a larger national group with many staffers, coordination of what’s going out and when can be a big challenge.
In fact, managing to keep all the moving pieces together while keeping the magic mix of your channel balanced is one of the biggest frustrations social media managers at animal shelters report.
So whether you have one person each of your content channels (blog, Facebook, Instagram, etc), or you have multiple volunteers adding to everything, you’ll need to ensure everyone is on the same page, can easily access the information needed, and that content gets shared in a timely and regular manner.
Here’s a quick way how:
1. Set up a central folder (Google Drive is a great tool for this) and give every member of the team access to it.
2. Inside the folder, organize all of the information that your team will need to promote your content across social media. An easy-to-use file structure might be:
ABC Animal Shelter Social Media
a) 2018 Editorial Calendar (A shared spreadsheet that everyone has access to)
b) Campaigns
– 042018 Pet Owner Independence Day
— Images & Graphics
— Overview & Copy
— Promotion Plan (in Word or Excel)
– 062018 Adopt-a-Shelter-Cat Month
– 082018 Bring Your Cat to The Vet Day
– 112018 Adopt a Senior Pet Month
– 122018 New Year, New You
Etc.
c) Sponsors & Partners
– Dog Walkers of ABC
— Logo & Brand Assets
— Partnership Agreement & Legal
— Co-Branded Materials
— Promotion Plan (in Word or Excel)
Etc.
d) Community Outreach & Education
– TNR Outreach
— Editorial plan (in Word or Excel)
— Drafts
— Images & Visuals
Etc.
e) Donations & Special Funds
– Funds overview (what fund does what and links to each in Word or Excel doc)
– Donation Goals and Benchmarks
– Donation Reporting
f) Reporting
– All social
– Campaigns
– Sponsors & Partners
– Donations & Special Funds
Etc.
3. A spreadsheet should be created for the year (aka 2018 Editorial Calendar) and a second one for each campaign (Adopt-a-Cat-Month).
4. Create a tab in the Editorial Calendar that links to the location of each of the campaign spreadsheets so you only have to know where the 2018 Calendar is to find any of the others.
5. In the campaign spreadsheet include the channel name, content type, drafts and photos or other relevant information about that piece of content. All copy and images needed to share it should be entered into that campaign spreadsheet through either linking to the location of the original or typing it in. That way, sharing down the road is efficient and messages are consistent. Likewise, anyone looking at the campaign sheet knows when things are going out.
a) Example columns may be:
– Title of content
– Date published/last updated
– URL of where original content can be found
– A brief description, including core purpose/message
– Facebook message example (this can be varied with each post but doesn’t have to be)
– Pinterest image 1 (direct link to the image on the drive)
– Pinterest image 2 (direct link to the image on the drive)
– Pinterest description (include keywords)
– Tweet 1
– Tweet 2
– Tweet 3
– Twitter image 1 (direct link to the image on the drive)
– Twitter image 2 (direct link to the image on the drive)
6. Whenever a piece of content needs to be shared, and no matter where it needs to be shared, the person doing it can simply pull the needed content from the spreadsheet and folder.
7. Suggested workflow:
- Have a single person (like an expert on the content) create the images and enter the text into the spreadsheet for others to pull from. This person is responsible to ensure look and voice/tone of the social media posts will remain consistent even though many different volunteers may be posting and scheduling the content.
- For a short-term campaign, fields can be added to the spreadsheet listing the date the piece of content should be shared and date is was actually shared (to confirm that the task is complete). It’s also a good idea, if you have several people posting to social media on your behalf, that you create a field where the person who posted enters their name.
- For evergreen-type content that will be shared annually or several times a year, you might want to duplicate the spreadsheet page and create one for each month of the year. You can then enter (copy and paste) the information for the piece of content to be shared into all of the months that it is appropriate. This makes remembering to share content easy because the information will be there when a person views the tab for that month.
- Days, weeks, or months down the road, someone won’t have to spend time finding and creating the right content to post. The social media content can certainly be tweaked if it’s not performing well, or to refresh it, but it likely won’t need to be
- It makes the process efficient because all of the content can be created at once and then all of the social media posts can be scheduled in one big batch when it’s time to share it
Besides the initial social media sharing, the purpose of the spreadsheet and folder system is to make sure that content is shared on a set schedule and findable, whether it be daily for a short campaign or a few times a year for evergreen educational content. Likewise, by having this system in place, someone can be more easily introduced to the workflow and be trained quickly.
