4 important tips on managing social media for multiple locations

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In business today, brand identity is everything. This is especially true for large companies with multiple offices and locations. You want customers to recognize and respond to your messages across all vehicles and platforms. Increasingly, that includes social media. With help from a public relations firm, you can bring order to complex, large-scale social media challenges.

Tips to maintain a coordinated social media existence

Develop a standardized presence.

Although you have a multitude of departments, locations, personnel and maybe even different products and brands, it’s vital that when customers see any of it, they can still distinguish your unique signature. Staying consistent will help you avoid unnecessary confusion, duplicated or mixed communication and audience misunderstandings.

Your social media presence is likely too big and multifaceted for just one person to manage. Using a PR agency for this task will let your staff focus on other marketing strategies.

Create a comprehensive social media policy.

Each department and location may have different goals and objectives. For example, your information department might need to measure the effectiveness of an ongoing campaign, while the sales team in a newer location could just be trying to reach new website visitors.

No matter who is handling your social media platforms, there needs to be one set of rules and one voice. A good PR firm can help you produce a complete social media policy for your entire organization to follow, along with how to measure success on every outlet.

Take control.

You see it all the time: some company in crisis due to employees and social media channels run amok. Sometimes, it’s staff mistakenly using company platforms for personal messages. Other times, there are simply too many people and pages all being listed as official company profiles. Then there are those pages that are simply dormant or forgotten, leaving your business vulnerable to dangerous hacks.

It’s important that your company only have social media profiles that you control. Get a PR agency to take inventory of what’s out there and make sure all pages are in line with your current messages. They can also handle taking down old, unnecessary or imposter pages, which, depending on the platform, is not always an easy job. In addition, you might find customers who have created fan pages. These you can’t control, but you can engage with these brand ambassadors and use them to your advantage.

Hire a PR firm to help with social media.

Getting every social media team from each branch or location in one place to discuss your social media issues can be difficult. It’s even harder to come to a consensus on things like objectives, calendars and results, both company-wide and departmental.

With the right PR agency, your company can develop a social media management system to work throughout your entire organization. At Axia Public Relations, we will help you create great content, generate organizational support and turn your social media chaos into a well-functioning instrument for your success. To find out more, contact us now or download our e-book The Essential Social Media Guide.

Lisa Goldsberry is a writer for Axia Public Relations with more than 15 years of public relations experience. She specializes in business and technology PR. Lisa has worked for Axia since December 2013. Learn more about Lisa Goldsberry. Connect with Axia on Twitter @axiapr or tell us what you think in the comments below.