When you first began contemplating your business’ entrance into the world of social media, you made important strategic decisions about your social media accounts.
You thought critically about the best platforms to use to reach your audience and the best content to publish and build your brand. As you started posting and building an audience of followers, you realized the immense amount of information social media analytics can give you. Trying to make the most of this information is difficult, but good social media management is as effective as it is efficient.
There are a number (literally hundreds!) of social media management tools on the digital marketplace. We outlined some of the best social media management tools in a previous blog post. But in order to understand which might be right for your business’ social media needs, it helps to understand the main benefits a management tool can provide.
Scheduling. Probably the most popular feature on any social media management tool is the ability to schedule posts on various social media platforms from one user interface. With this feature, you’re not stuck logging into multiple platforms to deliver the same content.
Optimization. This is another popular feature that goes hand in hand with the scheduling element. Optimization allows you to understand the best times to post on various sites in order to reach your target audience at the most opportune time.
Oversight. When you’re releasing a marketing campaign across a number of different social media platforms, it’s beneficial (for measurement purposes) to be able to see the metrics for all accounts involved. That’s exactly what you’ll receive with most social media management tools – usually in the form of a calendar.
Monitoring. Did your last post go viral? What was the impact? Judge the virality of your content by monitoring its spread across various social media channels. You’ll also be able to respond to comments, messages, and reviews in a timely matter.
Social media can be absolutely wonderful. But doing it correctly is an art! Balancing a combination of insights, engagements, monitoring and messaging can provide businesses a valuable social media presence. But for small businesses, the rigor of managing a number of social media profiles at an engaging level can be difficult.
There are concerns of not producing an adequate volume of content or posting within the desired frequency required to remain top-of-mind with followers. This can be especially difficult when you see your competitors successfully pushing out valuable content and engaging with their followers, with seemingly no effort.
In the next installment, we’ll discuss social media best practices and get you ready to kickoff your brand’s social media campaign.
This post is a part of a six article series on how small businesses can leverage social media for success.
- Managing Your Social Media Management
Get Social With Thrive!
We understand this frustration. However, if you were a social media expert, you would be working at Thrive, not running your current business! Just like other business functions (legal services, accounting, and IT services are all good examples), your social media management may be something it makes sense to outsource, especially if doing so is more efficient or effective, or if it provides you additional time for growing and managing your business.
To talk to one of our social media consultants about managing your social media, contact us online or call us at 817-642-9686.
