Roles and Responsibilities
The success of your social media activities depends in large parts on the resources available and their detailed and timely planning. Your long-term success requires well-considered and continuous content production and community management, social media listening, as well as reporting and evaluation for your channels. You also need to define routines and processes (e.g., how to respond in the event of a crisis). Fortunately, a number of tools are available to help you streamline most social media tasks.
Plan Your Resources
A clear and concise social media strategy should inform everything you do. Within your strategic framework, there are numerous tasks that need to be fulfilled. Ask yourself:
Do I have the resources to set up and manage my channel long-term?
Here are some of the most important tasks and factors to consider.
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Content Management Content management is about planning, creating and editing high quality content. As a content manager you might also have to coordinate your output with colleagues, other departments or collaborate with agencies. To successfully manage your content, Bayer uses Sprinklr to manage more than one channel and/or exchange content with other regions or departments (e.g., you plan content for the Global Food Day in Brazil and want to make the assets easily available for colleagues in Portugal). Sprinklr is a good choice when you need a tool to simplify content approval processes. Here you can set up teams and workflows with colleagues from compliance, legal or medical affairs. |
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Community Management Social media is all about dialogue. Our success hinges on our ability to generate relevant content and foster meaningful conversation with our target audiences. |
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Reporting & Evaluation In addition to keeping your channel up to date and engaging with your community, it is essential to regularly analyze and evaluate your activities. Big platforms such as Facebook offer their own statistics section — Facebook Insights, for example. If you manage more than one social media channel, you can use Sprinklr for analytics across all channels.
You can start small by collecting your channel observations every month and creating a report. These insights will help you track, maintain and optimize your progress to achieve your social media goals and inform subsequent strategies. Below are some suggestions to consider in your monthly evaluations:
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Social Listening Strategic social media listening (also called online listening) provides a great overview over current topics, opinions and key players in relation to Bayer. This can include insights anywhere from which topics are being discussed in social media to identifying key influencers and their opinions/perception of Bayer, among many other possible learnings.
Bayer’s preferred listening tools are Talkwalker and Brandwatch. To discuss joining the global setup, please contact Marc de Bruyn (marc.debruyn@bayer.com) and/or Adrian Giodani (adrian.giordani@bayer.com) on the Insights team. |
Choosing the Right Partner
When planning, opening or managing a social media channel, we often rely on external service providers. A good way to choose your partner is to let them analyze existing channels. Invite several agencies to conduct an audit and provide recommendations. Use workshops to find out if you have good chemistry — and to ensure that potential partners have a clear strategic foundation. Then partner with your local procurement team to make your decision based upon the partner’s performance, sensibilities and the associated cost estimates.
Costs vary from country to country, but the following requirements are universal:
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Basic strategy and channel setup.
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Content planning and formats for at least 3–6 months with clearly articulated goals of what is to be achieved by the end of each time period.
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Plan for continuous community management (e.g., Who takes care of what? Who is responsible, and when?)
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Professional cost calculation based on the given timeline, the amount of content to be planned, edited and published, community management as well as outcome measurement.
When choosing external partners, you should make sure that they adhere to our social media principles. Integrate a corresponding clause into your contracts to bind your partners and discuss the formulation with the respective legal and procurement department.
Make sure that at least one or two other Bayer employees in your department/division have access to the company accounts. Change your password and update the access list of your accounts regularly (e.g., when changing agencies).
Most frequently asked questions
How do I behave in the event of a crisis?
A social media channel is not a short-term project. It is therefore essential to start by defining and assigning the most important areas of responsibility. This will ensure the highest level of efficiency and swift action in the event of a crisis. By regularly monitoring your channels, you will be able to recognize issues and emerging crises quickly and respond appropriately. If you are unsure how to respond, contact your local communications team or the global (digital) team.
In a crisis situation, it is always important to be familiar with the responsible contact person at the company and to assemble a crisis team as quickly as possible. Further information can be found in the Crises & Side Effects section.
Do private social media channels need to be registered in MIRA?
You do not need to register your private channels in MIRA because they are your personal profiles. Bayer is therefore not legally responsible for them. If you write about Bayer or topics relevant to Bayer on social media, please make sure Bayer is shown as your employer in your account information. Please ensure not to give the impression that you are officially speaking on behalf of Bayer (use “I” instead of “we”). We have compiled a number of additional tips on private social media use. These can be found in the “Private Social Media Use” section of the Digital Guide.