Why Social Media Managers Must Be Swiss Army Knives

A social media manager can’t show up to work and “just do social media” without having an awareness or even mastery of the other parts of the business.

Without actually understanding how the business operates, the only “social” aspect of the media would be responses like “okay” or “we’ll get back to you” or worse, a non-reply. Strategy is important, yes, but it can’t be done in a silo. It must incorporate the other functions of the business in order to be comprehensive. Here are a number of scenarios that exhibit why your business’s social media manager must be a swiss army knife:

A customer complains in the Facebook Inbox.

What’s your messaging strategy for complaints or negative feedback? The answer to this could take the social media manager down several different paths. Do they show sympathy and offer some sort of refund or replacement? Do they escalate the issue to upper management? Do they try to solve the problem themselves? Do they refute the complaint or ignore it altogether? Your messaging strategy must be consistent and coordinated across the entire business so that it trickles down to what is really just a run-of-the-mill social media happenstance. The social media…