How to Effectively Manage Social Media
Social media is here to stay. Research suggests that by 2018 there will be an estimated 2.67 billion social media users worldwide, with 1 million new active mobile users added each day. Social media has become an essential element of modern day business. There’s simply no better way to engage with customers, generate new leads, develop valuable user insights and build a strong digital presence.
More people are online than ever before. And with the average person signing up for more than five accounts across multiple social networks, businesses can quickly find themselves stretched trying to remain active on each platform. So how can you effectively manage your social media and see the results you’re looking for?
Develop a Social Media Strategy
Many businesses make the mistake of diving headfirst into social media without having any idea of what they are trying to achieve. Without a plan, you’ll find yourself spending hours treading water and going nowhere fast.
An effective social strategy should be combined and integrate into your broader business goals and objectives. Each social interaction should support and be guided by a bigger marketing plan. It’s important that your social media efforts aren’t going to waste.
So how do you develop a strong social media strategy? Start by understanding what social media can do for you. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Build a loyal following? Acquire leads and drive sales? By outlining clear goals, you can then set SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based), and measure your success. An example may be, I want to increase Facebook page likes by 15% within three months of implementation.
A clear strategy with measurable objectives will make it much easier to analyse ROI (Return on Investment) and understand what is and isn’t working.
Stay Organised
There’s no doubt about it. Staying organised is essential if you're looking to build a strong social following on multiple platforms. Twitter engagement is generally at its highest with 3-5 posts per day, Facebook at 2 posts per day, Pinterest with 5+ pins and LinkedIn and Instagram at 1 post. To add further complexity, the times you post also impact your user engagement, and these differ between platforms as well as your target audience.
Switching to a social media management tool, such as BabbleHub, can drastically improve your productivity and help your marketing budget go that little bit further. Start monitoring and scheduling all your social activity from one place. BabbleHub offers advanced scheduling and integrates across the most popular social platforms- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. With the ability to manage up to 100 profiles and an unlimited number of social media accounts, there’s no excuse not to be organised!
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
While it’s great to be active on social media, sub-par content posted just to meet your quota is going to disengage your followers quickly, and can also reflect poorly on your reputation. You want to make sure every social post contributes something of value, and can be re-shared, re-tweeted and passed on.
Delivering quality content on a regular basis can be a lot of work, and it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Creating a shareable resource such as a content calendar can help your marketing team stay on track and regularly produce quality content. Don’t stretch yourself too thin, if you’re finding it difficult to keep up, consider outsourcing to a dedicated content writer.
Analyse data
A lot of time, effort and money go into developing and deploying a social media strategy, so naturally, you want to know if it’s successful or not. Otherwise, what's the point?
Set aside ten to fifteen minutes each week to see how your social media metrics stack up against your goals and objectives. A social media management platform should provide you with all the data you need to measure your success. You can track how your audience engages with your content, how your recent campaign contributed to your sales, or which #hashtags are performing best.
Final Notes on Managing your Social Media
Social media may seem like an overwhelming task, but if you approach it in the right way and manage it effectively, it can do wonders for your business. Start off small, keep persisting and watch your following grow!
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