Time and time again, companies and marketers mention how overwhelming it can be to manage social media effectively. Not only do you have to create content, but you need to engage with your followers, respond to questions or complaints, and promote your posts. Add the fact that you're likely using more than one social channel and the stress can become exponential. Unfortunately, you can't just push your social media accounts aside. According to Statista, there are currently about 2.62 billion users on social media, with that number expected to exceed 3 billion in just three short years. Those figures aren’t meant to discourage you – it should excite you to realize the potential audience you can reach! Below are three tips that are vital to effectively manage your presence on social media.
Keep your brand strategy in mind
- As humans, we have a need for consistency. Cognitive dissonance is the idea that we literally feel uncomfortable with inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, and concepts. We are unable to build trust, and therefore loyalty, without consistency. With branding, it’s important that you develop a brand style guide to keep all your social media accounts consistent. These guides are usually developed at the beginning stages of your content marketing strategy. By using brand style guides, everyone that is involved with your social accounts will know what voice, tone, and visual elements to execute so that your brand has a similar feel across all social platforms.
- Part of your brand or content strategy planning should involve developing buyer personas. Not only do you want to remember the traits that make up your ideal customer, but you should also reach them on the channels they’re using. By researching where you can find your target audience online, you may be able to cut down your social media presence to two or three channels.
Get organized
- At Revenue River, we believe strongly in calendaring so why wouldn’t we express the importance of an editorial calendar to you? In all seriousness, an editorial calendar will help you produce content consistently so your audience stays engaged with your brand. An added benefit is that you can schedule your posts so your audience sees them when they’re actually online. This will require some research and testing as all audiences are different, but there is some consensus on the best times to post on the various social platforms.
- If creating an editorial calendar or social media management is still too much for you, there are several social tools and software like HubSpot to help you get the job done. The tools you choose will depend on your needs and business goals, but there are a ton out there that will help with monitoring, publishing, and analytics.
Listen and analyze
- Social listening is the process of tracking and analyzing conversations online to aid your marketing efforts. Furthermore, monitoring involves actively tracking mentions of your brand, products, and services. By engaging in both of these processes, you can learn about your target audience’s interests, keep up with industry trends, and find out what your customers are saying (or not saying!) about you. You will also be able to learn about your competitors, manage your reputation, and find prospective leads as well as influencers.
- By listening and analyzing data, you can make informed decisions on how to best tailor your content and improve the efficacy of your social media campaigns. What are your metrics saying? Remember that your KPIs should be aligned with your marketing objectives so that you get the most accurate data to identify success! If you’re not getting the results you want, what changes can you make?
It can be challenging to know how to manage social media effectively. However, by being mindful of your brand strategy, staying organized, as well as listening and analyzing you should feel empowered moving forward. Your untapped reach and ROI is certainly worth the effort!
