In your company, from intern to CEO, everyone should have a common goal. And that goal should be to make your company successful, to drive sales, or to build a cohesive brand. After all, a healthy company means a healthy career for its employees. Each member of your team has a specific job to contribute to the company’s success. But when you have no in-house marketing team, who should contribute to online marketing efforts? Well… everyone.

Teamwork Gets Things Done

You may have heard the saying, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” This is true in many cases, but absolutely true when it comes to marketing. Whether you are working with an internal or external team, two, three, or four heads are often better than one.

• Blogging

Among our clients who choose to blog for themselves, the most successful ones are those that involve their entire team in the process of content creation. We at Imagebox also involve everyone, from designers to developers, in writing blog posts to share with readers.

The truth is that each of your employees has a different perspective on the company and a different set of skills that they can speak to. Allowing several members of your team to blog shows that you are a well-rounded company, knowledgeable in more than just one topic. Plus, blogging can get time consuming for companies who don’t employ a full-time blogger. Spreading the work out between several team members reduces the company’s risk of doubling an employee’s workload with marketing tasks.

When companies choose to have Imagebox blog for them, I still love to hear topic ideas from the whole client team. While the owner of the business might know the most about the company, sometimes their sales team has more insight into the topics that interest customers most.

• Social Media

Most social media websites allow you to have more than one administrator on an account. This makes it simple to have several team members contributing to your social strategy. While keeping a consistent tone and brand is important, having several people with social media on their to-do list helps with content curation and time management.

For instance, having three team members in charge of social media means that three people are on the lookout for articles to share, and three people are looking out for new comments from followers, making it less likely that a comment will go unread or unanswered.

Downsides to sharing the responsibility include overcrowding your feed with information because other team members didn’t know that a post was already made. That is where an editorial calendar comes in handy, so that you can see when others plan on posting. Another risk you run into with several team members as administrators is having your information used against you when one of those employees leaves the team. That is why it is important to entrust social media tasks to employees you truly trust, and to change your passwords and remove administrative privileges when there is a change in staff.

• Strategy

There are a ton of sources that encourage business owners to involve their team in their marketing strategy. Not only does it help that employees feel listened to, but they might also have some great ideas! Including those who will actually be implementing your strategy into the planning process can help you see possible problems or more effective solutions from a different angle.

For instance, you might not know that clients can’t figure out what you do by looking at your Facebook page, but the person answering the phone will know. Encouraging new ideas from employees helps them feel respected and helps your company from getting stuck in a rut.

Warning

Another well-known expression that can apply to a team working together on marketing efforts is:  “Too many cooks in the kitchen.” While having a team of people to serve as amateur marketers and brand ambassadors can help cultivate creative ideas and check more off of your to-do list, having too many team members involved in strategy can make it difficult to come to solid conclusions on goals and to-dos.

When strategizing, involve only those who you feel need to be involved. From there, you can involve the rest of the team more when it comes time to implement that strategy. While Dave might be a great communicator with big ideas, he may steer the team off track in a strategy meeting and fit into marketing better as someone who specifically plans social media campaigns.

Next week, I’ll discuss ways to keep your team organized and working toward your marketing goals. Do you involve your team in marketing?