SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT SERVICES

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

More than half of the global population – some 4.33 billion people – now use social media, with Facebook alone registering over three billion active users every month.

For businesses and marketing professionals, this represents an enormous opportunity to make connections with customers, generate leads and drive brand awareness. But the sheer size of today’s social media networks, and the intense competition for users’ time and attention on these platforms, means a carefully planned, strategic approach is required to take advantage of their potential.

This is where social media management comes in.

KEY ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

Effective social media management will help you get good returns from the time and budget you’re investing in this area of your marketing. Failing to properly manage your social account activities will increase the risk that your marketing and advertising content will simply get lost in the crowd and your messages won’t reach your target audience.

It’s important, therefore, to be aware of the most important elements of social media management and to be clear about what you want to achieve in each of these areas.

Knowing your audience

Much like any other area of marketing, to get strong results from social media you need to have a solid understanding of your social network audience, what they’re interested in and how your product or service can help them.

There are various useful steps you can take to analyse your social channel audience, identify their priorities and then form a plan to connect with them. One of the most important actions of all is to segment your customers into distinct personas with shared characteristics. This will help you refine your social media marketing to increase engagement with particular sub-sections of your social platform audience.

It’s also important to make sure you’re utilising the huge potential of social media to have real-time conversations with customers (existing or prospective) and to learn what makes them tick. Every social media channel engagement is an opportunity to better understand your audience and feed these insights into your marketing.

Tailoring your social media strategy

Once you feel confident that you have a good understanding of your social media network audience and how you can connect with them on Facebook, Twitter and the like, you can start work on creating a bespoke social media strategy.

This is a broad area that is likely to include a number of different components, such as:

• Identifying specific goals and metrics to measure progress towards them
• Planning how to use your available budget and resources
• Deciding what platforms to use
• Studying competitor activity
• Thinking about how social media will complement your broader marketing strategy

A key aspect of effective social media management is regularly revisiting your strategy to make sure it’s still relevant and aligned with your overall goals.

Content creation and distribution

The global reach provided by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn makes them ideal channels for the distribution and promotion of your content. But it’s not enough to simply create something, post it on your social media platform of choice and hope for the best.

Effective social media management will help you get the best possible returns from your content by coming up with answers to questions like:

• Which content types are most likely to earn engagement with your target audience?
• Which platforms are best suited to host and amplify your social media content?
• What are the optimum times to post content to maximise exposure and capture people’s attention?
• How will you plan your production workflow to ensure you have a regular supply of new content to share?
• Which tool will be best to use for scheduling posts?
• Is my organisation’s social media profile optimised to show up if I Google my business?
• Is there an analytics tool that will track my progress?
• Should social media ads be part of the mix?

Community management

If building loyal brand advocates is one of the top objectives of your social media campaign, community management needs to be at the heart of your social activities. That means focusing on processes like keeping track of what your customers are saying on social media and how they’re interacting with your brand.

From social media listening to creating a post planner, a social media manager can help you with this, as monitoring all such activity can be challenging. In fact, they may well use a social media management platform for the most accurate accumulation and analysis of data.

The instant engagement provided by social platforms gives you countless opportunities to take part in discussions with your audience and to nurture relationships with previous and potential buyers from your social profile.

Monitoring, measuring and reporting

As you move forward with your social marketing activities, it’s important to make sure you’re collecting and analysing relevant data to generate insights into how your organic and paid social content is performing and the returns it’s generating.

It’s also beneficial to come up with a structure for reporting these social media post results to your marketing team and the rest of the business. This will help you ensure that key decisions and changes in strategy are based on the latest data and trends pertinent to your social media marketing.

HOW TO MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING AND REPORTING

Monitoring and reporting are such important aspects of your social media marketing operation that it’s worth taking the time to form a dedicated plan to oversee them and perhaps utilise a social media management tool.

To start with, you should make sure you have a strong understanding of exactly what these processes involve and how you stand to benefit from them. They must be integrated into your social media account to ensure you’re not missing any essential data.

WHY INVEST IN SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT SERVICES? 

Social media management can be a daunting task if you’re not familiar with this dynamic and fast-moving segment of the digital marketing sector. Investing in a dedicated service could be the right option if you’re looking for support in areas where you still have more to learn, or you just want to offload this aspect of your marketing so you can focus on other priorities.

Using a specialist social media marketing agency to take on management responsibilities can also help you maximise the benefits that can arise when you get this process right.

Better customer service

The convenient access provided by platforms like Facebook and Twitter gives brands an unmissable opportunity to take customer service to the next level. A social media management service will help you take advantage of this potential by making sure you pick up on every message and respond to it in a timely and appropriate way.

Audience insights

One of the most positive outcomes you can gain from effective social media management is a stronger understanding of your target audience, what they care about and how you can deliver value to them. Bringing in a social media marketing agency to focus on achieving these goals can generate valuable insights for your entire marketing operation and the business as a whole.

Specialist tools and solutions

When you need to take a targeted approach to your social media management, an external service provider will be able to provide dedicated tools and solutions to help with processes such as:

• Content planning and creation
• Scheduling and publishing content across your social channels
• Conducting social media analytics to identify key trends and themes
• Collecting, examining and presenting data on the performance of your social marketing
• Creating a social media dashboard that makes it easier to track and measure your performance

More time

One particularly valuable benefit you can achieve by outsourcing any aspect of your marketing (including social media management) to an outside agency is getting your time back. The countless hours and extensive resources you previously had to dedicate to managing your social activities can now be channelled into other things, whether it’s running your core business or taking a more holistic look at your overall marketing strategy.

CHOOSING A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT AGENCY

There’s certainly a lot to be gained from working with a social media management agency, but you have to be sure that any partner you team up with is a good fit for your business.

So how can you make sure you come to the right decision?

First and foremost, you need to be sure any social media agency you’re thinking about working with is able to provide the services you need. It’s important, therefore, to begin the process of searching for a partner with a clear idea of what you’re looking for.

Do you need a supplier that can give you advice on specific elements of your social marketing – how to optimise your Twitter and Facebook posts, for example – or are you in need of a full, end-to-end service?

Set clear goals

Going a step further than making sure your social media management company is able to offer the right services, you need to have confidence in their ability to help you achieve your most important goals.

You can add more structure and clarity to your thinking in this area by coming up with goals that are SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable

• Relevant
• Time-bound

An example of a SMART social media goal could be to increase the number of impressions you’re registering on Facebook by ten per cent over the course of six months.

This level of specificity can prove vital when you need to take a focused approach to finding the right social media marketing agency for your business.

Look for proven expertise and results

Any company can promise excellent results. When you’re talking to companies that are trying to win your business, it’s important to go deeper than simply what they’re saying and look for evidence of their expertise.If you’re looking to improve results in a key area – such as increasing your profile and generating more leads on Facebook – you might want to look for a social media marketing company that specialises in this. You can also gain confidence and peace of mind by asking to see case studies, testimonials and reviews.

Give yourself time

Starting a new partnership with an external social media agency is a big step that could influence your company’s future performance and results.

It’s vital, therefore, to give yourself sufficient time to think it through and compare all of the options available to you. The last thing you want to do is rush into a decision that you later regret.

If you ever feel pressured into committing to a partnership you’re not entirely sure about, take a step back, reconvene with your team and take some more time to think before moving forward.

Find a partner that is the right fit

Perhaps most importantly of all, you should feel confident that any social media agency you choose to work with is a good fit for your business and how you operate.

Ideally, an outside partner will feel like a natural extension of your marketing team, and working with them should help you out by taking certain responsibilities off your hands, rather than giving you new things to worry about.

When you’re talking to companies about outsourcing your social media management, think of questions that will help you learn more about how they work and how they can complement what you’re already doing.

Taking these steps will help to ensure you find the right partner to optimise your social media marketing and generate exciting results for your business.