The last few months have been hard. Hard for families, business, employers and employees.

The role of the social media team can be a strange one. Most of the time, the they are embedded within the wider company, usually in the communications department. They help hone the message and are involved in campaign strategy and execution. They are the mouthpiece of the company, the first line of defence and, ever increasingly, the first contact for customer service. Companies and businesses that don’t understand this, tend to use social media in the same way they would print marketing. They fire out a statement and forget about it, not having the understanding (or capacity) to nurture a community with their customers and clients online.

Companies make mistakes, things go wrong, we all want answers and in this modern world we want them fast. But as more and more people use social media to raise these issues, we must take care of our communications teams.

Lockdown has been hard for social media managers. An already demanding role that has to juggle clients and customers, brand guidelines and customer relationships. They, like most, have been working from home. Which means they aren’t in the office and they don’t have all the answers at their fingertips, but they are expected to and often they are expected to at all hours of the day, dealing with rapidly changing situations, government announcements and an increasingly frustrated public. 

Many LGAs have struggled with the sheer amount of customer service enquiries in the last few months and many people take to social media to ask them and or vent their frustrations. It is the social media team who bear the brunt of this and many in this line of work find the demands and, at times, abuse, too much.