Social media has become an integral part of the digital realm. A solid social media presence powered by an intelligent team and robust social media management tools can take businesses to the next.
We see a term associated with social media being thrown around so much— social media management. Most people using the term are merely familiar with the definition of the process.
Social media management is way more complex and diverse than the definition we find online.
Effective social media management can make or break any digital marketing strategy, resulting in either a mind-blowing success or catastrophic drawback.
An example of effective social media management is Logan Paul and KSI, two social media influencers starting from YouTube and, with proper planning and social media management, created a beverage brand. Prime Hydration company is worth $250 million and was acquired by Coca-Cola for $10 billion.
The internet is flowing with success stories about small businesses that are killing it on social media with practical and productive social media management.
Suppose you are a small business or an individual joining a social media team and looking for a better understanding of social media management. In that case, this blog will work as a guiding star for you, so keep reading.
What is social media management?
To summarize, social media management is the process of creating, implementing, and monitoring an effective social media strategy. But there are a lot of other variables and moving parts continuously working to yield the desired results.
Social media management is an ongoing process like SEO responsible for creating, scheduling, monitoring, and analyzing content and a team of individuals under your command to achieve the targets set by the C-suite.
If we break social media management, it can be divided into the following components.
- Creating and implementing effective content strategy.
- Managing the reputation of the brand and its social community.
- Team management.
- Analyzing the overall performance and reporting.
Let’s explore these responsibilities further for better understanding.
Creating and implementing effective content strategy.
Content strategy is the foundation of every successful social media management. It is the fundamental and most complex part of the process, with a lot of volatility and constant changes.
Social media is a giant digital organism that is constantly changing and growing. Over half of the world’s population uses social media for various purposes, spending hours uploading images, videos, and thoughts.
Social media is a lot of noise and clutter, with 347,222 Instagram stories and 147,000 images on Facebook being posted every minute. Furthermore, 350,000 tweets are generated every minute on Twitter.
Although social media is mainly used for socializing with friends, family, and peers, 40% of all internet users use social media for work purposes. Taking it to the next level, each social media user has multiple social media accounts.
These facts make it a nightmare for social media managers to create and implement a social media tragedy that works. Compelling content is the only way to ensure you are heard.
Creating content.
Generating explicit, compelling, concise and credible content on social media helps to stop the rapid scrolling of modern social media users. Provide information to your audience in a fun and creative manner.
The first step in content creation is finding out what your audience wants and creating relative content they can connect with. Various content types are available online, ranging from traditional blogs to reels.
Short videos are the most effective form of content, thanks to the rise of TikTok and Instagram reels. You can see the popularity of different content types in the following image.
(Data Source SproutSocial)
Marketing content.
Creating content is the first step of the process; once content is completed, the next responsibility of social media managers is to market the content for maximum reach and visibility. Most social media managers and small businesses use social media management tools, like Adublisher, to increase the productivity of the process.
Using the correct marketing channels, mixing up different strategies and marketing techniques and closely monitoring their yields to ensure you are moving in the right direction. Implement necessary changes and find the perfect balance.
Managing the reputation and community of the brand.
Creating content ignites the process; once the content is set into motion, now is the time to see the impact of content on the audience and manage it. Most people turn to social media to find data on brands to make a buying decision depending on where they stand in their community.
Social media managers have to maintain and manage a positive brand reputation by tending to the needs of the consumers. Most users use social media for customer services and to voice their concerns.
Social media management entails replying to comments, answering inquiries, posting regularly and encouraging consumers to give their opinions and feedback. Staying on the positive side of customers is essential, fostering a trusting relationship.
It’s vital that you are respectful of the opinions of your consumers; if they are appreciating, make sure you thank them on social media. If they criticize you, respect their opinion and try to solve their problems.
Ask your customers to give testimonials, invite them to use your product and review them by posting on social media and promote this UGC nurturing word of mouth for more conversion and sales.
Community management encompasses overlooking what goes around in the groups and social media pages you create to create a solid consumer base. Look out for related conversations, participate in them, give insights and offer services and product information for clarity.
Team Management.
Social media is growing faster, and it is getting difficult to get a grasp of the process taking place. Consequently, even small businesses are expanding their social media teams and using different social media schedulers and management tools to stay in the game.
According to SproutSocial, 62% of organizations plan to have social media teams with 2-6 members in the next few years. Social media managers recruit and manage these teams and ensure their productivity.
Managing troops and training them, assigning tasks, and measuring their performance are the primary responsibilities of a team leader— social media manager. It’s essential to act as a strict parent, providing care and guidelines, all while keeping a rigid hierarchical structure to ensure practicality.
Bringing innovation and agility to the workflow.
Management is the fusion of creativity and practicality. Creativity and innovation in your social media strategy are key to achieving results. Social media management tools are software designed to make the life of marketing teams easy.
Tools like Adublisher offer social media management teams the agility and ability to create post calendars and use post schedulers to publish content automatically for maximum productivity.
Posting all your post calendars at once gives you the overall image of what your feed will look like. How will your consumers and audience perceive you, and what changes are required? In addition to this, social media managers use their free time to plan better, engage with the audience, and foster new leads and conversions.
Moreover, social media management tools provide necessary insights with Google Analytics, showing which posts are turning heads and which need more attention. A unified platform to overview team and content performance for a better understanding of where you stand in your social media game.
The main aim behind creating social media management tools is to overcome the limitations of native management tools offered by social media platforms like Meta Business Suite.
Tips For Social Media Management.
Understand your clients and audience.
Suppose you work for a digital marketing agency. In that case, it is crucial to analyze your clients, what they want, who their competitors and prospects are, and create formal documentation of the process.
Customer satisfaction is the key to success in the modern world. Involve your clients in the strategy process to make sure that all of the stakeholders are on board. Once you have accomplished that, it’s time to analyze the market.
Find out your target audience and see how you can approach them and deliver the message in their tone, making a lasting impact. Analyze the existing consumers and viewers and observe their behavior. Use these metrics to create a prospecting audience and balance your content to align with both groups.
Which platform to use?
More than 100 social media platforms are available online, each with different audiences and specifications. From industry leaders to newcomers, successful social media management entails finding the right mixture for maximum organic reach and ensuring your voice is heard.
Instagram is a visual social media platform that doesn’t allow posting links; on the other hand, it is pro-links and encourages using long links. Facebook allows both approaches; professionals and corporates use LinkedIn; Twitter is used for news and by most influencer world leaders and personalities.
These are just a few of the most used social media platforms. Though their audiences cross, each has its own specific values and guidelines. A social media manager has to find the best mix of social media platforms for their clients to make the most of social media marketing potential.
Find out which social media platform resonates best with your brand, focus on that platform and keep on growing and exploring across others. A fusion of social media platforms is essential for maximum organic reach.
Set SMART goals.
SMART is a framework designed to set achievable goals for different projects.
Specific: Set clear and specific goals that you want to achieve from your social media campaign.
Measurable: These goals should be measurable; otherwise, what’s the point of doing it? How will you know where you stand? Define KPIs and measure your progress according to them.
Achievable: Follow where you are and what your resources are to create achievable goals.
Realistic: It’s good to be hopeful, but it’s essential to be realistic when setting your goals. Don’t aim to sell 1 million products within the first quarter of your first-ever campaign.
Timely: Set a specific timeline for the completion of these goals for a better understanding of your progress.
Use social media management tools.
Social media management tools are softwares that help marketers make the most of social media without breaking a sweat. They are a cost-effective method of posting across multiple social media accounts from a unified launch pad.
Social media managers use these tools to schedule posts and RSS Feeds, interact with the audience, reply to their messages and comments, keep an eye on their team and generate reports on the progress of their work.
Create post calendars.
At this point, it’s easy to understand that social media management is a very complex and time-consuming process requiring much planning and execution. One way to deal with these issues is creating post calendars.
Post calendars are a list of social media posts based on the strategy and goal created for future auto-posting on social media platforms with a social media management tool like Adublisher.
Post calendars free up time for more concerning matters, allowing social media managers to focus on customer services and engagement. They also give an overall look into your approach for the overall social media strategy.
Utilize recurring content.
You don’t need to create every social media post from scratch. If you have a prolonged form of content, you can break it into bite-sized pieces and post them on social media. Since every successful blog has images, you can post exciting images with captions from the blog and post them on social media.
Add a link to the full blog and create interest in the viewers to read the whole blog. You can create infographics summarizing a blog or some process and post them on social media platforms like Pinterest.
Similarly, if you have a long video or a webinar recording, you can create snippets and post them online. Another form of the most influential and effortless content is UGC. It attracts an audience and doesn’t need you to make it.
What are the benefits of social media management?
The benefits of social media management are diverse, ranging from creating brand awareness to analyzing your competitors. The information and data collected from social media can be used in many ways.
Here are some key benefits of social media management.
- Create brand awareness
- Foster lead generation and increase conversions
- Create a loyal consumer base
- Establish a positive image of the brand
- Analyze the market and collect data for better decision-making
