Who Else is Looking for an Amazing Social Media Coordinator?

Do you believe your company needs to take social media marketing serious if you want to build an engaged community around your brand? You've tried it. Spent money on social media posting tools, loaded posts you felt were relevant to your brand's audience and waited for results. When you viewed analytics for the week you see the same three people engaging with your content and two of those are your parents. Ouch.

You lower your head, curse the algorithms, and vow to never write another brand Facebook post again.

Eff it! You've made it this far without Instagram and Twitter. You'll be okay. Right?

Yup, it's fine, if you want to be ordinary.

It's cool if you don't want to build a raving audience around your brand's products and services.

It's okay to settle for less. If your happy then quit reading.

But if you want to take action in 2020 and build an engaged audience and brand community then you need to make some changes.

1. Accept that your small business or start-up brand's success or failure ties to social media marketing.
2. Stop doing everything yourself and hire an in-house social media marketing coordinator or outsource to an agency or freelancer.
3. Know what to look for when choosing the best social media manager for the job.

Still, reading? So I'll assume you have accepted –the cold, hard truth– social media marketing is here to stay. You have also admitted you don't understand how to write a 144 character post to pique your brand audience's interest. 2 out of 3 down, now all you have to do now is bite the bullet and find the best social media marketing coordinator for the role

Over the years, I have worked with and as a social media marketing coordinator. I have also fulfilled this role for several start-ups in the addiction recovery industry. In this post, I've outlined several qualities you should look for when deciding on the social media marketing manager to build an engaged audience surrounding your brand.

Before you decide on a social media marketing coordinator look for these social skills:

1. Compassionate, empathetic, understanding

Many believe social media marketing is about selling more products. Sales are often secondary here, especially in addiction recovery space. Your ROI comes later.

Be patient!

Relationship building is the core goal of social media marketing. Exceptional coordinators know how to listen to the different teams involved in your company, the C-suite, and your audience. Managers with experience wade through all of the noise on the internet to find the opportunities to empathetically connect with your audience. During times of crisis or customer outrage, they hold their cool, listen objectively to complaints, and are resilient to letting negative comments attack them personally. Instead, they use these opportunities to show compassion and understanding to the team or customer in crisis.

Extroverted coordinators will understand how to

• Build relationships with your audience
• Join the conversations already happening online by creating engaging, conversational social media campaigns
• Strategically use transparency to show your audience your true brand story

2. Social media marketing coordinators are active social listeners

In order to build social relationships, you must know your customers, brand ambassadors, and community. Social media coordinators use social listening skills to actively listen to what people are saying and how they are saying it online.

It is the key to developing award-winning social media campaigns.

The fast pace of social media results in millions of conversations happening simultaneously online. You'll have to develop the mindset to take what you need and leave the rest. Effective social listening helps your coordinator learn what your target customer needs, wants, knows, and expects from your brand.

Social listening is a top priority. It helps you to understand your audience's

• Demographics, the language used, and their core values
• Dreams, goals, aspirations
• Pains, worry, and anxiety
• Inspirations to buy, use, or recommend products or services
• Process for making buying decisions
• Engagement with your competitors

Skilled social media coordinators know what key elements to listen for in the conversations happening online such as:

• When your brand or competitor is mentioned online
• Crisis management issues with your brand's products or services
• Customer service opportunities
• Competitors engagement especially negative comments, dislikes, discrepancies, or issues with products or services
• Product or service sales possibilities
• What influencers are saying about your brand and product, or service category
• Influencers to assess, recruit, and collaborate with
• When to join the conversation and empathize with your audiences' needs, wants, and desires

3. Research, analyze, and knowledgable

Copywriting legend David Ogilvy taught us the first rule of any marketing campaign is to start with research. Social media marketing miserably fails without proper research. Using the data mined through social listening combined with various forms of customer research ensures your social media marketing campaigns start off on the high road.

It is vital to research the language your audience uses. Stay away from industry jargon, buzzwords, and hype. It's 2020 and consumers are hip to the nonsensical buzzwords ill-informed marketers like to throw around as a smokescreen.

Ann Handley Content Rule Number 4: Speak Human.

Your social media coordinator must consistently research:

• Issues, topics, news your audience cares about
• What types of content your audience enjoys and engages with
• Your brand perspective, history, and future endeavors
• The most common questions your audience asks of your brand's products or services
• How your brand answers the questions that cause your audience stress and anxiety
• The common language used by your target audience

Analyze social media performance with a data-driven approach

Your social media marketing coordinator must be comfortable using a data-driven approach to get the most value from social media analytics. In order to understand how social media affects your brand, it's imperative to systematically analyze multiple social media platforms and the types of content published. It's pertinent the social media coordinator possess exceptional writing and analytical skills for collecting, organizing, analyzing, and breaking down multiple assessments into a common language to present to various departments and stakeholders.

Knowledgable about social media marketing

Social media coordinators understand the ins and outs of the social media platforms your brand plans to use. What they don't know they learn. A detailed understanding helps your manager to decide which social platforms best serve your brand's products or services.

After you choose which social media platforms to use, your manger must stay up-to-date about algorithm changes, publishing specifications, and social platform trends. A content publishing calendar must be created and respected. Through consistent publication, your audience will start to rely on when to expect new content from you. Respecting your publishing calendar builds trust with your brand audience.

Other factors to look for is how well your coordinator:

• Understands SEO and its purpose, in regards to your brand's blog and social media content
• The purpose of developing and refining a social media content strategy
• Branded content
• When to use paid social media publishing over organic blogging and sharing of valuable, relevant information
• The perfect formula for posting relevant helpful information with social posts asking for the sale.

4. Strategic, creative, and innovative content writer

In order for social media campaigns to prosper a campaign must flow seamlessly with each social media platform. Extensive knowledge of each social media platform's purpose, function, and style ensures the campaigns created have a big impact.

The daily work of your social media coordinator requires an armory of tools and knowledge of content marketing. Your coordinator must

• Create excellent and effective brand-aligned content
• Sharp conversational copywriting skills
• A well-trained eye for designing visually inspiring posts, especially for Instagram and Pinterest
• Craft compelling video content
• An insatiable thirst to learn new mediums and techniques to create compelling content to engage your audience

5. Understand your brand

Social media marketing happens in real-time, so your campaigns must flow concurrent to what's trending online relationship to your brand. There is no room to second guess how to respond to social media engagement. It is crucial to possess a deep understanding of your brand. Knowledge of your brand. helps social media coordinators strategically use transparency to show your audience the true brand story.

Takeaway

If you want to build an engaged audience in 2020, you need to embrace the power of social media marketing. However, you cannot do it all on your own. You will need to make an investment in your brand's future. Once you take action and hire a skilled social media marketing coordinator you'll be on your way to nurturing an audience.

Please, don't expect results overnight. It takes time to nurture and develop an engaged brand audience. Hmmm, I guess it depends on your product. I guess if you're product or service is sinister, a troop of outraged villagers could come storming to your castle –like Dr. Victor Frankenstein's– overnight.

When you take the time and do it right, show empathy and transparency, and meet your audiences, expectations, wants, and needs, you will see a return on your investment not only in product and service sales but in raving, hardcore fans.

Be diligent and find the best social media coordinator for the job.