Social media management is a type of digital marketing. It involves the use of social media channels to promote a business, product, or service.
Social media also provides a way for you to build brand awareness for your business, increase engagement with your target audience, generate leads and conversions, and provide customer service to users of your product or service.
Around 4.48 billion people are thought to use social media worldwide, with the average user engaging with 6.6 different social media platforms. With social media continuing to grow by an average of 12.5% per year, you can see why social media is something your business can’t afford to not be taking advantage of.
There are loads of social media platforms that you might use to market your business. These include:
- Facebook pages
- Instagram profiles
- Twitter profiles
- Pinterest pages
- LinkedIn profiles
- TikTok profiles
- YouTube channels
These are some of the most popular and commonly used ones. However, it is important to note that this list is by no means exhaustive, and new social media platforms are joining the internet every day.
By working with an experienced social media expert, you will be able to keep up-to-date with the newest developments in the social media world, and quickly jump on board with the best new platforms for your industry and target audience.
Many different social media marketing strategies exist. These include:
- Content creation (also known as content marketing – namely, posting videos and images that are likely to engage your target demographic, which may be accompanied with relevant hashtags to maximise your reach and engagement)
- User-generated content (re-posting or sharing content from your customers of followers, which is another great way to build engagement)
- Community engagement (that is, using social media to interact with your target audience and provide customer service)
- Promotions, giveaways, and contests (all of which are good ways to grow your following and increase the amount of traffic being received to your page)
- Paid marketing campaigns (where you can pay for your ads to be displayed to your target demographic)
- Influencer marketing (partnering with popular influencers or celebrities in your niche or demographic by paying them to promote your business to their following)
The type of social media marketing approach that you choose will depend on several factors, including the type of product or service you are promoting, the demographic you are targeting, and your business’s overall goals.
Several social media management platforms exist that allow you to schedule content ahead of time, which can help to take some of the hard work out of the social media marketing process. These can be a great option for businesses with an in-house social media management team, or who have some existing knowledge of social media.
However, many small businesses who are new to social media prefer to seek professional help from a social media manager who is experienced in their industry, to ensure they are achieving the best possible results. That’s where we come in.
What the social media management process looks like can vary based on a number of factors, including what your business does, what products or services you offer, who your target audience is, and what types of marketing activities that you want to focus on.
However, here’s a general guide as to what the process might look like:
1. Creative brief
We’ll ask you some questions so that we get to know you and your business. This will also help us to find out more about your brand, and what you’re looking for in your social media management.
Some of the questions that we might ask include:
- What does your business do?
- What products or services do you offer?
- Who are your current and potential customers?
- What sort of a message do you want to be giving your customers through your social media pages?
- What are your long and short-term goals?
- How would you describe your brand identity?
- What social media platforms do you currently use?
- What is your social media strategy like at present?
- What about your engagement?
- Do you have any examples of other businesses’ social media pages that you like?
2. Research
Then, we’ll do some of our own research. We’ll look at who the leaders are in your industry, who your direct competitors are, and what each one is doing with their social media management.
This will help us to establish what “good” social media looks like for your industry, what type of content is getting the most engagement within your target demographic, and how we can make your social media profiles stand out from your competitors’. All of these things will influence how we develop your social media strategy moving forward.
3. Plan
Based on our research and the brief you provided us with, we will develop a more detailed local plan for your social media accounts. This will cover things like:
- What social media platforms we recommend using
- Our vision for your social media content (may be presented as a mood board of different font, colour, image, and design samples, depending on your requirements and brand identity)
- The steps we will be taking to optimise your social media profiles for maximum reach and engagement
- A timeline for overall implementation
Generally speaking, we offer two types of social media management services. The first is where we manage your social media for you on an ongoing basis, and the second is where we set you up with all the tools, tips and tricks, and techniques for you to be able to manage your own social media pages moving forward.
If you have indicated that you’d like to go with the latter option, our plan will also detail what social media management tools we will be setting you up with to help you manage your own social media pages moving forward.
4. Implementation
Once you’ve approved our recommended social media management plan, it’s time for us to start implementing it.
Exactly what this phase looks like will vary depending on the specifics of the strategy we’ve crafted for your business. Essentially though, we’ll be implementing the agreed content creation and marketing strategies to get your page more likes, shares, comments, followers, and conversions across all social networks.
5. Reporting
Once we’ve implemented your social media strategy plan, we’ll continue monitoring it to see how well it’s performing over time. This part of the process is ongoing, and will be repeated by us every month to ensure that your social media pages are achieving the best possible results.
Each month, we’ll monitor social media, and prepare a detailed report for you using Google Analytics and other social media performance analysis tools. This will detail things like:
- Which social media channels are performing best overall?
- How is reach and engagement (e.g. likes, shares, comments, and new followers) changing over time?
- How many users are navigating to your website from your social media pages?
- How many clicks are you receiving on shared links?
- What is your conversion rate like for new customers or sales originating from your socials?
- What trends we are seeing compared to previous months?
- What is your total ad spend and revenue? (if you are using paid advertising)
- How are your competitors performing by comparison?
Get started
At Tomedia, our experienced social media managers are ready to help you save time when it comes to your business’s social media strategy.
If you’d like to find out more about how Tomedia can help you with everything social media, contact us today at [email protected] or 0419 697 016.
