2. You Need a Social Media Strategy and Plan

An employee posting at random on your social media profiles and having no plan will do a disservice to your brand. Social media should not be a ‘tick box’ exercise whereby you simply post to get it done and off of your to-do list. Social media like all of your marketing activities should be delivering an ROI and moving you towards your goals. Can you say your social media is moving you toward your business goals?

If you don’t currently have a social media strategy then we strongly suggest you take a look at working on one, so you know that when you or a staff member is spending time, effort and marketing budget on social media it is helping to achieve what you want it to.

Having a plan developed for social media requires seeing the bigger picture. You need to take into account all of the other marketing campaigns that you’re running on your brand’s behalf. Doing so will increase the synergy of all your marketing efforts – online and offline.

For example, if you’re planning on pushing out a direct mail, one that is more costly than perhaps paid search or email, your marketing team should think about how your direct mail piece can be partnered with emails and social media campaigns to magnify your message.

This will provide better leads, engagement, and results.

3. Protect Your Reputation & Help Your Customers

We manage many businesses social media accounts – as social media manager’s we are constantly on high alert to each message, review, and comment happening within our client’s social media accounts.

We have a process in place with regards to response times and how to represent the business within the platform, for each brand we look after.

Hiring an individual who has a great deal of experience in this area is huge, as within seconds a social media manager can help mitigate and solve an issue which would have otherwise turned into a disaster if a less-seasoned individual would have been put in the role.

It’s vital that the social media manager develops not only the right voice and language of the brand within social media, but also work with other individuals within the business, like customer support, so contingency plans are put in place, well before a social media crisis takes place.

The action of responding to a comment, whether it’s good or bad, should also be done within a certain timeframe. The sooner, the better.

Your brand can either help solve a problem for an existing or future customer or client, or make someone respect how your brand conducts itself on social media.

4. Perspective – Inside & Out

If you’re a business that is debating on hiring in-house versus outsourcing to an agency, there are benefits to both.

Advantages of Hiring a Social Media Marketing Agency

• It might be more financially feasible.

• The social media manager may have fresh new ideas that you may have not have considered.

• The social media manager may not be jaded by the culture that comes with your business and can bring in new innovative ideas that your team may appreciate.

They also most likely have the edge in working with similar target audiences, which can help with best practices, what works in your particular industry and what doesn’t.

Advantages of Hiring an In-House Social Media Expert

Once trained, the in-house staff will:

• Know the intricacies of the company culture.

• Understand the business boundaries when brainstorming campaign ideas.

5. Reporting & Tracking

Having a manager who is in charge of all your social media efforts can help you improve the existing campaign.

But a social media manager can also keep your brand agile – switching objectives, creatives, or content if your current efforts aren’t doing as well as they could be.

A social media manager will check their campaigns regularly – turning underperforming ads off and optimising other campaigns to make sure you’re money is being well spent and your goals are being met.

A social media manager will look at campaigns over time and will know if a tactic is becoming fatigued or if the strategy should be adjusted.

This provides substantial value at the end of the month reporting as they will provide documentation telling a story of:

• What was executed that month?

• How well it did compare to previous months.

• What should be done next?

Sometimes campaigns will have a continuing success and can lead to other great ideas, which wouldn’t necessarily be the case if you didn’t have someone dedicated to these efforts around the clock.

Hopefully, you now can see that you’d be far better off hiring a social media manager than not.

Having an outsourced social media manager we would say is the best way to manage your social media accounts to get the best results. We understand that can’t always be the case. Just remember, the results and goals you want will be dependent on your staff members execution. We have trained 100’s of in-house staff to bring them up to scratch on their level of social media knowledge. We help to put a strategy in place, plan social media content to work toward business goals and teach them the latest advances on social media.

Get in touch today about social media management for your accounts or training for your staff.