Social just ain’t an admins job.

6th October 2022

Behind every brilliant business there is a proactive, efficient, warm admin assistant. Preferably one with eight arms, enough heart space for everyone, and an organisational brain of an air traffic controller! We’ve got Jess, and she’s pretty damn good. (No sorry, you can’t have her, you’ll have to get your own!) The admin/studio assistant role often has fingers in many department pies, from helping out with those 5 minute jobs to lending a hand on larger scale projects. Our Jess is always on her feet, juggling weird and wonderful tasks left right and centre, happy to help with anything and everything. However, although we know Jess is happy to help, and is always here to support our team, an admins role should not be treated as a one size fits all role. It is common that those in these support roles, often get tasked with marketing and social media duties too, particularly in smaller and family run businesses, often with little or no training but with big expectations. 

Can you just post about this quickly…

Let’s flip it for a moment and instead meet Jess’s desk neighbour, Social Exec, Char. Whilst they work side by side, their day to day tasks are extremely different.

Creating content, strategy planning, checking insights and managing online communities; Char’s days are often more structured and of course content focused. A mistake a lot of businesses make these days is to lump their administrator with the job responsibilities of a social exec. Frankly, this is often caused by businesses’ lack of understanding as to how powerful social media is as a marketing tool. There’s more to it than people imagine. We can hear Char concurring in the background as she juggles photographing flat lays, writing reports, scheduling content, project managing designers, contending with ad budgets…… *sigh.* Char and Jess might share the same desk, but they do not share the same job.

If everything is important then nothing is.

When you’re fully in the loop about what a social executive job role entails, it’s loop-Y to expect someone to do this alongside all the other expectations. Jess may be fantastic, even super human, but that’s just it. She’s human, not an octopus. We’d be lost without Jess in our studio. Imagine if she was off managing our social media accounts too? We’d be in big trouble as neither our studio or our social strategy would get the attention it deserves. 

So, just for fun, we asked Jess how she would feel if we added social media onto her job list. Her eyes filled with panic at the thought! After much reassurance this was purely hypothetical, she started to imagine what she might struggle with. One of her worries was the fact that she would always have to have an awareness and understanding of the current trends and movements, as well as knowing the best way to create ideas that would stand out and grab a user’s attention.

Jess actually has a degree in illustration so creating content could be fun, but the planning, consideration and algorithms behind this? With no training to support her or the time to dedicate to the cause, Jess draws blank. Funny that.  

Despite what a lot of business owners think, social media marketing is more than a couple of posts on Facebook here and there, it’s a whole other channel to drive traffic to your website or door, that needs careful implementation and navigation behind it to promote your business correctly. To be effective content should be strategic, using considered posts to utilise the most current algorithmic changes, trends and movements that work to benefit your business and increase traffic and conversions. It’s not a bolt on for an admin. It’s a fully fledged, full time in house position, or should be outsourced to a reputable social media agency. 

Social media marketing will pay for itself, but only if it is right. 

Char has created a finely tuned process to help businesses’ social presence boom – her secret? Consistency. Whilst your admin may have to dip in and out of many jobs, having a designated social media executive means that their eyes are always on the prize. Your business presence will be consistent in terms of both regularity, aesthetics, voice and purpose. Other key workings of a good social strategy include:

• Getting into the nitty gritty of your audience and what they want
• Keeping on top of the (many and continual) platform updates 
• Wrapping your head around paid social campaigns 
• Liaising with design to make sure branding is spot on, consistent and emotive
• Creating, reviewing and amending, reviewing, amending, reviewing, amending and then sticking with targeted strategies.
• Running internal workshops to make sure your business is getting the most out of their social presence 
• Connecting your social output with your marketing as a whole via blogs, digital marketing and outreach

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

Ultimately, for your social presence to bring a return on investment, you need to invest in someone who has all hands on deck and a deep understanding of your business and goals, alongside a rich industry insight. If you don’t have the budget to support that, you could be better off not posting on social media at all, and instead simply focusing on ensuring your Google my Business presence is sharp and that your reviews are nice and shiny. Whilst it won’t gain you lots of new customers, it will keep your online reputation respectable.

We pride ourselves on getting to know your business, as if we were part of your team (our clients would be our specialist subject on mastermind).

What’s the takeaway from this? 

We’ll say it one more time. Managing your social media presence is not a job for an already busy admin assistant. It deserves time, care and attention to craft into something your business can be proud of, and that importantly gets you sales.  If you need the help of someone who really knows their way around social media, especially for businesses, why not get in touch with us and see how we can help you? From consultancy to full management, we’re sure we have a package fit for you.

Oh, and appreciate your Jess’s.