Surely, you wish to have an outstanding digital media team that manages your organization's social media and contributes to achieving its goals while enhancing its financial resources. In this article, we aimed to be practical by presenting 5 steps to build an outstanding digital media team, which are:

1- Assessing the current situation.

2- Defining objectives.

3- Determining the team size.

4- Distributing roles.

5- Structuring the team.

First: Assessing the Current Situation:

Assessing the current situation of your organization and the organizations that share the same goal or geographical area is a very important first step if it is done based on the correct foundations, which involves knowing 3 essential matters: budget, workforce, and available resources. Below is an explanation of these matters:

1- Budget:

From the budget, you can determine how many people you can hire for the team, as well as their specialties, skills, and experiences. Also, defining the budget helps in setting realistic and achievable goals.

2- Workforce:

Examine your current team to see who can be an active member of the digital media team. You will surely find someone who can help you, thus saving a lot of effort, time, and money. If you find a suitable person in your team, they will be aware of the organization's message and goals and will be happy with a small reward.

3- Resources:

Here, we mean media resources such as images, videos, articles, and reports you can use for daily posting on social media. At the very least, these media resources must be gathered in one place, as their presence definitely contributes to increasing the team's productivity and facilitates their work.

These three essential matters make you more balanced, clear, and objective in front of the grand false dreams that do not align with what you have at hand in terms of data.

Second: Aligning Objectives:

Here, we are not talking about the organization's objectives, but rather the objectives of the digital media department. When I open an account on one of the platforms, what do I want to achieve through it? Experiences have proven that defining objectives increases the team’s motivation to achieve them. Instead of having your goal be merely increasing followers, specify by what percentage or how many. The same goes for revenue and any other objectives. Below are 10 objectives set by leading non-profit organizations on social media:

1- Getting people to know you: This is termed "brand awareness" and its metrics include: the number of followers, the number of times your organization's name is mentioned, and the responses, comments, and interactions that occur with your content and their nature—whether negative or positive.

2- Website visits: What is the current number of visits and how many of these will come from social media?

3- Gathering information: By forming a database of the numbers or addresses of those interested in your organization and its cause.

4- Increasing donations: How much was your organization achieving without relying on social media and how much will it achieve through social media?

5- Engagement: Through interaction and communication with your audience and opening two-way discussions between you and them.

6- Building a digital army: By creating a loving and committed audience for your organization who will promote it, ask the audience to donate, grant it trust in the community, and defend it.

7- Serving beneficiaries and donors: It is important to note that every non-profit organization has two main types of audience: beneficiaries of services and products and donors, whether individuals or organizations.

8- Public relations: Here, we mean spreading news about your organization, its products, services, and projects. Through these ideas, you reach an intellectual leadership position in your organization’s field and build relationships with interested journalists, media professionals, decision-makers, elites, and the general public.

9- Understanding the audience: This is one of the most concerning issues for non-profit projects; they do not listen to the audience and do not have sufficient financial capability to conduct a community study and analysis through specialized companies. However, they can understand the audience and community through analyzing what is shared and discussed on social media and coming up with products, services, or projects that make a leading role in positive change.

10- Recruitment: Using calls and direct advertising for job opportunities, whether paid or volunteer, full-time or part-time, permanent or temporary. Social media is filled with individuals interested in your organization's field who want to contribute something to their community but are waiting for you to ask.

Third: Determining Team Size:

There is no ideal size for team members, but the average in non-profit organizations is 3 members in the digital media team managing social media. There are non-profit and charitable organizations where the number of digital media team members exceeds 150, which depends on the volume of work. There are key factors you must consider when thinking about the right number for your organization:

1- What is your budget? Is it continuous and can be converted to salaries, or is it intermittent and sufficient for one-time rewards?

2- What media resources are available? Do you have large and frequent activities occurring daily or weekly? Is your archive of images, videos, and reports vast? Remember, the more resources you have, the fewer people you need.

3- What are your objectives on social media? Your presence might only need one employee if it is merely to say “I exist,” or if your goal is to increase financial resources by 100%, you will definitely need more!

4- Are your organization's goals large? Do they serve an entire country, a city, or a neighborhood? How many beneficiaries are there from your services and products? Are your services or products for the general public or a specific group?

In research conducted by Ragan and NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on over 2,000 individuals from very small, large, and medium organizations, the result was that the size of the digital media team in organizations does not exceed 3 employees in most cases. The research showed that:

42% of organizations have one employee.

40% of organizations have 2 or 3.

9% have 4 to 6 employees.

9% have more than 6 employees.

Fourth: Distributing Roles:

There are 5 essential roles in the digital media team's work in charitable organizations, which are:

1- Team Leader:

Responsible for setting strategies and planning. This task may fall to the executive director or a board member if the organization is small, and responsibilities may expand to include content approval, with the director potentially doing everything in a small organization.

2- Content Creator:

Thinks about engaging content suitable for the organization and creates it in all its forms. You are lucky if you find an employee who excels in writing, design, and video editing. The task of content creation may belong to a team of employees or volunteers. From our experience at the third bank, we found that the best content creators tend to be women, especially when their work is remote. The content creator may also handle scheduling, posting, responding, and commenting based on the organization’s size and the volume of its media output.

3- Digital Community Manager:

The main task is to participate and interact with the audience. They listen to the conversations directed at them, observe the status of sister organizations and competitors, and organize digital community meetings through live broadcasts or posts by department managers and event supervisors. One of their most important traits should be quick-wittedness and patience.

4- Advertiser:

Designs paid advertising audiences and monitors, analyzes, and develops targeting. Their main task is to improve the return on investment for paid advertisements on social media platforms.

5- Analyst:

Discovers information that identifies where we are going, where we have reached, and what remains? This is done by knowing engagement rates, traffic, visits, click rates, and conversions. They must be someone skilled in digital aspects and have a good background in English.

Depending on your organization’s size, you may need:

- Public Relations Specialist.

- Digital Resource Development Representative.

- Donor Service Specialist.

- Beneficiary Service Specialist.

- Designer.

- Programmer.

- Business Developer.

One person may handle all these tasks and more, or several individuals may take on one role, depending on the volume of work and output. For example, here at the third bank, we have employees in the content creation team, an employee dedicated to scheduling and publishing, and another employee responsible for advertising, analysis, and audience interaction.

Fifth: Structuring the Team:

After determining the size you need for the digital media team, you can define the appropriate structure for the team. The best way to know what suits you is to experiment until you arrive at the model that fits you, and the models are:

1- Participatory: All of us are on the same level of responsibility and share tasks and powers with all members of the organization’s team.

2- Centralized: We have an independent team with specific tasks and clear responsibilities.

3- Shared Centralization: We have an independent team that intersects in some tasks with other departments within the organization.

4- Multiple Centralization: An independent team in each department of the organization.

5- Inclusivity: Every member of the organization participates in managing social media platforms according to their skills and capabilities.

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