Figuring out how to manage social media early on is essential if you want to make a success of your business. Many inexperienced marketers think that managing social media and Facebook is no picnic, but Southeast Digital beg to differ. Here, we’re going to give you some of the best practices to make managing your own social media channels easy as pie.
Are you ready to make managing your social media accounts a picnic? Then read on!
1. Focus On Quality Content
Posting quality content is essential if you want your audience to find you and follow you. You should make sure that everything you post will speak to them. This is why you need to know exactly who your audience are and what they want. You can then figure out what to post to grab their attention. It should be humorous, helpful, interesting – even all three. Whatever you do, make sure it’s high quality.
2. Automate Where You Can
Use scheduling apps like Buffer and Hootsuite to make posting a picnic. Automating your social media strategy will save you so much time and help you to get better results. Social media management tools are invaluable. When you have the right tool, it will allow you to:
- Publish content across multiple social platforms
- Schedule posts in advance so you don’t have to worry about missing a key posting time
- Collaborate with your team
- See all of your social media feeds from a single dashboard instead of logging into multiple sites
- Track and measure your results
3. Analyse Your Data To Find The Ideal Quantity
Analysing your data will help you to find the ideal posting quantity. As a rule, you shouldn’t be too spammy, but don’t be afraid to re-post a great blog post on your social channels if you really want people to see it and ensure it gets the engagement that it deserves. The following bullet points contain information that you can track to help you come up with a better social strategy:
- Reach and engagement for Facebook
- Impressions, visits and mentions on Twitter
- Impressions, clicks and interactions on LinkedIn
- Impressions and engagement on Pinterest
- Likes, comments and mentions on Instagram
A shocking 40% of businesses don’t track their social media ROI at all. This means that they literally have no clue as to whether what they are doing is working for them. Tracking your ROI and making adjustments as you go is the only way to handle your strategy in a cost effective way that gets results. Make sure you set your business apart from the rest. Social media marketing is no joke!
4. Engage With Your Audience
Engaging properly with your audience is a key factor in managing your social media. You should respond in a timely manner, and that means to both positive and negative comments. Many businesses use social media as a way to provide customer service successfully. Be social, and don’t just use your platform to sell. Below you’ll find an idea of how to engage:
- Replying to other peoples’ posts even if they don’t mention you
- Retweeting good posts
- Liking posts about your brand or simply posts that align with your brand
- Adding people to Twitter lists
- @mentions
5. Be Relatable
You don’t have to sound like a robot – in fact, this will alienate your audience. They want to feel like they are speaking to a real person. Know who you’re talking to and come up with a brand voice based on that. You will be able to solve the issues of your audience in a more personable way, and find it so much easier to build trust and relationships with them.
6. Post More Imagery
People are more likely to engage with a post that has an image. Try to include relevant, original, attractive imagery with your posts and you should notice your engagement, click throughs, and other metrics shoot up.
7. Keep An Eye On Your Competitors
Don’t forget to keep an eye on your competitors so you can compare your strategy to theirs and tweak if needed. This doesn’t mean copy them, though! Below is an idea of what you can look at:
- The kind of content they post
- Who they follow
- Who’s following them
- How often they post
- What time of the day they post
- What kind of headlines they use in their posts
- Their most popular posts
You want to analyse what they are doing that you aren’t, so don’t neglect to check them out.
The above advice will help you to make managing your social media a picnic!
Southeast Digital offer all our clients detailed competitor intelligence reports that tell you which of their posts perform best, the best time of day to post, what their social media ads look like, and what type of content they post.
