It’s a hectic life to take care of all the social media content. You have to keep building effective social media strategies, overseeing multiple social media platforms, you need to stay ahead of finding opportunities for marketing growth. All these things need solid management and things can be overwhelming. So here’s a guide to managing social media effectively.
Social Media Management
Social media management is a broad term that refers to several processes. It’s a process of analyzing the social media audience, developing a strategy to cater to them in their desired way, creating and keep on updating content on the brand’s social media handles, monitoring conversations, collaboration with the social advocates and influencers, creating a community and providing services to them, listening and monitoring, measuring and analyzing the brand’s performance and also determining the ROI on marketing budgets.
Broadly, it means leveraging your digital presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter by creating, publishing, and analyzing the content posted by you. Managing social profiles includes engagement and interaction with social media users. Brands make the most of social media to reach out to their target customers and achieve their brand goals. But why should businesses/brands focus on social media? Because social media offers great money-making opportunities if you manage social channels in an organized and efficient way.
Tasks fall within the ambit of social media management:
⇒ Content creation in the form of articles, audios, or videos
⇒ Posting information at the right time
⇒ Social listening means paying attention to what users are saying about your brand or in general
⇒ Monitoring the success of a product launch or a campaign
⇒ Analyzing and predicting trends
⇒ Reaching out to customers and addressing their grievances
⇒ Building a social media strategy to achieve marketing goals
There are countless other tasks that a social media team engages in. Therefore, only an effective and organized social media management guide can help a business to perform these tasks in the right manner.
Why is social media management important?
Management of any kind is useful for paving a path to success. Brands should use social media to drive their objectives from raising brand awareness to increasing retail or e-commerce sales. Many goals can be achieved through social media by building the right team for it. To make sure all the team members are working hand-in-hand to deliver top-notch value in social media you should build an effective social media process.
So where does social media management begin?
To start the right foot you should be doing 3 things
I Conducting social media audit
A social media audit will allow you to improve the way you manage your social media. It will provide you with a detailed picture of the effectiveness of your social media strategies, pinpoints the loopholes where the brand’s resources are being wasted, which channels are performing effectively, and present the impact of social media on the web results.
II Finding the right social media channel
Another crucial thing to be aware of is deciding the right channel for your brand. After analyzing the reports of your social media audit it might put some light on some channels which aren’t performing well. It also depends on the audience you cater to and where are they present, you might be putting all your efforts on Twitter and it turns out that your customers are most likely to be Instagram users. So you might consider shifting your resources to a different channel.
III Analyzing your target audience
It is very important to analyze your audience as it will help you build strong customer relationships, relevant content creation will bring in more engagement, and eventually get that boost in the sales of your brand through social conversions.
All these things need strong and efficient social media tools to take your brands to new heights.
The Tools
Social media management tools play an impressive role in building your brand’s presence on social media. You need, social listening and monitoring tools, social media analyzing tools, content creation tools, social media publishing tools, social media editorial calendars, customer care tools, influencer marketing, and collaboration tools. Social media management tools are designed to make digital marketing easier. Some of its major benefits include:
⇒ Expense
Social media is a cost-effective way of content marketing, it won’t hurt your marketing budget. It is free to join social media networks, post content, respond to comments, get engagement, and more. Reaching out to your audience and building an online following on social media is a profitable option.
⇒ Time-Saving
Since most of the tasks are automated by social media management tools, it gives time to a company to focus on other core functions. For example, posts can be scheduled well in advance and you don’t have to manually remember posting at peak hours.
⇒ Brand Reach
Social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn… allow users to connect over with people across the globe, whereas Pinterest is a channel to target some niche audience. Whatever brands do, traditional channels and advertising won’t match the reach, price, or community. It’s a must for brands to have an online presence.
⇒ Community
Social media is a vital part of digital marketing strategies, as it allows brands to align their marketing initiatives with consumer behavior. Most people get advised or influenced by social media channels about purchasing products.
⇒ A better understanding of the audience
The highly advanced data analytics tools available nowadays give a company the advantage of gaining deep insights into customer behavior and understanding trends. This is not possible to do manually.
⇒ Easily manage your brand’s reputation
Brands today don’t have to rely on big hoardings or costly marketing campaigns to manage their public image. It can be done simply by reaching out to the target audience through multiple channels. Brands can even respond quickly on social media.
⇒ More creative and engaging space
Social media has already become a place where people hang out and interact with each other. Brands can leverage this space since it is easier to engage the audience here than in the physical world. But, for this, brands need to be more creative and updated on trends.
How to develop a social media management strategy
Let’s look at what needs to be done to develop an effective social media strategy. These are the broad steps to be followed:
⇒ Pick the right social media platforms
Research on which platforms your target audience is present. Find out if your brand’s presence on that platform is strong enough and if not, take steps to establish your presence there. It is very important to allocate your time and resources to each of these platforms in proportion to the number of target customers. For instance, if you are a sports brand catering to the needs of youth, you should consider marketing your products on Instagram as it covers the maximum number of your target audience.
⇒ Get to know your audience thoroughly
To build an effective social media strategy, you need to know the users for whom you are building it. You should try to understand their needs and inclinations. This will help you to develop a product or service accordingly. Analyzing your customers will help you build stronger bonds with them and create relevant content which can win you even more followers. There are user persona templates and other tools which use artificial intelligence available for this purpose.
⇒ Select the right set of tools for social media management
Many tools have been developed to serve various aspects of social media management. It is important to pick the right ones among the lot. Posting the right kind of content which is unique and engaging is very crucial. There are multiple tools available for content creation, social listening, influencer collaboration, social media analytics, and monitoring. Select the tools after thorough research only.
There is no dearth of such tools in the market. Some of the reliable ones are Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Hubspot, Buffer, etc.
⇒ Create quality content
This is the defining step in your whole strategy. All efforts would go in vain if your content is not good enough. Since this is more of a human-based task, you have to build an innovative team for content creation. It will be better if you can stick to particular content themes as this will give your content pieces distinct identities.
⇒ Analyze the outcomes of your efforts
It is very important to check whether your efforts are giving results or you need to change the course. This can be done by going through your social media metrics. It includes data about the interactions around your posts, likes, shares, and any other form of engagement. There are tracking tools available, such as Google Analytics.
In the final analysis
Social media management seems to be an uphill task when, in reality, it makes your work much easier. It is worth the investment. With the right kind of team and tools in place, you can make a huge difference in your marketing game.
Tags: Social Media, Social media management, Social Media management tips, Social Media Management tools