If you’re marketing a business today, chances are you’re doing it on social media. A commonly asked question around C-level meetings today is “Do we need a Social Media Manager to help our marketing strategy?” The short answer is yes, you should consult with a Social Media Manager (SMM) to cultivate and create your online marketing strategy.
A common misconception about the role of Social Media Manager is that it’s a simple job. After all, anyone can publish a post, caption a picture, or start an Instagram page. On the surface, that may appear true, there’s so much more that goes into social media marketing. What makes a successful social media marketing manager though is developing and implementing a well-thought-out strategy, creative and engaging content, established brand standards, and consistency.
Hiring an experienced Social Media Manager can benefit companies by doing more than just publishing content. SMMs also can create a strategy to use on social media, construct and implement an editorial calendar, they can take photos of your products, create graphics and other content, grow your following, and more.
The job of an SMM isn’t just to publish content, it’s really to nurture and grow your social media pages, create a community, and consistently be taking your business to new levels on social platforms.
Many Social Media Managers also may go the extra mile and create mockups for Facebook Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn posts. At Idea Marketing Group we often do this with templates for our new clients to help them visualize our post ideas. We have included Photoshop files of the templates, our team uses frequently here.
Social Media Manager for Paid Advertising
Sure you can stick to using social media organically and choose not to pay to advertise posts and your page. However, social media companies have squeezed organic reach to just a fraction of your audience in an attempt to get businesses to put a budget behind their posts to reach larger audiences. You can up the ante and run a Facebook or Instagram ad or you can simply boost a post or promote your page. The options are endless when it comes to social media marketing, but it’s important to have a strategy and reason behind it.
A Social Media Manager can provide the best guidance to you for your social media ads. They can set them up, create the content, and measure their performance. Many social media platforms offer certifications for SMMs that qualify them as experts on a particular platform. Having a certified team can help whether you want to run a simple or more complex advertising campaign.
Our Social Media Marketing Tools
Before an SMM takes over your pages, they will most likely conduct a social media audit, especially if there’s been previous content posted on the platform. During their audit, they’ll look for what posts have worked best for engagement. They’ll also brainstorm new content, campaigns, and graphics they can create. You can find a variety of social media audits to use, but this audit form is one our team has used many times when looking over our clients’ accounts.
In addition to an audit, your Social Media Manager can also use an Editorial Calendar and Social Media Scorecard to aid your social media marketing efforts. An editorial calendar is great to use when planning content, you can also ask your SMM to share it with you, so you can work with them and create content to stay in line with your brand.
Another part of a Social Media Manager’s job is to keep track of analytics, including page likes or followers, the number of people reached and engaged in your posts and more. Our team likes to use another document called the Social Media Scorecard, which can also be shared and so your SMM and you can set goals. It’s a good idea to have a baseline of analytics before your SMM starts publishing content.
While yes it is great to have an SMM, we know not every business has the means. If it’s not in the budget, you can dedicate an existing team member to manage your business’ social media accounts. You should make sure someone is managing the accounts and staying consistent.
More importantly, it’s essential to have the right tools at your disposal so you can have a strong presence on social media. At Idea Marketing Group, we’re all about giving you the tools you need, and we’ve provided those tools here.
Our Social Media Marketing Tools
You can use our templates as guides when planning out your social media content. If you need additional help, contact Idea Marketing Group today and we can help!