How are you managing your Social Media Team?

                   We are the Facebook Generation (even those of us "too old" to be born with it). Business, Pleasure, Networking, Reconnecting - we sort of take for granted that several years ago we simply weren't able to communicate the way are able to now. We didn't have access to celebrities, major corporations, or private lives the way we do now. Of course all along the way to discovering this great new communication tool there have been organizations attempting to use the system to it's advantage - and in thus was born the idea of a "social media job."

                    Major Corporations had the upper hand and the capital to begin forming the first social media teams, leaving many smaller organizations and non-profits scrambling to  achieve similar ends with zero budget and limited staff. This is where I entered the scene. As an adult returning student I had some strange mix of real world experience and past online experience (including chat room navigation and mass emails that in retrospect really looked a lot like whiney blogs) that prepared me for a dive into the social media pool. I learned a lot from simply watching what people posted, analyzing how the networks shaped discussions, and figuring out what people responded to most in my personal networks. There appeared to be a greater application, and I found some success in my region.

                    However, I'm going to be the first to tell you - nothing I accomplished was on my own. Sure I sort of took over a few networks as the main (only) poster. It wasn't a hostile take-over, I just simply felt compelled to fill the "dead air" with content I thought was important and it totally worked. But all the while my classmates took on other aspects of what my social media program work - event organization, project management, generating student involvement, extending reach, etc. But they're all gone now!Some suffered at the hands of budget cuts, the rest graduated... and I am now the "I" in social media (acting as both of them really, with a few superfluous i's thrown in there for jobs outside my experience and irony)

Read the great article that goes with this picture here
Social Media Burnout and why You shouldn't try to do it all

                 I realized that for every organization out there who relies on one social media person - there is an organization getting itself ready to perish online once that person leaves or achieves burnout; not to mention that one individual can't contribute the quality insight and content population that makes social media "magic." What's worse is some organizations throw people who aren't adept or interested in the realms of social media. This basically gives them the end result of a bored and apathetic employee and little social media strength to back up their company objective.

                Having lost at least one person that made an impact in my networking abilities with my greater organization... I can tell you, now that he's gone, that losing him was immediately noticeable in the page(s) that he manged. Not only that, but he -despite his hardcore geek visage- was actually a pretty adept mediator in interpersonal communication (and as a bonus he was willing to give the newbs a shot with a little positive reinforcement on the side). These are the people you can't afford to lose on your Marketing Team and your skilled social media folk with strong communications skills are one of them. They are the ones that grow networks and keep their audience engaged. Ironically, in small networks, the same social media jobs they vie to create are cut in a budget crunch and the position is filled by someone doing 10 other things (most of which isn't updating your status).

          So from the other side of the screen, my world gets harder and burnout gets closer with the more skilled social media people I lose; so, I ask you - how are you managing your social media TEAM? It shouldn't be about one person managing your whole network - it should be about many people creating your network.