Photo by S O C I A L . C U T 

It’s super important to ask questions, and never more so than when coming up with a company-wide social media plan. You will never be able to live in someone else’s shoes, but through asking good questions, you can gather a better mental image of what that life might look like for them. I find doing so helps me relate to how other people act, as well as reposition how I think about my own life circumstances. It also helps uncover family lore, such as the story my grandmother recently told me about her father faking a back injury so he didn’t have to go to her sister’s wedding (scandalous). Part of me wishes they had social media back then – I’m sure there would have been a passive-aggressive Facebook post about it! 

While this knack for asking questions is certainly helpful for me, it wasn’t something I immediately identified as valuable for social media. That is, until I started studying for my Social Media Strategist Exam with the National Institute for Social Media, and when going through the strategic planning unit came across the section on how to make your social media plan a company-wide effort. Just last week, I had the opportunity to listen to the NISM webinar Strategic Voices: Career Insights from Certified Social Media Strategists. What I took away from the webinar was how professionals in different industries can use social media to their advantage, and how they find it valuable. So, how can you most effectively use it in your own company? 

To Start Off 

Surprise! It starts with being curious and talking to people who have “different goals” than you. In theory, everyone in a company has the same goal – hopefully, in an overarching sense, the success of the company or product – but within departments, it is easy to get so focused on your own tasks that you forget about the larger vision. There is a huge missed opportunity when the social media team stays in their own silo. Not only is it possible to promote the wrong products or target the wrong demographic, but there are benefits for other departments to work with the social media team. Customer service may find they have to answer less unexpected questions, and sales can benefit from sharing the good work of the marketing team. For best results, the entire company should be involved in social media. 

How Do You Do It? 

You have to make sure that as many voices and perspectives as possible are present when coming up with your strategic plan. Additionally, they must be comfortable with sharing their thoughts. Departments that are particularly impacted by social media are Sales, Human Resources, Product Development, and Customer Service. However, it can be argued that almost all departments can have some connection to social media. Even for the C-suite, it has never been more important to establish a positive social media reputation. Everyone on all levels should be involved!  

Why? 

By coming up with a cross-functional social media strategy, you ensure that there are not only goals set that reflect the whole company, but also that the success of the social media plan is important to the whole company. Just one example of why social media is important for a different department, almost half of customers now prefer to give feedback on social media. Customer Service, therefore, needs to be in the loop when it comes to a social media strategy, as well as social media maintenance, because that is now where a lot of their data will come from. 

Communication between departments is also key. Think about a company that may need to close down one of its locations. If Public Relations chooses not to share it with the social media team, this could be a real problem. For one, the social media team might have planned to promote this location later in the year and already have created content showcasing it. Additionally, if the social media team is not prepared for the closing of that location, they will have no strategy for dealing with the negative feedback that could show up on their social media platforms. Which again loops back into Customer Service and complaints; it’s all connected! 

Don’t Stop 

Once a social media strategy is formed, and you have gathered a plethora of voices and opinions across different departments to form a plan, that is not the end. Throughout the implementation of the social media strategy, and as things are tweaked and more information is gained, it is so important to continue to check in with other departments. Ideally, the other departments are also part of the implementation. 

Bio: 

Cassandra Hultgren was an intern at the National Institute for Social Media, where she gained experience in social media strategy and began pursuing her Social Media Strategist certification. She graduated from Luther College in 2024 with a degree in Communications and French, which means she can explain a branding campaign and order croissants correctly. Now based in sunny Arizona, when she’s not crafting content or juggling hashtags, she runs a coloring book business and explores her love for all things visual communication—markers and metrics included.