Chapter 7: Channels

Summary  •  Outline  •  Study Questions  •  Flashcards  •  Quiz

“Choose your social media channels just like divas select their wardrobe, with an eye on comfort, function and just the right amount of drama.” – Dr. So What

Chapter Summary

This chapter explores the dynamics of channels, principles for selecting channels and presents a guide of how to use the principles to make strategic channel selections.

 Effective social media managers abide by several key principles. For example, they select platforms that sync with their coordinates and their target audiences’ preferences, and they distinguish between those platforms that will be passively managed and those that will be actively managed. They use these principles to assist them in strategically selecting channels, by: 1) systematically studying a wide variety of potential social media platforms, 2) evaluating and selecting the platforms for active and passive management, 3) crafting a “job description” for each channel (e.g., each channel’s primary and secondary “duties”), 4) bundling the channel “duties” into manageable jobs, and 5) assigning the right person or team to the tasks.

Chapter Summary

  • The Benefits of Strategy
    • A sound strategy helps guide your deployment of scarce resources
    • A sound strategy helps coordinate people and resources
    • A sound strategy provides a powerful message to educate employees in the organization
    • A sound strategy provides stability during tumultuous times and crises
  • Conclusion

Chapter Deep Dive Study Questions

These exercises are designed to enhance your understanding of the chapter’s key ideas, principles and approaches.

#1
List three objections you might encounter when asking a team to discuss and complete the Channel Evaluation Grid (see Table 7.2).  How would you counter each objection?

#2
List three other important questions that should be added to the Social Media Investigative Question list proposed in Table 7.1. Discuss why you think those are important questions to add.

#3
Select three platforms you frequently use.  Craft a job description for each of them. Develop a scorecard for each based on your “job description.”

Chapter Flashcards

[qdeck] [q] Actively Managed Platforms
[a] The channels in which you invest significant time and energy by, for example, actively pushing out content.
[q] Niche Platforms
[a] Social media channels that are less publicized and less well known that might hold more innovative and edgy appeal.
[q] Passively Managed Platforms
[a] The channels in which you invest minimal time and energy. Managing these platforms might involve, at a minimum, securing the platform names that some audience members might access or stumble across as well as regularly monitoring them.
[q] Platform Job Description
[a]  The role that a specific social media channel is to perform in the organization, or in other words, the aspiration that the channel is seeking to fulfill in a specific circumstance.
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Chapter Quiz

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