7 THINGS A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER CAN DO FOR YOU
Besides rescuing you from the complexities of Facebook ads
If you want to grow your business’s social media channels, you need to invest in a social media manager.
You are going to be wearing many hats in your business, surely, you can let an expert in take care of that part of the business for you.
There are a ton of things a social media manager can do for you especially if you hire the right one.
But I understand that when you’re just starting out, you might not have the budget for a social media manager, therefore, you’d want to run things in-house.
That’s why I’m writing this post to let you know that rather than engage all the services, you can pick one or two services from what the social media manager can do for you, I’ve written 10 of them in this post.
If you run an online business, social media management is the core of your business, it’s where potential customers and your target audience will find you.
Therefore, it pays dividends to invest in the full services of a social media manager and to do so early.
Contrary to what many people think, social media management is much more than posting pictures or videos on social media.
As a social media manager, my work involves planning, developing, and managing strategies to increase followers, also creating and overseeing social campaigns, producing content, and reviewing analytics.
But I am really passionate about helping online business owners scale their businesses, so it’s not hard work for me at all.
It’s really going to pay you dividends if you hire one because here are some of the things social media manager can do for you.
Strategy/Planning
The first thing I do when a client books my services is to create a social media strategy.
To do that, I need to find out what the client’s goals for their business are.
For example, if the client wants to increase their business profits, my strategy will be to drive sales of their products and services.
If on the other hand, the client wants to improve customer retention, my strategy will be to provide customer service with social media.
Every strategy must tie back to the business goals.
Have I worked with clients who did not have business goals? Yes, I have.
What I do in this case is to get on a call with them and ask them a few questions.
Every business owner has a purpose for their business and when we communicate, they touch on it, and from that, I can figure out what their goals are.
So one of the things a social media manager can do for you is to create a social media strategy.
A good social media strategy will provide a direction for all your social media activities so that you don’t just post for posting sake.
Content Creation
Another important thing a social media manager can do for you is content creation.
One of the cores of a social media manager is content creation.
They can help develop and manage activity on core social media channels with the aim of driving engagement, building an audience, increasing web traffic, and ultimately reaching your business goals.
This is useful if you have decided to post on your social channels by yourself or by someone in-house.
It involves identifying a topic or an idea that you want to share with your audience, fleshing out that idea, and distributing it across your social media platforms.
First, you have to research your idea and make sure that it is relevant to your target audience.
Then you’ll decide which format you want the content to take- blog posts, videos, eBooks, Tweets, infographics, etc. and then which platform it’s going to be shared on.
Content creation is a very time-consuming responsibility for social media managers.
They can help meet shared objectives and provide insights and analysis to improve impact and effectiveness.
The day-to-day workflow like research, development, design, rounds of editing, production, and so on, can be time-consuming, so don’t be surprised when they charge higher rates for this.
The content doesn’t only have to be done but it has to be great, perfect even, and compelling enough to get people to engage with it.
If your audience is going to spend 10 minutes watching your videos, then it better be interesting enough.
If they are going to click your link to read your blog post, it needs to be top-notch.
Content creation is very important because content is the lifeblood of every online business and it’s one of those many things a social media manager can do for you.
Content Calendar Management
Content calendar management typically includes managing upcoming pieces, status updates, planning promotional activity, partnerships, and updates to existing content.
If you want to experience a seamless social media strategy, creating a content calendar is your best option.
And that’s one of the things a social media manager can do for you.
A content calendar provides specific details on the day-to-day management of social media content like what will be published, on what platform it will be published, and when it will be published.
Apart from social media content calendars, a social media manager can also create an editorial calendar for you.
Just like a content calendar, an editorial calendar also shows the management of your social media activities but on a much higher scale.
It focuses on the higher-level content strategy and looks at the big-picture approach to reaching your business goals.
Instead of the day-to-day activities, it looks at the coming months, quarters, or years in your online business.
It is important that you have a content calendar because impromptu posting will be bad for your brand.
With a content calendar, all your content will follow the strategy and no content will be posted without having a stated goal or objective behind it.
Luckily, that’s one great thing a social media manager can do for you.
Email Marketing
You do not own any social media platform, in fact, you are bound by their rules and algorithms.
Social media platforms have the habit of falling out of popularity, and if that is the only medium with which you reach your audience, you’ll soon be disappointed.
That is why you need to have your own platform, a place where you can reach your audience on a more personal level.
Since email marketing is about reaching people in their emails with your messages, you need to have a way to collect people’s emails.
The process of collecting people’s emails is called List Building.
No matter the level you are or the stage of your business, you should start collecting emails as soon as possible.
But just like your social media management process must have a strategy behind it, your email marketing must also have a strategy.
Your strategy, of course, must tie back to your business goals (or in some cases, your marketing goals).
Before starting email marketing, you need to set your goals for it.
Drive product purchase? Build brand awareness? Nurture leads? Your goal will determine your approach.
Once you’ve determined your goal, you’ll then choose an email service provider, some of which include ConvertKit, Mailer Lite, MailChimp, Substack, etc.
So, how do you build your email list?
You must understand that people will not just give you their email address just because you asked for it.
You have to give them something in exchange for their email addresses.
This something is bait and it is called a Lead Magnet.
A Lead Magnet can be anything from a free PDF guide, an eBook, a free webinar, a free online or email course, and so on.
Ensure that it is relevant and valuable to your audience so that they can be baited.
Once you create it, you can set it up on your website or embed it in your blog posts.
Social Media Graphics Design
If all you need is someone to help design your social media content, then a social media manager can totally do that for you.
Sometimes, brands or business owners like to outsource their social media designs to a graphics designer and that’s totally fine.
You can outsource your designs to a graphics designer and talk about payment, delivery, number of designs, etc.
But when you allow a social media manager to do that for you, they not only will deliver as well as the graphics designer, but they’ll also take it a notch higher.
Because we work predominantly on social media, we know the rules for every platform.
We know the dimensions for each design, we are familiar with brand colours and font styles for the client’s business and we know what the audience will engage with more.
Many social media managers use Canva, a graphics design tool that is template based and can help us work faster, among many other tools.
So if you have your content ready, all you have to do is to send them to the social media manager and they’ll create stunning designs for you.
Community Management
Social media isn’t just about pushing out quality content, it’s about building community.
When that community starts growing, you need to then hire the services of a community manager.
The job of a community manager is to build, grow, and manage online communities, for a brand or for a cause.
When community management is done right, it can do wonders for brand reputation.
Some great platforms where your business can build a community include Facebook groups, Twitter, Slack, LinkedIn, and so on.
You give your business a competitive edge by making use of community management services.
In fact, community management should be a huge part of your social media strategy.
Managing your community becomes more and more important as your customer base grows.
Social Media Advertising
Many times, I’ve gotten calls from business owners who attempted to run Facebook ads by themselves and got stuck.
It was either that their ad was not approved, or the money deducted from their account by Facebook was more than the amount for the ad.
Other times it could be that their ad account was banned or they didn’t get any results from the ad they ran.
I always tell people, “If you cannot run a Facebook ad professionally, don’t attempt it”.
Facebook ad is not so complicated, but it requires someone who is extremely skilled at them to do them successfully.
Many business owners do not even realize that there’s a difference between boosting a post and running an ad.
Some do not even understand that their ads need to be run from an ad account.
Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographic, and profile information.
When you create an ad, you set a budget and bid for each click or thousand impressions that your ad will receive.
But many people do not know their way around this, they don’t know how to set a budget, and some do not even understand how the ad account works.
That’s why I always advise my clients not to attempt it.
Ads management is one of the things a social media manager can do for you.
Some social media managers specialize only in ads and they often call it social media marketing.
All you need to do is to find out which social media manager can run ads well and get results and then hire their services.
And when they are done setting up the ads, they begin to prepare to give you an analytics report.
Conclusion
These and more are all that a social media manager can do for you.
Don’t get it twisted, even if your social media manager is only doing one out of all these tasks, it’s still a lot of work to do.
You need to give them room and allow them to do the work without you interrupting or changing strategies mid-way.
If you want a social media manager that will help you get results, get on a discovery call with me today and let’s get started on helping you get results.
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