What Is Social Media Management And Why Do You Need It?
In an uncertain world, there is one thing you can be certain of when it comes to running your business: social media management is essential.
With over 3.8 billion active social media users, it is a great way of getting your business noticed and reaching your goals in the modern age.
What’s more, 43% of social media users saying that they research products online via social networks. Also, with 27% discovering brands via ads on social media platforms, it is clear that social media is a fruitful avenue for businesses such as yours.
Whilst this is all well and good, how do you actually go about making the most of this through effective social media management?
What Is Social Media Management?
In a nutshell, social media management is simply the process of effectively managing your social media accounts. But what does this actually mean?
Firstly, the most popular and therefore most useful platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. However, other platforms such as TikTok, Youtube, and Pinterest are also becoming incredibly popular. As such, these can better suit your needs in some specific cases.
What differentiates effective social media management is more than simply creating a few posts and posting them across a few platforms semi-regularly.
Essentially, if it was that easy then everyone would be doing it, but many aren’t.
Social media management includes posting, of course. But, it also includes other tasks such as audience interaction, follower vetting, and content creation.
Let’s look at all of this in some more detail.
Selecting the Right Platforms
Each platform is different and has different uses, demographics, and different post formats that perform best.
Because of this, it is important to understand the differences and how to make the most out of each platform. Especially, before you embark on your social media management strategy.
We’ll start by running through some of the core social media platforms and giving you an idea as to what differentiates them.
• It has 2.5 billion monthly users
• 24% of people on Facebook are between the ages of 18 and 24
• 32% of people on Facebook are between the ages of 25 and 34
• 17.1% of people on Facebook are between the ages of 35 and 44
• Video posts earn the highest engagement of any type of content on Facebook
• 26.7% of Facebook Pages use paid media
• It has more than 1 billion monthly users
• 30% of people on Instagram are between 18 and 24 years old
• 35% of people on Instagram are between 25 and 34 years old
• 16.5% of people on Instagram are between 35 and 44 years old
• Video posts earn the highest engagement of any types of content at 1.87%
• Photo posts gain an engagement rate of 1.11%
• 92% of all Instagram users say they’ve followed a brand, clicked on their website, or made a purchase after seeing a product or service on Instagram
• The average business posts to Instagram 1.7 times a day, and posts 13.1 stories per month
• It has 152 million daily users
• 24% of Twitters users are between 18 and 24 years old
• 29% of Twitter users are between 25 and 34 years old
• 23% of Twitter users are between 35 and 49 years old
• Twitter users linger 24% longer over ads than users on any other platforms
• Tweets with hashtags get 100% more engagement
• Also, tweets with video get 1x more engagement
• It has 675 million monthly users
• 19.1% of LinkedIn’s users are between 18 and 24 years old
• 65% of LinkedIn’s users are between 25 and 34 years old
• 16.7% of LinkedIn’s users are between 35 and 54 years old
• 62% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates leads (twice as many as the next social platform)
• Cost per lead on LinkedIn is 28% lower than on Google AdWords
YouTube
• It has more than 2 billion users visiting every month
• 81% of 15-25 year-olds in the US use YouTube
TikTok
• It was the most installed app of Q1 of 2019
• Has 800 million monthly active users
• 69% of TikTok’s users are between 16 and 24 years old
• People on TikTok are 1.8x more likely to want brands to be “young”
Creating and Posting Content
Knowing what to post and how to source good content can be the difference between make and break for your social media marketing strategy. Without good content, you will struggle to attract and retain followers and fans.
Creating and finding engaging content is not an easy task and requires a bit of thought and effort, but the payoff is undoubtedly worth it.
One thing to bear in mind is the 80/20 rule, whereby 80% of the content you post is sourced from elsewhere and is relevant to your business and what your followers might find interesting or useful. The remaining 20% should be directly related to your business. This can be advertising your products or services or the like.
Yet, whilst it’s known as a rule, there is a large degree of flexibility to this. It is very dependent on your business and how much content you can create that directly links to your business.
The importance here is that there is no hard and fast rule and you should be guided by what you want your social media platforms to do.
What’s more, the reason for the balance leaning towards sharing interesting content is because people like to be entertained and to learn new things.
As well as this, whilst selling your product is important and likely the main goal of your platforms, a brand that only posts about their products will struggle to maintain followers.
Finding this content is made much simpler through tools such as UpContent and similar content databases. These will help you to find great content to boost your social media platforms.
Interacting With Your Audience
As well are finding, creating, and sharing engaging content, you need to engage your audience in other ways through direct interaction.
At the end of the day, the greater the relationship you build with your followers, the more conversions you will get, and the greater the brand loyalty you will develop.
Answering messages, replying to comments and running giveaways are all great ways to do this and will undoubtedly improve the returns from your social media and turn your followers into loyal customers.
Track Your Performance
Whilst making changes to the way you run your social media accounts is all well and good, it is important to understand what an impact this is having and to monitor the performance of different strategies and campaigns.
Luckily, most social media platforms have tools in place to help you do this with their Analytics section.
By keeping an eye on what posts do well you can further refine your strategy to maximise its performance.
So Why Use a Social Media Management Company?
Now you’ve seen why social media marketing is so essential and some of the ways to begin to approach this, it might seem like a mammoth task with many things to be constantly thinking about.
This is where Shape The Market steps in.
As a small to medium-sized business, time is a vital commodity, and time spent on boosting your social media might be better spent elsewhere. And, in large businesses, you may feel your in-house staff may not be achieving noticeable growth across your platforms.
By using a social media management marketing company such as Shape The Market we have the expertise, experience, and staff in place to create, manage, and develop your brand online using social media.
One thing to note when investing in social media management is that the return will likely not be instant and you will likely have to give at least 6 months before you start seeing considerable growth.
However, businesses that have long-term foresight and a genuine willingness to buy in will seriously benefit from the power of social media.
