The current pandemic has forced businesses all over the world to change the way they operate and deliver their products and services. Businesses are making their way online in droves, some opting to do all the work themselves, while others are making the decision to outsource their social media management to digital marketing agencies.
Before you call yourself an overnight expert at digital marketing, it’s best to consider the importance of getting it right. What goes on the internet stays there; you might not get a chance to fix your mistakes, so it makes sense to get it right.
The question of whether you should outsource your small business’ social media management is one you have to make from a business perspective all on your own. Armed with the facts, you need to do what you have to in order for your business to survive this turmoil. There is no question, the way we all do business is not ‘changing’, it has changed.
Social Media
Social Media provides the opportunity to share content in real-time, eliminating the need to wait on traditional media outlets such as radio stations and TV stations to share content for us. It also gives us the ability to share this content for free. With that power comes great responsibility as you are tasked with ensuring the content you put out properly represents your business.
Knowing how to do this effectively is extremely important. More goes into managing your social media than simply posting on social networking sites.
What does a Social Media Management Agency do?
- Develop a social media marketing strategy
- Research your target audience
- Optimize your online presence
- Create your social media content
- Schedule content on the various social channels
- Conduct marketing campaigns
The Benefits of outsourcing your social media management
Knowing what to do, when to do it and how to do it does not all happen at the same time. A social media agency studies the social platforms and understands what works and what doesn’t, in order to effectively give your small business a solid online presence.
Strategic Actions
Instead of posting on random days and random times, a social media management agency will conduct an assessment of businesses in your niche and select the correct times and days to post your content to your social media accounts.
A social media strategy provides more than just generic tasks one would think of. Some of these are:
Demographic research
In order to effectively market to your target audience, you first have to know who they are. Demographic research is conducted by social media agencies so they’ll know who to create content for. Is your ideal client a mother in her mid-thirties? She might not see your Facebook ad at eight in the morning because she might be busy getting her kids up for the day, or she might see it because she is sitting and scrolling through her phone as she nurses.
Data allows you to know for sure. This research gives you the best opportunity to create content tailored to the people you need to speak to.
Customized and branded content
Creating content for your social media should be something you put a lot of thought into. What message do you want to convey to your followers? What sort of content are they most likely to respond to? Images, videos, Instagram or Facebook lives? Knowing this gives you the power to send out the right content at the right time. Guesswork has no place in social media. Having a customized strategy is what determines success.
In addition to creating content for your social media posts, the content posted to your page should be branded or watermarked. Your brand isn’t just the type of content you post, it is your logo, fonts, colors, and style. This should remain consistent so that whenever a social media user sees your content and they are familiar with your brand, they will be able to immediately identify your work.
This consistency builds trust and brand awareness and that is what you need to make your social media accounts successful.
Hashtag and keyword research
Keywords and hashtags help your profiles be discovered by people and pages not already following you. It also makes it easy for your current followers to find you just by entering keywords and hashtags specific to your niche. You can also create your own branded hashtags that represent your business.
Your social media agency will conduct this research on your behalf to ensure you get the highest reach possible outside of your current followers. Strategic use of hashtags will ensure the steady growth of your pages.
Content creation
Content for social media comes in a variety of formats: images, videos, audio, texts, and captions or descriptions. The benefit of using the agency for these is that they can use the data gathered from their research to create solid content that will fit into your social media strategy. They will also have staff trained in various content creation fields so that content is developed faster and easier than if you should do it on your own.
Posting to your social media pages
We mentioned above that it is important to post to your accounts at the right time and on the right day. Social media management tools such as a scheduler or calendar are used by most companies to ensure that they are able to stick to the correct posting times. This improves efficiency and eliminates human error.
Most agencies will create and schedule your calendar for the month and review it with you, giving you time to change what you don’t like. This time-saving task will be appreciated by small business owners who already have a lot on their plates.
Reporting and analysis
At the end of each month or any agreed-upon cycle, agencies will send you a report of the performance of your accounts and after analyzing, make suggestions on what to change and what to keep. This is useful so that you do not continue to repeat your mistakes. This information is also used to develop a strategy for the coming month.
Engagement
Some agencies include customer engagement in their packages. This includes liking/following other accounts and responding to comments and likes, etc. Engagement is important for social media algorithms and it will be useful if you don’t have the time to respond to your customers. This is a sure way to build relationships with your followers. Treating them like people and not like mere followers. Watch your loyal fan base grow steadily.
Can you manage your own social media
The short answer is yes. Anyone can post on their social media page. If that is all you want to do, you can. If you want to develop a solid strategy that will get you more engagement, increase your reach and following and highlight your target demographic, have a conversation with us.
We help businesses get results and we would love to do the same for you. Save time on your social media marketing efforts and use that time to build other areas of your business. Studying the various social media platforms is a must if you want to be successful. We have and we have the experience and skills to handle your social media management.