One of the most common problems organizations face is the social media rockstar. Now, you may say, hold on there – a social media rockstar is a good thing! It gets our brand visibility, it gets conversation going, it gives a public face to the organization. All of these are good things, important things, but the problem isn’t the person. The problem is the structure. A social media rockstar by default is a single point of failure, a shatter point that, if it breaks for any reason, breaks a whole bunch of things.

The most common problem is that your rockstar leaves and represents another organization, potentially even a competitor in places where non-compete agreements are unenforceable. It’s not just leaving, though – lots of different, complex, difficult situations can arise where you lose a visible personality in an organization.

So how do you deal with this situation? Some organizations just bury their heads in the sand and make blanket decrees that employees shouldn’t go out and be rockstars. I’d like to think that the ideal solution is one that’s an actual employee benefit: increase the number of rockstars you have until you have a full bench. Rather than just a star quarterback, have a star team.

Be in the business of building rockstars.

There are countless recipes for building the social media authority of individuals. The simplest, lowest overhead recipe that works is what I call the rule of 5.

Find 5 things a day to share, only 1 of which should be related to your company, and suggest that employees share those things. You can do this with a variety of tools; one of the easiest is Buffer, which not only lets you schedule social media updates across social networks but also gives you relevant suggestions for content.

Find 5 people a day to follow, ideally in the topic area that your company is a part of, on each social network. Tools like Klout are a decent starting place for the individual employee to work with, particularly if they are not super socially savvy.

Read 5 relevant articles, blog posts, or news items a day that increase your knowledge of your space and industry, whether or not you share them, so that when you do engage in social conversations with other people, you’re well-read and well-informed.

That’s it. That’s the simple recipe to teach to employees to get them started on an upward social media trajectory. Start to finish, it will probably take between 30 and 60 minutes a day; you can make the process more efficient by curating recommendations for your employees in all three categories so that they don’t have to do the digging themselves. If you provided all of the data above to employees, the process could take as little as 15 minutes a day.

Build up your staff to grow as many rockstars as possible!

2 Comments

NicoleMillerbooks on July 1, 2014 at 12:50 pm

Hi there Christopher!

This is a fantastic post! I really like your rule of 5 — it isn’t an incredibly daunting number nor is it too little. Such great words of wisdom and we really appreciate the Buffer shoutout!

Cheers!
Nicole
Community Champion at Buffer
Takis Athanassiou on July 4, 2014 at 2:53 am

Excellent approach, Christopher. I like very much the rule of 5 and your suggestions. But I believe most people lack the necessary discipline when social media involve and they loose too much time in beyond their original scope intentions. Other than that, I totally agree with your approach, Christopher. Thank you for sharing.