SERVICE
Social Media Management
Social media management is the process of managing your online interactions and content across social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.
Social media management goes beyond just posting updates to your company’s social media profiles. It also includes engaging with your audience and looking for new opportunities to increase reach and visibility.
Social media management offers several benefits, including:
- Cost: No matter your marketing budget, social media is a cost-effective initiative. It’s free to join social media networks, post content, respond to user comments, and more. Even advertising offers a profitable channel for reaching your audience and building an online following.
- Reach: Social media networks, from Facebook to LinkedIn, can connect you with users across the world. You can also use social media platforms, like Pinterest, to reach niche audiences. Traditional marketing and advertising can’t match the reach — or price — or social. That’s why social media management is a must for businesses.
- Users: Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy allows you to align your marketing initiatives with user behavior. For example, 74% of people now use social media when making purchase decisions. Not to mention, 80% of people get advice about a purchase through social media.
- Performance: Marketers and business owners alike agree on the performance of social media marketing and advertising. Via social, companies can build their brand and even generate leads and sales. Almost 45% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers, for instance, have earned a client through Facebook.
With social media’s multiple advantages, it’s worth considering for your marketing strategy.
A common follow-up question to, “What is social media management?” is about the platforms included. It’s a smart question, as you want to focus your time and resources on the social media networks that offer the most value to your business.
Here are some of the most common platforms for social media management:
- YouTube
- TikTok
Developing a Social Media Strategy
Developing a social media strategy is an important part of making sure that each of your campaigns is helping you get closer to meeting your marketing goals. After you have decided which channels you plan to use, you’ll need to consider how often you plan to post and what types of content you will post.
Start by considering what you know about your audience. What type of content do they like best? Develop content that’s engaging but also speaks to their needs and challenges. If you need help getting started, check out these social media marketing ideas.
You should also consider how you plan to make engagement and response a consistent part of your social media management. Do you plan to reach out to fans and followers and start a conversation? How often will you respond to questions and concerns posted to your page? Do you plan to use contests to engage your audience? All of this should be somewhere in your social media strategy.
Creating a Social Media Schedule
When it comes to social media management, consistency is key. You see, no two businesses are alike. Therefore, you can’t expect the same results for every business who has implemented the same approach in posting on social media channels. However, whatever frequency or time of posting that you choose to do, you have to do it consistently.
If you want to keep customers engaged and grow your following on these channels, you’ll need to consistently post quality content. The only way to do this is to create a social media schedule that details when and what you’re going to post on which channels.
Creating an editorial calendar for your social media management is a good way to keep your business on track when it comes to a social media schedule. You can customize this editorial calendar in a way that works for your business. Just be sure to include basic information like the posting date, content, and any link or image.
Creating and Posting Content to Social Profiles
A big part of social media management is creating and publishing social media content across your company’s profiles. This involves not only writing copy but also developing creative in the form of images or video. In addition to their own content, many businesses will also share curated content from third-party sources on relevant topics.
This aspect of social media management requires you to have an in-depth understanding of both the social media platforms and your audience. You need to know what the best practices are for creating content on the channel. But you will also need to know what type of content and topics appeal most to your target audience.
Responding to Fans and Followers
Responding to fans and followers on your social media platforms is an important part of social media management. When an individual comments on your page with a question or concern, this presents a new opportunity for you to provide value for your leads while also demonstrating excellent customer service.
As part of your social media management, your business should routinely check for comments or messages across your social platforms. Think carefully before replying as the response will often be public. Don’t have time to do this? Our specialists at LYFE Marketing monitor accounts every single day, and as a best practice they always reply to followers within 24 hours.
Engaging with Others on Social Platforms
Engaging with social media users goes beyond just responding to fans or followers who comment on your business page or send a message. This often includes seeking out new leads or other opportunities and starting a conversation with them on the platform.
Building relationships with influencers can help you expand your reach over time. If there are certain individuals or organizations in your industry that have a significant following, your business can reach out to them to find new opportunities to share your valuable content with their user-base.
Creating Social Media Advertising Campaigns
Creating and implementing social media ads is an integral part of answering what is social media management. Though there is plenty of work that you can do to connect with your leads through organic social content, social media advertising complements this organic activity by allowing you to target specific audiences and improve visibility.
For example, posting ads on Facebook can help drive more revenue for your business as it allows you to reach new leads who are similar to your best customers. These are individuals who may have never encountered your brand or site in the past, but are encouraged to visit after seeing relevant content from your Facebook ad.
Managing Contests and Giveaways
Social media contests and giveaways are an effective way to keep your audience engaged while growing your fan or follower base. Whether you use a simple drawing or ask users to submit their own content, there are plenty of ways that you can use contests to drive more traffic to your pages.
If you plan to create contests or giveaways, then managing this process will be part of your company’s overall social media management tasks. Managing a contest involves creating rules and guidelines, accepting submissions, choosing a winner, and following through with the promised prize or giveaway.
Tracking Performance Over Time
As with any other type of digital marketing tactic you employ, you’ll want to make sure that you track and measure your social media campaign results over time. This is the only way to know if your campaigns are successfully helping you meet your marketing goals. Not to mention, this is how you will determine your social media ROI and decide if you’re putting your resources to the best use.
Tracking your performance also helps you identify areas of improvement. Once you know what needs work, you can start taking actionable steps to improve your social media strategy. This will enable you to boost results now and in the future.
It can, but indirectly.
One common misconception about social media and SEO is that getting your content shared on social media will help improve your rankings. Google has flat out stated it doesn’t count social shares in its algorithm. Social shares are easy to manipulate, so they aren’t the most reliable metric to decide the value of a piece of content.
However, social media can still help your SEO efforts indirectly. You can use social media to network with influencers like bloggers, editors and journalists. These are all people that can potentially link to your website in their own content, which can help your SEO.
By using social media to build relationships with the right people, you can even land guest blogging or interview opportunities. Just be cautious of spamming people. You don’t want to come right out the gate begging people to link to your content. Instead, build relationships organically by liking, sharing and replying to their content. Build familiarity first, then when the time feels right look for an opportunity to work together.
Yes, and here’s why: Social media isn’t just reserved for athletes, fashion brands and retailers. When it comes to marketing, your goal is to reach your target audience where they’re paying the most attention. And for the past 10+ years, that has been social media.
Remember, social media isn’t an advertising platform for you shout your message as loudly as possible. Instead, use it as a platform to educate and entertain your audience.
For instance, taxes are about as boring as it gets for most non-accounting people. But H&R Block puts together fun social media campaigns that don’t make you cringe at the thought of tax season.
