Social media has taken over many facets of our lives from news to marketing.

With more than 3 billion users around the world, social media can provide brands with an unprecedented audience reach. Perhaps there has never been such a cost-effective means of publicity for companies.

Marketers have therefore made the most of it to build brand awareness and increase their sales. They can easily showcase their products/services to the public and redirect them to their website or the purchase page.

But the question is whether or not there are other abilities in social media. For example, B2B-based companies are recently using social media to increase their public presence.

Is it really possible to use social media to manage projects?

In social media marketing, you should reach out to as many users as possible and entice them to purchase from you. Social media is, therefore, is a perfect tool for businesses that want to sell their products/services to people.

On the contrary, managing is all about coordinating duties and deadlines. For example, the entertaining aspects of social media aren’t your concern in project management.

In marketing, brands try to collaborate with influencers to increase their brand awareness. This is specifically perfect for local businesses that want to gain fame on social media. But influencers aren’t important in project management since you don’t need to market your work publicly.

So, many project managers might think that social media isn’t useful in their job. There are a lot of project management software & tools and they might ignore the power of social media. If you’re one of these managers, you’re making a technical mistake.

Keep in mind that with a different approach you can use social media for project management. In this article, we’re going to outline several beneficial aspects of social media for managers.

Manage communications in your project

Traditional workplaces needed a lot of bureaucratic procedures if you just wanted to have a simple communication related to the project. Communication is a critical part of every project and has a significant contribution to the project time/effort consumption.

Social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Telegram, Facebook, etc. have now provided professionals with a 24×7 availability to communicate with each other. Different types of content such as text, picture, voices, videos, live videos, hashtags, info-graphics, and stickers can easily convey complex messages instantly. With the right Instagram feed planner and social media expert, you can leverage the benefits of social platforms greatly.

Using these platforms is paramount for project managers to handle communications in their projects. No matter how large your project is and how many team members you are coordinating. You can’t avoid using social media if you want to successfully complete the project before the deadline.

Monitoring and recording communications was a time/energy-consuming task and it was subject to numerous human-made mistakes. This task can easily be done using social media services to prevent future problems.

You might need to define different levels of communication groups depending on the size and importance of the project. Try to select administrators of these groups carefully and inform them of your expectations in detail.

Manage remote works

Remote working is a relatively new working style that provides you with the opportunity to work outside of the office environment.

Many kinds of tasks don’t necessarily need to be done in the workplace these days. A laptop is all your staffs need to do their job. This method can significantly reduce workplace expenses and increase your ROI.

On the other hand, remote working needs more accurate monitoring and task allocation techniques to prevent any misunderstanding. Social media is the best means of managing remote works, scheduling online meetings, sending reminders, making contacts, and handling many other tasks.

One of the most important aspects of using social media to manage remote works is that you aren’t forced to select employees from your city or even your country.

You can employ skillful staff from across the world. Assigning tasks, coordinating teams, and assessing the performances can all be done by different social media platforms.

By this method, the working hours aren’t limited to your home country’s official time and, therefore, you have constant progress in your tasks. Worldwide project management can easily be performed simply by social media.

Inform colleagues of the project updates

Informing colleagues of the project updates, especially in large-scale projects, isn’t an easy task. Social media with the support of high-speed internet can play a vital role in this regard.

Social media can help the coordinator to instantly manage updates and assign everybody the right task at the right time.

For example, if there is new progress in a specific part of the project or even a new regulation is laid down by managers, social media is the best means of informing everyone of his/her new duties.

Updates can also be related to project revisions, meeting changes, team activities, innovation, emergencies, etc.

Manage experiences

Lessons learned (also known as lessons learned) are abstract experiences you have after a project. You can effectively utilize them to enhance the quality of future projects.

These lessons can be easily forgotten among masses of documents your company records in every project. So, you need a different style of recording and reminding these lessons.

Social media can be of great use is the management of lessons learned. It is recommended to create a channel on a specific social media just for these lessons. Every one of your projects can be added to that channel and use this information.

This kind of information can especially be useful for beginners to equip themselves with the valuable experiences of previous projects. Therefore, their learning speed will significantly increase without any more time and effort being spent by the supervisors.

Tackle problems and issues

Whatever you take care of managing projects in detail, a lot of problems and issues can still happen during your projects. Issues management is often a heavy part of managers’ duties.

Although face-to-face management is still the best means of tackling issues, you can’t expect to solve all problems with traditional approaches.

Social media can greatly increase the efficiency of the issue management procedure. Issues are usually involved with a number of people and events. A quick and effective problem solution can easily be achieved by using social media.

An important matter in issues is that managers don’t want rumors to be made and spread. By face-to-face management, all staff can instantly be informed of the issue. On the contrary, an online meeting using social media can remain invisible.

Also, tracking the messages and decisions is greatly simple on social media compared to traditional management.

Manage your team knowledge and skills

One of the most important duties of managers is being informed of their team members’ knowledge and skills. They should be taking care of increasing the knowledge of their staff.

Using a simple social media channel, project managers can either effectively track their staff knowledge or teach them new information. For example, on Telegram, you can have both channels and groups.

In a group, you can engage all members in a debate so every member can share his/her ideas and increase team knowledge. In channels, on the contrary, you can broadcast your information to teach members.

With a user-friend environment and many useful features, Telegram can play a key role in the knowledge management of your team.

Another useful aspect of social media is that you can easily perform webinars using them. In webinars, you enhance the skills and knowledge of your team members.

Many institutions are currently this approach to hold online classes. Project managers can also use this tool in their projects and teach staff new information.

Another aspect of this technique is that you can expand the circle of teaching to the public and subsequently gain fame. With this approach, you can kill two birds with a single stone.

First, increasing the knowledge of your team using shared posts of colleagues or even outsiders. Second, gaining followers and building brand awareness. Many managers, therefore, try to use social escrow services to acquire and customize famous channels on social media.

Broadcast your milestones

One of the most effective means of getting fame and building brand awareness for your company is publicly sharing your milestones.

When you’re working on a project, you can share your progress with the public using social media platforms. This is a perfect way to prove your skills and managing abilities to outsiders, especially professional.

LinkedIn is an employment-oriented network on which many brands and job seekers are socializing their moments. We recommend you to create an account on this platform and share every success of the project.

Although this might do nothing for your project, broadcasting your managing skills and the ability to deliver the project before deadlines can work miracle. If the public and professional see your capabilities, you can expect good fortune in the coming projects.

Final word

We have tried to summarize some key aspects of social media that can be of use in project management. Along with many tools that are available for project management, you should study more and learn different features of top social media platforms. So, you can choose the best social services that fit your purposes.