How good is our communications?

THE ONLY SOCIAL COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK YOU NEED

Overview

Welcome to the latest article in our SU Social series, where we take a look at the social media & mobile marketing & communication tips, tools, and tactics for each students’ union.

Each of part of the series have been de-constructed, carefully selected, and properly sequenced for easy understanding and usage so that you don’t have to sift through the thousands of articles on the web. And apply these strategies right away.

Today’s topic to explore is the Competencies for Students Unions.

SUsocial Competency Rings

It’s broken into 4 parts

1. Development Review Worksheet
2. Organisational Competencies
3. Social Squad/ Team Competencies
4. Recap*: Behavioural Competencies

*if you’re a sabb — find it from that lead and change training that you might have been too hungover to remember about. Check your handbooks (Toni Pierce editions onwards)

*print as many of these objectives section for the organisation & each staff responsible for social/mobile marketing

SOCIAL & MOBILE DEVELOPMENT REVIEW WORKSHEET

List social media activities here

OBJECTIVES

Eg: Increase brand awareness and engagement, Engagement acquisition, Educate customers (ie: clubs and societies, where to go for help, how to be better students), etc.

• List 3 to 5 objectives here.

METRICS

Eg: 1–2 facebook posts per day, Facebook page likes or net follows, Facebook reactions and comments, Facebook offer conversion, etc.

• List 5 to 7 metrics here.

PROGRESS

Create a table with three columns: Metrics, Previous Quarter Data, and This Quarter Data — to date.

• Populate this table accordingly

ACTIONS

Eg: create content folder with photos & videos, Create list of ideas for weekly offers/ campaigns/ contests/ etc. (brainstorm with each department), Define audiences to target via sponsored posts and ads, etc.

• List 7–9 tangible actions to take before the next review (preferably in the next quarter)

ORGANISATIONAL COMPETENCY SUMMARY

(Digital Evangelism, 2018)

Organisational Competency Map

1* | Fundamental

- Have profiles and ability to post, tag and share

2* | Basic

- Fundamental skills, and basic understanding, knowledge, and demonstration of Communication & content, Graphics, and Strategy

3* | Intermediate

- Basic skills and intermediate understanding, knowledge, and demonstration of Communication & content, Graphics, Strategy, Paid & targeted advertising, and Data analytics

4* | Advanced

- Intermediate skills and advanced understanding, knowledge, and demonstration of Communication & content, Graphics, Strategy, Paid & targeted advertising, and Data analytics

5* | Proficient

• Advanced skills and proficient understanding, knowledge, and demonstration of Communication & content, Strategy, Paid & targeted advertising, Data analytics, and Training.

ORGANISATIONAL COMPETENCIES EXPANDED

(Digital Evangelism, 2018)

1* | Fundamental

• Has one or more personal social media accounts;
• demonstrates ability to post text and pictures;
• ability to tag friends and share content

2* | Basic

1* skills +

Communication & Content:

• understands and operates within the unique cultural expectations needed for effective engagement and communication across a variety of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and blogs;
• demonstrates basic knowledge and use of hashtags;
• demonstrates ability to effectively search and browse for contacts, information, and resources in various platforms;
• understands topic trending and popular social media trends.

Graphics:

• demonstrates ability to select compelling images and crop.

Strategy:

• demonstrates basic knowledge of best times/days to post content;
• ability to articulate and understand various social media platforms and their roles

3* | Intermediate

2* skills +

Communication & Content:

• demonstrates ability to customize privacy settings;
• can find and use key hashtags (popular or niche) and create strong branded hashtags;
• can select relevant content and write basic marketing copy in various formats including text, links, video, visual and more;
• demonstrates basic ability to research and find interested audiences, influencers and potential partnerships;
• basic ability to cover events live on social media (live-tweeting, posting) and engage with online participants during an event;
• has knowledge of Twitter lists used to monitor competition, community needs and for content curation.

Graphics:

• demonstrates basic photo editing abilities as well as ability to overlay text;
• knowledge of and competency in various photo editing apps.

Strategy:

• demonstrates ability to contribute creative ideas to the larger strategy;
• basic implementation of strategy with supervision;
• basic knowledge of Hootsuite scheduling tools as well as in-platform scheduling tools.

Paid & Targeted Advertising:

• demonstrates basic knowledge of filters to target posts by age and demographic;
• basic knowledge of when and how to boost posts;
• ability to create trackable links.

Data Analytics:

• demonstrates basic understanding of key terms such as clicks, views, reactions, etc.;
• basic understanding of Google Analytics.

4* | Advanced

3* skills +

Communication & Content:

• demonstrates ability to negotiate online partnerships and cross-promotions;
• ability to create promotions packets for partnerships; ability to live-tweet panel discussions and engage with online participants live;
• knowledge of live-broadcasting tools and appropriate use;
• ability to critically evaluate content online for accuracy, bias, and authority;
• ability to adopt new tools and technology quickly and effectively.

Graphics:

• demonstrates ability to create high quality marketing images through a variety of software and applications;
• ability to design and edit images quickly for distribution in real time.

Strategy:

• demonstrates ability to develop and implement small campaign focused strategies with flexibility;
• knowledge of trends, industry standards, and emerging technologies.

Paid & Targeted Advertising:

• demonstrates ability to set up basic targeted ads (geo and demo), select compelling images, and write copy;
• ability to interpret performance data; ability to manage a budget.

Data Analytics:

• demonstrates ability to find and accurately interpret campaign data in Google Analytics;
• understanding of in-platform analytics;
• ability to compile reports and analyze data as well as communicate findings in a meaningful way to a broad audience.

5* | Proficient

4* skills +

Communication & Content:

• demonstrates high awareness of ethical and legal use of social media and Internet;
• high level of social intelligence needed to handle conflict resolution and crisis management within the digital community;
• ability to protect an organization’s brand and reputation;
• ability to manage several different brands and platforms simultaneously.

Strategy:

• demonstrates ability to develop and implement multiple complex strategies over multiple brands and platforms simultaneously with the flexibility required for dynamic environments;
• ability to create post-event strategies that extend community engagement and further foster meaningful relationships;
• ability to create buzz campaigns leading up to large events that generate broad awareness and encourages social media ambassadors to contribute actively, culminating in trending online locally or nationally;
• ability to anticipate social trends, tools and directions;
• ability to align needs with larger goals;
• ability to analyse strategic approaches and processes.

Paid & Targeted Advertising:

• demonstrates understanding of the principle behind social media algorithms and how to work with them to achieve marketing goals;
• ability to set up highly targeted ads (based on interests, behaviour, lookalike audiences, etc.);
• understanding of ad optimization and A/B testing; ability to run and monitor several ad campaigns simultaneously.

Data Analytics:

• demonstrates ability to set and determine meaningful goals; ability to measure progress quantitatively;
• ability to set goals in Google Analytics;
• ability to troubleshoot;
• comprehensive understanding of Google Analytics as well as other reporting software and tools.

Teaching & Training:

• demonstrates ability to communicate level-appropriate feedback to train and empower social media users in a variety of capacities and roles;
• ability to identify, evaluate and recommend tools that best suit an individual’s or organization’s needs;
• ability to promote strategic ways of thinking (proactive versus reactive).

SOCIAL SQUAD COMPETENCY SUMMARY

Rate each person to each competency between 1* to 5*

Squad & Individual Competencies

KNOWLEDGE

• Technology Savvy, and basic knowledge of online marketing, and websites
• Understanding and usage of social media monitoring and reporting tools
• Understanding of social platforms, and trends
• * Understanding and successful usage of SEO — SEO specific
• Base knowledge of digital and data laws in place, eg: GDPR , and what that means for the organisations social media tactics
• Effective Ad copy skills
• Knowledge of social platforms user agreements, privacy and policies
• Knowledge of all departments, service offerings, and product offerings in the organisation

SKILLS

• Strong copy skills (grammar, spelling, punctuation, plain language)
• Project management
• *Strong and clear speaking skills (both english and mother tongue) — video specific
• Multi tasking
• Strong online research skills
• Time management, and meeting deadlines
• Teamwork and interpersonal skills

ABILITIES

• Creative/ thinks outside the box
• Proactive on new trends
• Ability to examine social behaviors based on different student demographics
• Ability to establish goals, campaign strategy and establish metrics to meet them
• Ability to handle stress
• Problem analysis, judgement giving solutions
• Ability to understand student needs and experience/ empathy to their service needs
• Ability to develop and execute successful integrated social media campaigns including integrating social strategies to web content, web navigation and user experience
• Ability to nurture social relationships with BNOC (big names on campus) social influencers on campus

CHARACTERISTIC

• Communicative — communicates with their team and with staff and officers from other departments often
• Eager/ have a thirst for learning and learns quickly
• Keen eye for design
• Outgoing
• Self motivated
• Takes responsibility for actions
• Thinks quickly/ on their feet

SQUAD & INDIVIDUAL COMPETENCIES EXPLAINED

(Cao and Poorani, 2015)

KNOWLEDGE

1. Digital platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. )

Social media managers are supposed to have a comprehensive knowledge of the features and structures of those diverse platforms. The demographics they are designed to, the ways they are operated, and the influence they exert.

2. Systems Know-how

This includes the search engine optimization, social media analytical tools, basic knowledge for Web 2.0, paid search (pay-per-sale, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead), contextual search, knowledge of HTML and CSS coding. From this perspective, certain kind of IT background or knowledge is the prerequisite for the social media managers to monitor the daily operations of the social media websites and the successful distribution of a certain product or a travel plan.

3. Knowledge of internet marketing and knowledge of sales

It is essential for a social media manager to equip the knowledge of marketing and sales. It will facilitate them to direct the social media team to better promote a product with an ideal portfolio of diversified distribution channel.
For example, in relation to the distribution channels, it includes the common B2B and B2C operations.

4. Knowledge of agency setting and corporate setting

Since social media managers are responsible for the promotion of products and services, it is necessary for them to effectively and efficiently coordinate and communicate with the employees from other department to get more knowledge in order to provide more integrated background information for the customers. For instance, they are supposed to communicate with the IT department to acquire the IT support; they may cooperate with the department of marketing and sales to design a unique portfolio featured with a mixture of elements and present it on a specific website; they may work with the department of finance to obtain the price information; or even they may collaborate with the customer service department to help to deal with some reviews or complains on the virtual or real settings.

5. Basic knowledge of digital, data, and privacy laws in place

Experts suggested that it is vital for social media managers to follow the rules in order to fulfill their business goals. When it comes to the laws and rules, it includes the social networking site’s user agreements, privacy policies, company page policies, contest guidelines, advertising guidelines, and community standards and so on.

SKILLS

1. Strong creative blogging and writing skills

A competent writing skill is paramount for a social media manager to manipulate the effectiveness of the writing content for a product and service. This skill is about the adeptly using of the English grammar, good spelling, and punctuation, which are important for the image of company and social media managers. For the enrolled experts, “Creativeness” is second to none. A creative slogan or advertisement is decisive for the successful promotion of any brand or company. Take FedEx as an example, its 409 slogan is “Relax, it’s FedEx”, which is unique, easy to remember and differentiate from the competitors. Apart from that, interactive, customizable, contextual, entertaining, playable, useful features are the six foundations of a great social media promotion success.

2. Strong research skills

It is significant for social media managers to have strong research skills. That is to say, he or she can point a problem from the daily data or the reviews on the company’s website, analyze it and come up with a solution to deal with it. Moreover, it is more promising for a company if its social media managers obtain the skills to mine the “big data” from the current client pool; build conversations with the current or potential clients to consolidate and establish relationship with them.

3. Skills for multi-tasking in a certain time periods

It is common for a company to promote more than one product or service in a certain period. Under this circumstance, social media managers have to work with many tasks at one time. In this sense, they are supposed to have a strong power to withstand the stress and a competency to solve a multitude of problems in an ordered manner.

4. Project management skills

Since the design of a certain Internet marketing campaign is a project, then a project has to be completed in the right time for the right people. All projects are specific and unique, and vary widely in size and type. Besides that, projects are always multidisciplinary. It requires people with different knowledge and expertise, so it is complex in its nature. In consequence, he or she has to calculate the duration of each task, arrange their importance and deliver them smoothly in a predetermined way.

5. Leading skills

Just as all the managers, leading skill is one of the most important for social media managers. Managers ought to cultivate their own charisma for a specific group of people under a specific working environment. As they operate as internal consultants within the organisation.

6. Bilingual language skills

Thanks to globalization, market today has already expanded to a world scale instead of only a constrained region or country. Besides that, Internet also exists in a global scope. From this point of view, a social media manager will be better process the work if he or she is familiar with two or more languages. In other words, they are supposed to act as an excellent commander of both mother tongue and English.

ABILITIES

1. Ability to analyze a problem, provide judgment and give solutions

Quick thinking accounts for a large portion in the daily operation of social media managers. Due to the fast pace of the daily business and internet marketing, when encountered with a specific problem, social media managers should be able to point a problem exactly in time according to the data, analyze it, judge its attributes and come up with alternative solutions which can solve them directly or indirectly and choose the best one in a quick manner.

2. Ability to understand customers’ needs

According to experts, social media managers must have experience and some background in the customer service or have a strong sympathy towards the situation that a customer may encounter. Relating to the Internet service marketing, the process of customer decision making and evaluating services encompass all three stages, pre-purchase, service encounter, and post-purchase stage.

3. Ability to be proactive and active on new trends

Proactive ability means to act before some new things happen. Active ability means to fully engage oneself in the ones work and tasks. As cited in the literature review — -Harvard Business Review has surveyed 2100 companies, among them only 12% says that they tap the social media tool effectively and efficiently. In this sense, social media managers are supposed to create a vision for the company’s future on how to utilize the Internet to do marketing and how to realize the organization’s mission in a measured way.

4. Ability to think outside the box

Think outside the box, which is the synonym of creativity, serves as one of the most significant abilities that a social media manager should have. In common sense, an attractive website, which means a flashing combination of the design style, words’ color, sounds, pictures, will absorb customers’ attention in a glimpse of time and may in turn promote the sales and revenue for the organization. 410

5. Ability to establish goals, strategy, campaign and then establish the metrics to attain them

It is significant for a social media manager having the ability to build and execute the strategy as well as to establish a metrics to measure whether the strategy takes effect. Besides that, in order to make a strategy successful, social media managers could launch strategic campaigns, which comprise integrating social strategies to web content, web navigation, user experience, and along with nurturing social relationships.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS

1. Eager to learn and find differences

Our experts emphasized learning as an important attribute for social media managers. The preference to keeps one-self learning all the time, can pave the way that the person is informed, having a vision, and acting proactive and active before the new trends.

2. Self-motivated

A leader should be highly self-motivated and further monitor his or her employees or team members. For many companies, displaying passion for the product and services is one of the most important traits a social media manager could possess. It is the fierce passion that makes him or her keep motivated and provide the best presentation for the company, no matter in the virtual website or the real working environment.

3. Keen eye for design

This characteristic is signified by the ability of thinking outside the box. Just as what have been mentioned above, only when the web page is attractive to the customers, they will remain on that page, search the information and make a purchase decision in the end.

4. Futurist

This is the attribute associated with the ability to be proactive to the new trends. Social media managers should act as a futurist to create the vision for the company and direct the company to the foreseeing future. Besides the characteristics mentioned above, the participant experts also mentioned other characteristics that a social manager might have. It contains hardworking, empathy, patience, responsible, reliable, productive, ambitious, outgoing, and clever etc.

BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK SUMMARY

(National Union of Students UK, 2015)

NUS Individual Behavioural Competencies

Circle ★, or ✔, or ╳ as appropriate

Accountability | ★___✔___╳

Takes personal responsibility for the part they play in our students’ union, its mission and values, the student body and wider society

Student focus | ★___✔___╳

Keeps the needs of students at the heart of activities

Personal effectiveness | ★___✔___╳

Consistently role models high standards and good practice

Inclusivity | ★___✔___╳

Applies an understanding of equality and diversity to strengthen positive engagement in all our students’ unions activities and services

Results focussed | ★___✔___╳

Maintains commitment to targets and results, striving consistently to achieve them

Communications | ★___✔___╳

Helps to provide clear, consistent and appropriate messages at all levels of our students’ union and beyond

Political awareness | ★___✔___╳

Applies an appreciation of the political environment in which our students’ union operates

BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK EXPANDED

(National Union of Students UK, 2015)

1 ACCOUNTABILITY

Takes personal responsibility for the part they play in our students’ union, its mission and values, the student body and wider society

★ | Areas for celebrating & rewarding

• Helps to create through own work and with others ways for students to grow and achieve their aspirations
• Looks for ways to strengthen the contribution that our students’ union makes to positive developments in higher education
• Champions and helps to embed our values
• Challenges people and processes that are not ethical or socially responsible
• Looks for ways to actively support our communities

✔ | Areas for improving

• Understands and respects the governance arrangements within our students’ union and where approval needs to be made
• Trusted by colleagues and line managers to deliver consistently and honestly
• Takes responsibility appropriately and ownership of things to be done
• Helps others when they need it
• Provides updates to the right people at the right time
• Displays an awareness of the need to reduce our students’ unions environmental impact and manages own impact on the environment
• Is clear about and accountable to the stated requirements of our Students’ Union and its membership
• Supports others to be ethical and socially responsible

╳ | Areas for addressing

• Does not take ownership of issues or complaints
• Does not tell others when they see something wrong that needs improving
• Makes excuses and blames other people when things go wrong

2 STUDENT FOCUS

Keeps the needs of students at the heart of activities

★ | Areas for celebration

• Contributes significantly to improving the experiences of students and the wider student movement
• Takes a creative approach to problem solving and identifying innovative solutions that will appeal to a diverse audience and have the widest impact
• Comes up with creative approaches and solutions to new and emerging needs and services and ways to extend active membership within the student body
• Shares ideas and best practice with others e.g. institution, wider student movement, sector and other organisations

✔ | Areas for improvement

• Demonstrates positively how the needs of students can be at the heart of activities
• Understands how they affect the experience we create for our students
• Able to engage students, understand their current and future needs and identify ways to support them to achieve success
• Works collaboratively across our students’ union to improve the student experience and the services we offer
• Enables Sabbatical Officers to get more involved and engage with the broadest cross section of students
• Understand without doubt that we exist for our members

X | Areas for addressing

• Fails to listen to feedback, ideas or suggestions from students
• A poor listener and interpreter of key ‘messages’ from students
• Makes assumptions about what our students want or need
• Is resistant to change (in practice, systems etc.) which might benefit students and the delivery of the strategic aims of our students’’ union

3 PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Consistently role models high standards and good practice

★ | Areas for celebration

• Consistently enhances the image and impression of our students’ union and its work with stakeholders through their high standard of work
• Displays a commitment to the continuing development of our students’ union
• Brings outstanding thinking and contribution to their specialism
• Generates leading edge thinking in self and others that contributes to the development of a range of options for the future
• Looks for ways to actively share learning and best practice across our students’ union

✔ | Areas for improvement

• Understands and works with the student democracy
• Actively supports and enables student representatives
• Acts with integrity at all times
• Delivers on time as expected, to a consistently high standard
• Has the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job and keeps up to date in own field
• Is member focused
• Works collaboratively with others and actively engages in team work
• Champions the organisation and its mission
• Looks for ways to consider the health and well-being of self and others
• Understands and adheres to policies and procedures e.g. HR policies, Health and safety standards and data protection
• Takes a positive approach to own development, seeking opportunities which may be outside own area of expertise or experience and willing to challenge own assumptions
• Inspires people around them by choosing a positive attitude everyday

X | Areas for addressing

• Is not a positive ambassador of our students’ union
• Has a lack of concern for the reputation of our students’ union
• Displays limited pride in work
• Ignores the contributions of other colleagues to the wellbeing and achievement of our students’ union
• Does not learn from experiences

4 INCLUSIVITY

Applies an understanding of equality and diversity to strengthen positive engagement in all our students’ unions activities and services Level Indicators

★ | Areas for celebration

• Takes active steps to ensure under-represented groups can participate and find a comfortable place within our students’ union
• Promotes initiatives to create a more diverse organisation that take account of the broad range of the student needs
• Champions diversity, equality and liberation consistently throughout their own work
• Continually looks for ways to learn and share learning about under-represented groups

✔ | Areas for improvement

• Recognises and celebrates the importance of equality and diversity
• Takes positive action to remove barriers and promote diversity and inclusivity
• Challenges and reports incidents of discrimination
• Uses language that includes people and supports dignity
• Recognises significant variations in lifestyle and needs in the creation of a diverse workforce for our students’ union
• Encourages the involvement of under-represented groups when designing new initiatives or services

X | Areas for addressing

• Displays a lack of awareness or unwillingness to promote engagement with a wide range of communities within the student body
• Labels people unnecessarily and make assumptions about people and their lives
• Displays prejudices regarding equalities that go against the principles and values of our students’ union

5 RESULTS FOCUSSED

Maintains commitment to targets and results, striving consistently to achieve them Level Indicators

★ | Areas for celebration

• Consistently motivates self, and supports the team to achieve beyond expectations
• Displays creativity and is innovative in aiming for outstanding results and consistently good service
• Sets and commits to stretching targets, motivating others for achievement
• Identifies ways for our students’ union to be more efficient
• Is a role model in achieving outstanding results

✔ | Areas for improvement

• Helps to maintain effective services, structures and processes to meet members’ needs
• Ensures that quality is a fundamental part of achieving results
• Is able to modify and flex plans in order to achieve the best results
• Manages their work to ensure timely delivery
• Is recognised for their commitment to achieve the best possible outcome for students
• Takes pride in way they deliver tasks and services
• Generates or contributes to a team culture of ambitious targets
• Recognises and encourages entrepreneurial flair and innovation
• Assumes positive intent when people communicate

X | Areas for addressing

• Fails to align own work to the organisation’s and team’s cycle for delivery
• Does not achieve targets and deadlines
• Fails to contribute to forward planning
• Does ‘just enough’ to get by in the role

6 COMMUNICATION

Helps to provide clear, consistent and appropriate messages at all levels of our students’ union and beyond

★ | Areas for celebration

• Is able to adapt consistent messages to diverse audiences — achieving clear outcomes
• Uses communication channels to raise and promote where appropriate the brand of our students’ union as separate but complementary to that of our institution
• Is an inspirational speaker on subjects dear to our students’; union both internally and externally

✔ | Areas for improvement

• Communicates clearly and comprehensively using the most appropriate route (face to face, email, phone, social media, etc.)
• Encourages an exchange of constructive feedback
• Invites, listens to and respects others’ views

What competencies and frameworks do you use to benchmark or baseline your social and mobile communications performance? Did you find this useful? Let us know at rajbrighton@smoovemedia.com