As a Content Marketing Manager, I deal with words all day long. I’m always writing, editing, reading, or posting on social media in the name of Atlassian’s Jira products including Jira Coreand Jira Service Desk. When it comes to social media, the details are key. Every word, every character, and every image counts toward building the company’s brand persona. People pay attention to what’s trending, funny hashtags, and if your brand is proficient in meme-ry. (Is meme-ry a word?)
Companies rely on social media marketing to communicate with their customers. They need to respond to tweets and trending events on twitter promptly and appropriately, for we all know the collective internet is a harsh critic. For example, if something in the product breaks, companies need to bring their “A” game, reviewing and responding to customer tweets tactfully and on-brand.
It’s my job to make sure our customer’s voices are heard, and I handle their concerns with care. But for my day-to-day activities, I’m juggling with marketers from different product teams trying to post a message and reach multiple target markets. Everyone’s trying to get a specific message out in a space with a lot of noise. It can be a lot of heavy lifting when you’re running a social media account for a worldwide brand.
Social media strategy and process
The variety of social media channels offer brands many ways to engage with customers, to learn about what they love, and what they’re not so crazy about. When it comes to social media presence, nearly all brands focus on the big three: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
As for me, when I want to get a message out to the masses, I use Twitter. I love it because it’s so easy to provide followers with those key soundbites you’d want them to remember about your product or brand. But, Twitter can be a pretty chaotic place if not monitored correctly. Tweets can be misinterpreted and tarnish a brand. Because I want to balance timeliness with getting the right message across, process is crucial. Without a good process, we run the risk of getting the messaging wrong and turning off customers. Or if we obsess over process, we could miss out on the real-time conversation that Twitter’s best for.
Without a good process, we run the risk of getting the messaging wrong and turning off customers.
That’s why when someone on my team wants me to tweet for them, there’s a process. I’ve created a set of guidelines that provide me with clarity, expectations, and most importantly, relevant information. In the past, gathering information wasn’t easy. My team would request a tweet via email, then email me again with edit after edit. I was receiving quite a few requests a day and it wasn’t possible to keep everyone sane with this process. I needed to figure something else out, and fast. In true Atlassian fashion, I looked to our own tools to help us: Jira Core.
How I use Jira Core
Jira Core is a project and task management tool used by all business teams, including social media marketing teams. So instead of pouring through endless email threads for information, I asked my team to give me the following information, neatly organized for me in Jira Core:
- Requester name
- Purpose (what’s this tweet for?)
- Proposed date/time
- Proposed text
- Any relevant links
- Any hashtags
- Any photos or media
I take the requests, analyze, and prioritize them for the week, so they’re ready to go by the proposed scheduled date. But, because things happen so fast on Twitter, I can also use Jira Core to tweet requests within a five-minute warning – it’s all about how fast my teammates can file the ticket.
Jira Core gives me an out-of-the-box workflow: To-do, In Progress and Done, so I can keep track of what I’m working on and have tweeted.
- To-do is the state for all incoming Twitter requests.
- In-Progress means that I’ve reviewed the request, have fact-checked the information, and it’s ready to post.
- Done means I’ve posted.
Pretty simple.
By using Jira Core, it’s my job to ensure all goals are met, and everything moves along as planned. I, along with the team, track the progress of the pending tweets from to-do to done. Working in Jira Core lets the team see posts in the queue while preserving my sanity. I don’t have to chase down information via email – it’s all right there in the ticket.
And that’s what teamwork is all about. How does your team tackle social media? Leave a note for us in the comments, and be sure to check out Jira Core.