7 Ways for Social Media Teams to Improve Productivity
Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory states that employees in an organization generally feel some kind of disappointment at the workplace. So, no matter how immaculate your team compilation skills are, a certain degree of non-productivity will always creep in.
Does this mean that it is impossible to have a highly-focused and super-productive team that can accomplish allotted tasks within the stipulated time frames?
No! Amazing teams across the globe are still killing-it the right way. Of course, if you strive to achieve the best possible results, nothing can stop you to emerge as a winner.
So, what would it take to boost social media marketing productivity? And, how can a manager keep his/her social media marketing team focused and motivated at all times?
Let’s explore the ways to boost social media marketing productivity.
1. First Things First: Change Your Understanding of Productivity
Fraser Sutherland, marketing manager at Storage Vault, once said that most people think productivity is inflexible. This means that they have this notion that a factory worker can build one car per hour.
Thinking encouraging employees for overtime could help to boost productivity levels? Well, you need to understand that doing overtime on a regular basis causes annoyance and could result in high employee turnover. Set your employees’ minds at ease and enjoy high efficiency, consequently.
It is a proven fact that flexibility at the workplace boosts productivity and empowers team members to raise the bar. When employees are given options to work from remote locations, work at flexible hours, and report in a flexible manner, they produce better results. Flexibility at the workplace boosts morale and employee engagement.
Flexible work hours make the employees’ lives more convenient and boost their mental & physical state. In addition, when employees don’t have to worry about their reporting time, they are likely to work most actively.
You must delegate job roles and listen to your employees to make your work environment more healthy and engaging.
Now, let’s talk about the tips you need to keep in mind:
2. Give Your Day an Organized Start
Source: Freepik
This is one of the best ways to boost social media marketing productivity. There has always been a day in the life of social media marketing managers, which comes with a large to-do list that gets lengthier as time passes.
In this digital world where billions of people are swiping, reading, posting, and following social media stories on a daily basis, you cannot act like a slowpoke.
Setting daily goals and formulating to-do lists to complete important tasks seems the only way here. And creating a list of 100 tasks might look like a reliable solution. However, as the day passes, it becomes a source of pressure and affects work efficiency. The same is applicable to the team task allocation and work routine formulation.
While most of the tasks on your to-do list are critical, it is easy to lose sight of the ones that can actually make a difference at the end of the day.
So, make use of online calendars, time-tracking tools, and project management software, etc. to keep your day organized. Unparalleled project management tools like ProProfs Project help you keep the day organized by offering indispensable features.
Takeaway: Compile a worklist that makes you feel accomplished by the end of the day. Set a priority for all the tasks on your to-do list and ensure that it is followed meticulously.
3. Use Automation Technology
Make use of the robust and reliable automation technology to take care of regular chores. To boost social media marketing team productivity, you can consider autoresponders, automated email workflows, drip marketing campaigns, etc.
By means of automation, you can empower your team to accomplish much more and in a short timespan.
Some of the social media management tips are:
- Lead scoring and Email Tags
- Dynamic Content
- Social Media Integration
- Landing page
- Live performance graphs
- Drag and drop editor
- Advanced segmentation and filters
- Push notifications and SMS campaigns etc
A majority of the workforce is comprised of millennials, and most of them prefer using their gadgets and smart devices during their leisure time. So, offer them the luxury to work remotely, but keep a close eye on whether assigned tasks are being done or not by deploying the right tool.
Are you worried about that deploying multiple automation tools can affect your business’s bottom line? Opt for customized versions of project management software with added functionalities.
Takeaway: The decision to opt for a team-friendly work approach and automation tools can enhance team productivity and help to build a work culture that is suitable for the modern-day workforce.
4. Refine Your Internal Communication
Source: Freepik
The team size amplifies with business expansion, and this makes internal communication quite tough. As a result, work-related issues take place and slow you down significantly. Therefore, it is important to strive for proper internal communication.
Keep your ears and eyes open for any misunderstandings, lost chunks of information, and any lack of awareness among teams or departments. The moment you encounter an issue, make sure that you resolve it right away.
The importance of a robust internal communication cannot be neglected as it ensures proper dissemination of information & data that are relevant and crucial for ongoing projects. When your team members are updated with a new piece of information, they are likely to adjust according to the situation and bring desired results to the table.
This again brings us to the earlier point, where we said that it is important to have the latest automation technology to boost social media productivity. So, bring a team collaboration tool into your business operations and boost internal communication.
When we talk about internal communication, we cannot skip the importance of leveraging the right channels for information and data collection. Information-hungry teams that know how to differentiate between credible and average sources of information and news, make amazing clique for social media marketing.
Takeaway
Hone your internal communication network so that all the team members stay on the same page, and no time gets wasted in recapturing the facts or generic information.
5. Motivate Your Team and Make Sure You Do so as a Habit
‘Getting people motivated is not easy, especially when there is no will.’
Unfortunately, most of the managers fail to understand this, which leads to a gap between their efforts and the results they get. As per a ten-year study done on more than 200,000 professionals, 79% of employees quit their jobs owing to a lack of appreciation.
Further, as per the Harvard Business Review, only 21% of the employees agree that they feel motivated when their performance gets evaluated righteously.
So, keep these suggestions in mind to bring the best out of your social media marketing team:
- Acknowledge your team for their hard work
- Create a friendly work environment
- Set new benchmarks while working on a complex activity to help out your social media team
- Pay attention to your team’s requests and then decide what can be done from the business’s point of view. Sometimes, SM teams want relaxation with regard to time or seek a better campaign budget. At this juncture, put yourself in their shoes to understand their demands in the best possible manner. In brief, opting for a customized or tailored approach for employee motivation is one of the best productivity tips for the social media team.
Takeaway: Motivation begins with the right recruitment. So, go the extra mile and devise employee-centric motivation strategies and programs to boost productivity at the workplace.
6. Encourage Autonomy Within Your Team
Social media marketing team members are a special breed that has to be socially aware, focused, and organized. Apart from being skilled in communication, writing, design, information gathering, and fact-skimming, they must possess world-class multi-tasking skills.
Expecting such people to follow work routines or a strict set of rules corresponding to their designations is just like giving an invitation to unnecessary problems. The fuzzy nature of being a social media marketing professional makes it difficult to bind one professional with one type of job. This will not only hamper their growth but also limit their horizons.
Instead of setting rigid job roles like a typical boss, you must encourage autonomy and make them realize the importance of being a contributing teammate. Don’t stress yourself with micromanagement and develop a sense of being accountable in every employee.
Opt for simple rules and develop a friendly work culture to make your social media marketing campaigns.
Takeaway: Encouraging open communication is the key to enhance social media marketing productivity, as shared expertise generally wipes out loopholes from the root.
7. Equilibrium Between Meetings and “Do Not Disturb” Hours
Source: Freepik
As per the recent studies, professionals have the following perception towards meetings:
- 71% of them find meetings unproductive and inefficient
- 64% of the employees feel that meetings take a toll on deep thinking
- 62% of the employees feel that meetings fail to bring the team members closer
By now, you must have realized how the so-called important ‘Monday meetings’ are perceived by your team.
So, should there be no meetings at all? The answer is downright NO!
Once in a while, you can skip meetings and encourage your social media marketing team to work in their desired manner. By doing this, you uplift your social media productivity and develop a stress-free environment.
Daily meetings hamper the work pace, which indirectly puts unnecessary pressure on employees to complete the most important tasks on time.
Another novel method to boost social media marketing productivity is to have Do-not-disturb hours. Give your team at least 2 to 3 hours of uninterrupted work every day so that they can concentrate on their job completely. There are many smart time collaboration tools that let you keep track of DND hours
The benefit of using such tools is that you get timely notifications whenever a team members turn the do-not-disturb flag on. This enables you to check the status of the entire team or different teams on one page without any hassle.
So, start using smart and effective meeting planners to boost communication quality and save a significant amount of time.
Takeaway: Stop the meeting madness and opt for a better meeting strategy. Meetings are important and fruitful. However, they are not more valuable than completed tasks and focused employees. Give your employees time to accomplish the most important tasks without interruptions.
Other ways to boost social media marketing productivity are:
- Be agile while working on anything and support agile work schedules. Social media marketing requires an agile working approach, as the data relevance has a short lifespan. The stats change in the span of a few days and become useless if they don’t get used at the right time. An agile work approach makes sure that your social media marketing team works at a required pace.
- Have a strategy, make a plan, formulate goals, and follow them. Devising strategies by employing an in-house knowledge base will certainly help you train teams in such a manner that boosts the productivity of your organization. Plus, it will build a distinct company culture and result in high employee retention.
- Have a positive learning curve for the entire team. Explain why learning new skills, technology, and acquiring expertise over new domains can help in bettering one’s career. You can also reward the employees with better learning curves to boost the culture of self-learning and growth on the individual level.
- Presentation, data analytics, copywriting, designing, and communications are some areas that always have a scope of learning. Motivate your employees to enhance their skills in these areas. You can even organize seminars periodically for the same.
- Never leave your team under the pump, as it will affect your business’s growth sooner rather than later. So, keep an eye out on work progress to learn about those team members that have multiple tasks in hand and a tight time window. After this, outsource tasks if it’s urgent, otherwise, you can put them on hold. This can do wonders for you and your business.
These are some smart productivity tips for the social media team that you can follow as a manager. However, this is not all because productivity-boosting techniques evolve with the evolution of modern workplaces, modern workforces, and innovation in tech. So, one just cannot stick to one practice or the best-practice paradigm to keep the social media marketing team productive.
In short, never rely on a one-size-fits-all approach!
We hope that this discussion proves helpful to you. Let us know which strategies you have implemented and how’s the outcome in the comment section.
Thanks!
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