Social media is a place of broad variety and creativity, where one can find channels or pages for just about anything. But under this generic umbrella, we have also got numerous small businesses and marketers, who are quite familiar with the changing atmosphere of social media. They can then use it to their advantage and influence a multitude of people. So how do they do that? How do they keep all their social channels organized and effective? Well, the magic trick here seems to be the use by social media managers for the business. Let the social media management and marketing packages help you through this.
Efficient workflows and excellent delivery of results keep a business running. However, the growth of a local business is only possible through a channeled and strategic marketing plan, with solid management and a growing social media team. If you are trying to multitask your way through it – by overseeing all socials on your own while trying to work on effective business strategies – drop the idea. Because with such a hectic routine, you will never have enough time to keep up with new opportunities in the market and how you can take advantage of them.
To approach social media management, just having surface knowledge will not be enough. That is why we have compiled a guide that covers everything from what social media management is, and how it can help your business, to management tools and the overall social media management costs.
What are Social Media Management Packages?
Social media management refers to the process of carefully creating, scheduling, publishing, analyzing, and monitoring the content you post on different social platforms. So social media management packages are the tools that assist you with all of this. Let’s first focus on each of the enlisted aspects with a bit more clearance. It involves:
Creating varied content for all social handles, after tailoring a social media strategy for your business.
Developing a social media strategy tailored specifically for each social account and creating a publishing schedule.
Analyzing social media content and the response it generates.
Monitoring all online engagements with the audience and also measuring social media performance as well as ROI.
All of these aspects are now an integral part of any company’s marketing strategy. And if you are wondering why? It’s simply because social media can turn into a hub of money-making opportunities for any business. The only condition is managing and handling all social media platforms in an effective, organized, and consistent way.
Why is effective social media management so important?
Social networks hold immense business potential and brands can easily leverage it through effective management strategies.
- For starting, social media serves as an integral part of building and maintaining a consistent brand image.
- Your chances of reaching your target audience through advertising packages will be much higher. This in turn will increase the number of visits to your store or office.
- Since most people discover a brand on social media, it is important to create a lasting first impression.
When strategizing your social presence, remember to stay aligned with your overall brand narrative. Social media trends change quickly and you have to adapt accordingly. However, respect the balance between staying true to the brand’s narrative and tailoring content that fits the new trends. Curate and tailor the content as well as the visuals very carefully, for each social media platform. And there is no room for improper formatting. This is why incorporating social media marketing packages in business is so important.
A Guide to Social Media Management
Social media marketing is a broad term and it’s natural to wonder what its management includes. You might be confused about where to take the start. With this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to bring the above-mentioned information to practice. The management campaign for your social media can be tackled through the following steps.
Create a Social Media Strategy
If you don’t already have a social media strategy for a buisness, start by building one. The comprehensive approach must focus on all social media platforms equally.
GOALS – Start by listing the goals you want to achieve through social networking. What is your business planning to accomplish through social media marketing? Do you plan to raise brand awareness or do you just want to fill the content gaps through guides and blog posts?
BRANDING – Build a brand voice or narration that reflects your business value and will become your business’s identity.
AUDIENCE – Lastly, narrow down the targeted audience after extensive research on who can be your potential clients.
Audit the Existing Social Media Strategy
If you already have a social media marketing strategy, and you are advertising your services online, it’s time for social media auditing. There is always room for improvement and through this audit, you can take a look at what’s effective and what’s not in your social media campaign.
Some typical steps include:
- Review your social media marketing goals.
- Ensure that your branding is consistent across all social platforms.
- Analyze the content preferences and check if your social media metrics match the trends.
- Never forget to review the details of your competitor’s social media and what are they focusing on.
- Compile social media metrics of all your socials. Check out the engagement rates, number of followers, and much more.
Consider these points an overview of your social health check. Let’s have a step-by-step detail into social media auditing.
- One – Enlist all the socials in one place, including the ones from different sub-branches or regions.
- Two – Review the key performance metrics by using certain social media analytics. Focus on the average engagement rate of each platform for each month, content publishing frequency, content engagement rate, top-performing posts, community sentiment, audience interest, the average response time of your followers, traffic sources, audience demographics, behaviour, and interests.
- Three – Pull out a good audit template and add all this information to the template.
- Four – Analyze this data carefully and identify your areas of improvement. For example, if you notice a dwindling engagement volume on Facebook, there can be multiple reasons behind it. It can be low-quality content, wrong publishing timing, inaccurate targeting, etc. Once you’ve spotted the cause, contact the relevant team and make changes accordingly.
The Benefit of Creating a Social Media Strategy
In addition to providing immediate insight, the social media audit will help you gain the following advantages:
- Having a granular image of your social media marketing strategy.
- Detecting where your resources are being wasted because it isn’t generating much output.
- Realizing which social channels and what type of content is bringing you the most results.
Analyze the Targeted Audience
The core part of social media marketing and management is analyzing your audience. This practice ensures that the marketing budget spent on advertising and content creation is reaching the right audience. If your team does not know who their targeted audience is, it can make your marketing strategy much more complicated. Without research, you will be wasting both the company’s time and resources. Once you know who the targeted audience is and where to find them, it will be much easier to reach them. Also, by targeting the audience on their preferable platform, you will gain a bigger return on investment (ROI). So how can you analyze your target audience?
Start by building a detailed picture of your audience’s shared characteristics. It helps you divide them into certain personas. Having this information will give you a better idea of what you should be concentrating on, and what will work out best for your online community. Even if you plan to hire the services of the social media management packages, they will also require insight into your targeted audience.
Create Advertising Campaigns
Social media advertising campaign also plays an important role in encouraging user engagement and earning genuine followers. However, each social platform has a different approach to ads. They feature different goals and ad types.
Generally, when creating ads for any platform, take care of the following aspects:
- Use of compelling media and content.
- Crafted for a targeted audience.
- A simple but compelling CTA (call to action), makes it easier for the user to reach you.
- Estimation of cost per click.
If you have crafted an ad perfectly, but it isn’t reaching the target audience, you won’t get the expected results. So before you sign off and launch a campaign, give it a review.
Pick the Most Suitable Social Media Platforms
When it comes to picking social media platforms for your marketing, it’s best to focus on the ones which matter the most or are used the most by your audience. This can be done simply by reviewing the demographic data and conducting a social media audit as mentioned previously. After knowing which platform works the best for you, make it your priority. So there is no need to distribute time equally for every channel. Let’s have a look at how you can develop the profiles of some of the most famous social platforms and manage them properly.
Starting with Facebook hosts around 3 billion users worldwide and is a powerful social platform. It’s a bad look for a business that does not have a well-developed Facebook account. Because of such a high number of users, the platform serves as the best source of gaining sufficient reach. Facebook marketing appeals to both local businesses and corporations because of three main benefits:
- Low Marketing Costs.
- Exact Audience Targeting.
- Organic Follower Engagement.
After connecting your Facebook to a social media management tool, you can take maximum advantage of these benefits. The management services you get from a social media manager include:
- Recommendations for marketing strategy
- Content development and scheduling
- Paid advertising
- Engagement monitoring, etc.
Another different albeit valuable social media platform for business is Twitter. Because of the recent developments surrounding Twitter under Elon Musk and his quest for blue ticks, we wouldn’t say your business must have a Twitter account. It remains to be seen what changes he has planned for Twitter’s security and advertising policies. In May, Musk hinted at imposing a “slight cost” for commercial users. Now whether the business owners will have to pay for a subscription or not is still a mystery. However, he does claim to make Twitter the…
“most respected advertising platform of the world”.
With that said, let’s see how you can take advantage of Twitter in your social media management and strategy.
Because of the character limit of tweets, the platform can serve as your announcement centre. Whatever the recent company developments, discount offers, announcements of sales, or important company news, Twitter will help you craft the message in a meaningful, concise, and engaging way. You can also use it for customer support services. After linking Twitter to the social media manager, the tool will execute its management according to your desired preferences.
Instagram is currently hosting 1 billion users, one-third of which have purchased some product through the app. Hence, this visual story-telling Facebook-owned platform shall be of great value for your business, if utilized correctly. You can now reach a wide range of audiences through posts, reels, videos, and live sessions.
Additionally, because over 200 million users visit a business page per day, the substantial market of Instagram is the most suitable for your business ventures. Just don’t forget to execute the use of paid ads, hashtags, and media correctly.
LinkedIn is said to be an optimal platform for business-to-business (b2b) companies. The social network will be helpful in compelling executives and potential business partners. For LinkedIn management, your content should bolster your brand credibility, gain market trust, and demonstrate your leadership qualities.
Managing Content Creation on Social Media
A huge part of social media marketing and management is content. The creation, nature, and publishing of content all rely heavily on your in-depth understanding of your business and targeted audience. You need to know which practices are most suitable for your website content, and which topics are in appeal to your audience.
Make a Social Media Calendar
When it comes to managing social media, consistent and regular posting is the key. Now that you have picked your social media platforms, it’s time to make a social calendar for each app. This includes what you will be posting throughout the month, considering your business priorities. Map out the main campaigns that you will be focusing on throughout the year. The time of publishing must also be optimal for the audience. Whatever frequency of posting you choose, you must stay consistent with it. Otherwise, you will lose your reach swiftly.
The basic social media calendar includes information like a list of content you plan on posting, publish dates, relevant links, images, and content metrics.
Monitor Performance
Having established social media goals and platforms, it will be easier to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitor the performance of your socials. For example, if your week’s goal is to increase the number of followers, you must monitor the follower growth of every platform and see if it’s growing steadily.
Respond to Followers Efficiently
Consumers prefer having customer service on social media instead of apps or emails. This is a serious chore that involves 24/7 attention to customers. The key here is to respond to them as quickly and efficiently as possible. Fortunately, by using social media management packages, you don’t have to stay on the beck and call the whole day. Depending on the management tool you can use, you will either be given a manager in the package like Postredi, or you will be provided with a chatbot functionality. Once in a while, you can come online and respond to your customer’s comments. This valuable feature can immensely improve your customer service. To ensure that the management package you opt for offers a listening feature.
3 Ideal Social Media Management Tools
The social media management tool you use for your business will ultimately define the whole workflow and your marketing priorities. It’s important to know what the must-have features of an ideal social media management packages are. Here’s a good list of things to keep in mind:
- User Experience.
- Pricing.
- Collaboration Tools.
- Availability of social media manager.
- Security and Scalability.
After identifying the features that weigh more for your platforms, you can pick the one that best serves your goals.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is probably the most famous social media management tool in the market. It has over 15 million users and it offers a complete suite. Pricing plans include a free trial, $29, $129, and $599 packages per month.
Postredi
Postredi is a relatively new social media scheduling and management tool, with unique features of “generating post ideas” and “lead management”. The tool has been centrally designed for realtors as they can easily keep a watch on all the leads through their Postredi account. Another unique aspect of this management tool is that you also get to have a marketing assistant who would get social media management done for you.
It’s social media management packages include $49/month, $39/month (annual plan), $699/ month, and $599/month (annual plan). The last two packages will also get you a marketing assistant so you can focus easily on other important real estate jobs.
Buffer
Buffer is an intuitive and affordable managing tool that is mainly focused on helping you gain organic traffic. Pricing packages include $15, $99, $199, and $399 per month.
FAQs
The Takeaway
Right, so yes social media management can be an overwhelming task. But by building constructive strategies and using the right tools, you can build a good deal of revenue out of social media marketing. It’s quicker and more efficient to meet your goals by using a social media management tool.
