Alice Williams — June 25, 2017 — June 25, 2017
Summer is upon us, which means your social media team has a barrage of big days like Father’s Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day to plan content around.
During this busy season, social media teams are tasked with generating a wealth of new content on short deadlines, responding to hundreds of comments, and being available to tackle last-minute requests for posts on evenings and weekends.
How do you help your team stay motivated when you know you’re asking a lot?
Here are a few simple tips for equipping your team to do their best work during a challenging time.
Bring the Entire Team on Deck
You hired (or outsourced) your rockstar social team because they’re great at what they do, but even they can benefit from some fresh perspective from time to time.
In fact, the majority of social teams are comprised of just one to three people.
Don’t be afraid to invite other team members to brainstorm sessions to foster new ideas and ways of thinking if your small, overworked social team is feeling the threat of burnout.
Some companies choose to adopt an all-employee social media strategy, providing incentives to encourage all employees to post about work on their personal feeds.
Whether or not you choose to take it this far, a few new faces around the brainstorming table could push your social team in new and innovative directions at a time when they really need it.
Make Shut-Eye a Social Media Team Priority
Over the course of one month, five percent of adults admitted to falling asleep while driving in 2015. It’s not a stretch to say that sleep deprivation is a widespread issue across the U.S. right now.
Plus, the myriad consequences of being sleep deprived can have measurable effects in the workplace.
Far from just being drowsy, overtired employees are more prone to irritability and shorter attention spans—far from ideal during the demanding summer season.
Excessive stress during busy times for the company can trigger insomnia for some, which leads to fatigue and reduced productivity during the day, starting a cycle of sleep deprivation and sub-par performance.
Whether your team’s poor sleep habits are directly related to work or not, reminding your team to make healthy sleep habits a priority can help ensure that inadequate sleep doesn’t impact their ability to create quality content.
Have a Laugh or Two
When your social media team has a lot on their plate, team bonding and other downtime activities often fall by the wayside in favor of longer hours and truncated small talk.
In fact, it’s during these times you should be striving to maintain and strengthen your team’s bonds. Though you may not have as much flexibility, you can still encourage your team to come up for air from time to time.
Staying on trend is a huge part of your social team’s job, and if they spend all of their time responding to comments and creating content solo, they won’t be exposed to new ideas.
A simple discussion about a new restaurant or a weekend getaway could foster the spark of creativity needed for another round of rich, relevant content.
Plus, researchers have found that laughing as a team fosters bonding and feelings of contentment, with laughter-filled meetings leading to “more productivity and more innovative solutions.”
Take a Look at the Big Picture
Spending hours editing and fine-tuning individual posts can leave your social media team struggling to understand how those smaller tasks are impacting the business can be difficult, especially when more demanding workloads reduce communication.
Be sure to take the time to let your team know how social campaigns and strategy fit into broader marketing and overall goals for the company, and try to remind them that they’re making a difference as individuals and as a part of a team.
A sense of being valued, especially for new or smaller role team members who may feel their contributions are nominal, is a powerful one.
Recognize Your Social Media Team
On small social media teams with loosely defined roles and the expectation that everyone will “pitch in,” the importance of communication and recognition is paramount to employee motivation.
Starting from as far up in the organization as possible, effective communication helps everyone stay on the same page, even when the workload is heavy.
By recognizing your hard-working social media team, you can solidify a sense of appreciation for teams both among their peers, who may not know just how much they’ve been doing, and upper management.
Pushing through a summer heavy on social demands doesn’t have to leave you with drained and overworked team members.
With a few simple strategies, you can equip your social team with what they need to stay creative and focused through a tough time of the year.
Challenge yourself to address your team’s needs, and you’ll all reap the benefits.
How do you motivate your social media team? Let us know in the comments section below!
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