Social media is the fastest-growing technology craze of our time. Allowing people to easily listen, interact, engage and collaborate with each other, the likes of Facebook and Instagram have created an almost clear-cut path straight to our audiences. But as the number of vital social media platforms increase and the conversations get louder, it becomes a more time- and labour-intensive process to effectively track, monitor and manage them.
With social media management tools, you can effectively manage incoming and outbound interactions and engagements, streamline and consolidate how you listen to and participate in relevant conversations within the various different platforms that this chatter is occurring, and amplify your message where you have a social presence.
Develop A Social Media Strategy
Establishing a social media strategy is the primary way you can work on maximising what you get out of each social media platform.
Here's how:
1. Decide which platforms you're going to focus on. Depending on the size of your company and how long you've been operating, you may already have an online presence on each of the main social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram — and that's great.
But most of the companies that attract new customers via social media do so because they are often on a few. This depends purely on what your company offers and how well you understand each of the platforms. For instance, a B2B company may be heavily invested in LinkedIn and Twitter, whereas a consumer-facing company that produces visually appealing products will focus on their Instagram and Pinterest accounts.
2. Then, consider what you know about your audience and what kind of content they like best. You want your social media marketing strategy to reflect your target market's desires and, of course, how you can solve their biggest pain points.
This will determine whether your content will be (mostly) in the form of images to be looked at, articles to read, or videos to watch. Every piece of content needs to be engaging and speak to your audience's needs and challenges. Here, you also need to decide how you're going to engage with followers — with calls to action [CTAs], reaching out via email, competitions?
With a social media management tool, you can post, without sweat, across all active social accounts, in whichever format the content is in, from one platform.
Build A Social Media Posting Schedule
Once you have the basics covered, you'll need to decide on a posting schedule. Consistency is key here, and there is no better way to lose a following than to go quiet for long periods of time. But high quality is paramount — the only way to achieve both is to invest in a social media management tool that offers a posting schedule. That way, you can have all your high-quality content planned, and save yourself time, effort and stress by scheduling it to be published automatically.
Take Engagement To The Next Level With Social Media Ads
Although nothing beats organic, social media ads complement your organic reach by targeting audiences and improving visibility. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram ads, linked sponsored posts and even YouTube's 5-second clips drive sales by allowing you to reach new leads who are similar to your best customers. The different platforms naturally have different layouts, formats, targeting options and pricing, but each of them has the ability to attract new leads.
One of the main advantages that social media advertising has over other media is the power of its targeting options. For example, you can choose to target audiences by age, likes, interests, job title, function, income bracket, location, and other demographics. There are also retargeting options for people who have visited your website or engaged with your content previously. Make sure you take advantage of these advanced selection criteria to direct your campaign to your target audience and control your budget.
Post To Company Profiles And Respond To Followers
Another challenge of manual social media management is creating and publishing social media content across your company's social profiles. By now there's a good chance you're creating original content in the form of image, text and video, as well as posting third-party curated content from followers, and doing this all to more than one platform. With a social media management tool, you can post, without sweat, across all active social accounts, in whichever format the content is in, from one platform.
Responding to comments, messages and mentions from followers is also a crucial part of any social media marketing strategy. With a social media management tool, you can acknowledge and reply to everything that is said to you or about you. If it's a concern about another department's expertise, just flag it on the system and they'll be notified immediately.