WHY HAVING A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER IS SO IMPORTANT
Social media has created an unprecedented opportunity for brands. Today, your business can engage directly with customers and the benefits of doing so include:?
Together, these benefits also help socially active brands build better solutions.
Social media management touches on a number of important elements, all of which form part of a well-structured digital marketing strategy.?
This blog post covers the core components of social media management. We’ll connect the dots between social media strategy and social media management. You’ll also learn what the most important factor of running a well-oiled social media management operation is, and how to choose the right platforms for your brand.?Finally, we’ll dig into the importance of planning and schedule content effectively to ensure that your brand reaps all the rewards possible from social media.?
But first, we need to answer an important question. what is social media, What is a Social Media Manager,What Do Social Media Managers Do?
What is Social Media
The 'social' part:?refers to interacting with other people by sharing information with them and receiving information from them.
The 'media' part:?refers to an instrument of communication, like the internet (while TV, radio, and newspapers are examples of more traditional forms of media).
From these two separate terms, we can pull a basic definition together:
Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by sharing and consuming information.
Yes, it's a broad definition—but keep in mind that social media is a very broad term. This is likely as specific as we can get without zeroing in too much on a more specific subcategory of social media.
Common Social Media Features
The following list of common features is often dead giveaways of a social media site. If you're questioning whether a particular site could be classified as social or not, try looking for at least one of these features.
What is a Social Media Manager
A social media manager is often called the ‘voice of the company’.” The role may also be referred to as ‘Community Manager’ (although this title has become slightly outdated) or ‘Digital and Social Media Manager’.?
Why Social Media Manager
Unfortunately, for a business owner, time is sparse and efforts can often be spread out too thin. When balancing countless work tasks, adding social media to the mix can appear daunting or almost impossible to sustain. Therefore, the importance of Social media manager becomes much more significant. Hiring a dedicated and committed Social Media Manager to manage social media marketing activities not only allows employers to direct their attention to general management and other important tasks, but also allows for a strong focus on a vital component to any succeeding business; social media marketing.
“A Social Media Manager is integral to any online marketing strategy. They understand the way people think, act, and behave because at the very crux of social media are consumers and by developing strong relationships with them, increases leads and sales.”
Below is a list of only a few responsibilities required by Social Media Managers.
1. Consumer Engagement
Consumer engagement involves a Social Media Manager listening, responding, and asking an online audience questions in order to engage and interact with them. A Social Media Manager has a plethora of ways at their fingertips by which they may engage an audience. Some of which may be through;
Importantly, consumer engagement is generally ‘proactive’ where Social Media Managers will actively interact with influencers or consumers (tagging or mentioning others in social media posts, or starting a LinkedIn group discussion) as opposed to ‘reactive’ engagement (such as responding to comments made by a user).
It is vital that Social Media Managers have a firm understanding of the products and services available by the company and have knowledge of how the sales process operates in order to respond correctly and effectively to consumers’ product-related questions.
2. SEO and SEM Marketing
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) attempts to maximise the number of visitors to a particular web page by ensuring the web page appears at the top of a search engine list of results. SEO involves a range of different methods to ensure a high position on the results list such as including quality meta descriptions and focus keywords.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) on the other hand, is a form of marketing whereby businesses pay for an increased visibility in a search engine’s list of results. It is the responsibility of Social Media Managers to combine SEO and SEM practices in order to precisely target a relevant audience by ensuring high website rankings, and an increased competitive advantage.
3. Promotion and Advertising
It is one thing to ensure an active presence across a range of social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. However, in order to grow and promote your valuable content further, advertising may be required.
Facebook for example, requires high financial expenditure through advertising to obtain even hundreds and thousands of impressions. However, when done correctly, the results can be very rewarding. Instagram on the other hand, does not require costly investment in order to generate a huge following and high levels of engagement. It is often up to a Social Media Manager to decide?which social media platforms can be profitable, where to advertise, and what the budget will be.
4. Analyse and Measure Effectiveness of Social Media Strategy
Social Media Managers are requires to record cumulative data from each and every post made from every social media network. Although excessive, the information forms the basis for analysis on the effectiveness of employed strategies. Data must be reported and monitored frequently. Commonly monitored metrics include:
Job Requirements and Essential Duties of a Social Media Manager
The role of a Social Media Manager however, is not for the faint-hearted. The job requires hard work, the ability to juggle many tasks simultaneously, research and diagnostic capabilities, and the ability to adapt to constant change.
Below is a comprehensive list of competencies required by a Social Media Manager.
1. Quick Feedback
Respond to any online feedback from customers quickly and professionally whilst demonstrating gratitude and genuine appreciation for the feedback and positive comments received online.?Personalisation?plays a major role in building loyal community of customers.
2. Social Listening
Constantly?listen to what consumers are saying online, and react to changing sentiments about your brand.
3. Brand Consistency
Always adopt the ‘voice’ of the brand since every brand has a defined persona and style of expression which is (and should be) apparent in all online and offline activities which should remain consistent. It can be done through?personal branding?as well.
4. Humanise the brand
Embody personable traits by relating to an audience with the aim of provoking positive emotional responses such as laughter and surprise.
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5. Engage with communities
Creatively and uniquely engage relevant online communities and look to other communities for inspiration.
6. Content Creation
Write online quality and valuable content with expression and flair.?Content creation?is a challenging process and is the cornerstone for the success of any website.
7. Data monitoring
Frequently track progress, analyse metrics and results in order to measure Return on Investment (ROI).
8. Manage
Manage general activities across a range of social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) by discovering optimal posting and scheduling times, and by developing and implementing effective social media strategies.
Without a Social Media Manager, there is no definite online spokesperson for a company with which consumers can directly interact. The Social Media Manager is essentially an online touchpoint whereby consumers can communicate with a business however, without a Social Media Manager’s presence how can a business expect to develop a strong relationships with their hyper-connected consumers? Today’s online consumers are more demanding than ever before and so without an active and well-established social presence, a business is considered at a loss and uncompetitive. In fact, a business’ reputation, future growth, and development depends on a Social Media Manager!
7 Skills You have Need to be a Great Social Media Manager
Now that you know what the role of a Social Media Manager involves, here are some of the skills you’ll need to do your best in this role.
1. Writing
Social media managers do a lot of writing, sometimes more than a dozen posts each day. Plus, each social network requires a slightly different style of writing. Linkedin, for example, requires a more?professional tone, while Facebook is more light and fun. SEO copywriting knowledge is also very helpful to know about. (More on this later!)
You must be able to create messages that are quickly understood by your brand’s audience and promote a positive sentiment. In essence, through writing the Social Media Manager should enhance their brand and become?‘the voice’?of the company.?Some important types of writing include:
2. Research
Social media managers must stay up-to-date with the ever-changing world of social and digital media. This includes new measurement/analytics tools, industry and world trends, and?tracking what you competitors?are doing, even on a daily basis.?
Great Social Media Managers set up?Google Alerts?on popular topics and use tools like?Feedly, Ahrefs and?BuzzSumo?to keep up with trending content. The Twitter Trends sidebar and the TikTok ‘Discover’ tab are useful, while?hashtag research?can also help.
3. SEO Knowledge
Though SEO is often considered a separate department within organizations, that way of thinking is disappearing as SEO has become an integral part of content marketing and social media..?
In fact, SEO can have a great impact on your social media content. A good Social Media Manager knows this and strives to?write SEO optimized copy?on social networks. When you embrace SEO as part of your strategy, you can attract a larger audience with an interest in your products or services, leading to more potential customers.?
When thinking about combining SEO and social media, ask yourself the following questions:
4. Social Media Expertise
It may seem obvious, but a Social Media Manager needs to have great social media skills! Although these can be learned over time through research and experimentation, if you’re aiming for a job at a large company, you’ll need a few years of experience under your belt.?
The type of knowledge you’ll need to outshine your competitors includes:
The graphic below shows the types of content that marketers believe are the most valuable for achieving their goals on social media.?
5. Customer Services?
When?47% of customers prefer brands that offer strong social media customer service, Social Media Managers need to make sure they have the skills to match.?
Customers often look to social media accounts for help with answering questions about products and services, and if nobody is there to answer those questions (even on nights and weekends!), their impressions of that brand will likely sour. A successful Social Media Manager understands that your social media presence is your brand’s face and voice online. So, everything they say or do on social platforms is a representation of the brand.?
Here are some?stats?on the importance of customer service and social media.. Highlights include:
While the role of Social Media Manager is often defined as 9-to-5, individuals should be available to respond to comments and questions at any time. Most Social Media Managers access their company accounts on their mobile devices so they can respond when necessary.?
If there’s no one to take over social media while you’re on vacation or out sick, you may still be on the hook--even when you schedule posts ahead of time.
6. Visual Intelligence
While a lot of the content you’ll put on social media will be written, visual content is also crucial. The right video or photo can be shared hundreds or even thousands of times, and you need to understand how to?create platform specific social media content.?
It’s valuable for Social Media Managers to have a knowledge of design to create visually appealing graphics to complement your posts.?Know Your Meme?can be helpful in keeping up with daily development of new memes (if appropriate for your company).
Video is also an essential component of your social media strategy, so if you can gain skills in that area, it will be extremely helpful. As Hootsuite explains, a good Social Media Manager will “know great video when they see it, and most importantly have a firm grasp of social video trends and how they fit into each major network.”
With the meteoric rise of visual platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, the quality of your videos is hugely important. Make sure you?use social media for storytelling?to speak to your audience alongside a clear, concise message about your brand.?
7. Be Adaptable
Flexibility is important in any marketing role, but even more so in social media management. The?social media landscape?moves so quickly that being adaptable is an absolute necessity.?
It’s not enough to be able to schedule posts. You must be able to try out new features and change things up based on trends and the continual testing and analytics that you should be running on your posts.?
Once you have the analytics in front of you, you also need the flexibility to try new things to make your social media work best for you. A/B testing (writing posts in multiple ways, with different images) can help you quickly determine which types of images and copy work for your company - and which aren’t. Use this?beginner’s guide to A/B testing so you can optimize your approach.?
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