Why You Need a Social Media Management Strategy

What is a Social Media Management Strategy?

As soon as you read Social Media Management Strategy, you probably thought of posting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. That’s part of social media, but not all of it. A social media marketing strategy is a plan for creating communities of customers. There you’ll offer customer service and create interactions. It’s a complex and ongoing process, so many brands use a social media agency.

What Makes a Social Media Management Strategy So Important?

When you started your business, first you made a plan. You set specific goals and had ways of measuring your progress along the way. For every strategy you invested in, you had ways of measuring whether or not it was effective.

A social media marketing strategy outlines how your organization will use social media and how you’ll evaluate your progress. That matters for a number of reasons.

Social Media is Still Rapidly Expanding

Statista measured the most popular social media network sites from around the world and released their numbers of active users as of January 2018.

• Facebook – 2,167 million
• YouTube – 1,600 million
• WhatsApp – 1,300 million
• Instagram – 700 million
• Twitter – 328 million
• Snapchat – 255 million

Does it surprise you with how much Facebook takes the lead? Even more astounding is their rate of growth. Snapchat and Instagram are hip and resonate with a younger audience, but Facebook is still the most rapidly growing platform.

The social media giant added 527 million active users in the past two years alone. Twitter has consistently been the slowest growing from 2010 to 2017. Your social media agency can help identify the most beneficial platforms for your brand and plan social media management accordingly.

Related Article: How Your Blog and Social Media Management Work Together

Brand Actions on Social Media Lead to Purchasing

Fifty-three percent of respondents in the Statista survey said they opened their Facebook app multiple times a day. When they do, they’re often thinking about making a purchase. Some of them are looking at reviews, others are just absorbing what their friends and associates are saying about your brand.

Each social media platform plays a different part in how buyers make purchasing decisions. Social media Tyler users go to Pinterest to find ideas for meal planning or inspiration for their next project. They go to Facebook to share content and see what others are saying.

Wherever they’re looking, they want answers in real-time. Here’s what they say motivates them to buy.

• 48 percent say they’re more likely to buy from a brand that’s responsive on social media.
• 46 percent act on promotions and complete a purchase.
• 38 percent are drawn to buy after seeing interesting visuals.
• 35 percent purchase from brands that offer exclusive content.

What Makes Social Media Management so Effective?

Why are people so influenced by what they see others doing for their social media management strategy? Part of it involves social proof.

Millennials are especially influenced by peer and influencer recommendations. Seventy-two percent of them say they buy products based on Instagram posts. Gartner research found 84 percent of millennials are even motivated to buy when social media marketing content is created or posted by strangers.

Social media Tyler creates discussions and improves engagement. People are going to talk about your brand. Your social media management helps you take control of what they say.

Related Article: Social Media Management Done Right

Why Can’t You Just Post Promotions?

Any social media agency that recommends you just fill your feed with ads doesn’t know what they’re doing.

When people are on social media Tyler, they’re relaxing. If they’re at work, they’re looking for a few minutes of escape from the daily grind. If they’re at home, they want conversation and recreation.

People access social media Tyler because they want to learn, be entertained, connect, express themselves, speak out for a cause, or shop. If your online content meets one of their needs, you’ll get their attention.

If it doesn’t, you’re keeping them from reaching their goal. They feel frustrated and start to associate negative emotions with your brand. So let’s get specific about how to work you’re your social media agency to create that strategy.

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Identify Your Goals

Where is your organization facing challenges? What do you hope to achieve with social media marketing? Pick up a pen or device and start taking notes.

Your time and your money are both limited resources. You want goals to be challenging enough they’re worth the effort while still reasonable enough to obtain.

Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time sensitive. Here are a few examples:

• Create greater brand awareness. Accomplish this by offering meaningful content and developing an impactful brand personality.
• Develop high-quality leads. Reach the individuals that are interested by learning to listen for keywords, hashtags and phrases that show they’re already looking for you.
• Increase store traffic and buying. If you have a brick and mortar store, use social media to let customers know what’s going on. Invite them to join the experience.
• Size up your competition. Keep your…er…competitors close when you analyze what they do that gets a response. Learn from what works and avoid what doesn’t. Focus on businesses of similar size to your own.
• Build a large group of loyal customers. This part takes time, but with a carefully planned and executed strategy, you’ll have a thriving social media Tyler community that reacts to your brand with enthusiasm and spreads that sentiment to their friends, family members and associates.

Related Article: How to Use SMART Goals To Improve Your Marketing

Gather Information on Your Target Audience

Make the most of your social media Tyler budget by targeting the people who are most likely to invest. Online tools can give you a better idea of the age, gender and location of key demographics.

A good social media marketing agency can help you know where to look or research for you.. You can also take courses online if you’re handling it yourself. Estimate your audience size using tools like Facebook Ads Manager. Audience Insights provides Facebook data and third-party input to help you narrow down your focus.

Survey current customers to identify their interests. Use your email marketing list, current social media users and in-store interactions. SurveyMonkey and Google Forms offer tools for creating social media marketing materials.

Once you know your audience’s age, household size, income etc., identify which channels they are most likely use. For example:

• 89 percent of Facebook users are women.
• 88 percent are between the ages of 18 and 29
• 82 percent have some college experience.
• 84 percent earn less than $30,000 annually.

In contrast, LinkedIn users are older and more likely to be male. They tend to be higher earners with more educational experience. The majority of Snapchat users are under 30.

Related Article: How to Create a Social Media Posting Schedule

Identify Key Metrics and Establish a Baseline

How do you measure social media Tyler success? How many followers you have and how often they like, share or comment doesn’t paint a clear picture. They’re sometimes called vanity metrics, but a good social media agency knows that’s not completely accurate.

For example, if you don’t have followers, no one sees your posts. How people respond lets you know if you connect. However, there are other metrics that allow you to fine-tune your efforts so what you’re doing is not in vain.

Go back to your goals and connect metrics to business objectives. Measure these indicators of success.

• Reach – This lets you know how many individuals saw your post.
• Engagement – Divide your number of interactions (clicks, retweets, replies and so on) with the number of impressions.
• Clicks – Analyze how many users clicked on your company name, logo or content. Use that data to understand what parts of your campaign motivated viewers to seek more information or to complete a purchase.
• Hashtags that drive engagement – Which ones did you use most? Which hashtags did others associate with your brand?
• Organic and paid likes – Organic reach involves the people who respond to a post you didn’t pay to distribute.

Gather, Create and Curate Content

Businesses fail at social media management because they tend to jump in at this point. A social media management strategy first outlines what you want to accomplish. Then your social media agency plans how you’ll measure success with who you’re trying to reach.

Now that you know, what should you create? Here are some of the most impactful types of content for social media marketing:

• Blog posts
• eBooks
• Video
• Infographics
• Company announcements
• Interactive material like surveys, polls and quizzes

We’ll cover written content like blog posts and eBooks in a separate article. For now, let’s take a quick look at video content.

More than half of social media marketing professionals from around the world say video is the type of content with the highest ROI. Much of the time users view it on mobile, and 92 percent of mobile viewers share with their friends.

Snapchat users watch 10 billion videos every single day. Facebook users consume 100 million hours daily. A Facebook video has, on average, 135 percent greater organic reach than even the most engaging photos.

In other words, if you want to reach your audience on social media Tyler, you should be investing in video content. Talk to your social media agency about how to use videos to reach your audience.

Related Article: Content Marketing Strategy Guide

Reaching Audiences on Separate Platforms

Since each platform has unique demographics, it doesn’t work to just post the same social media marketing content on each channel. Adapt what you’re doing as follows:

• Facebook and Instagram – Use behavioral, demographic, interest-based and household comparison data. Pull what you’ve collected from your customer relationship management (CRM) software to create Facebook and Instagram lookalike audiences.
• Pinterest – Top searches involve food and do-it-yourself projects. Keywords that speak to those interests will be the most popular. Target Pinners by first thinking what they’re searching for. Keep in mind Pinners are usually planning a project or recipe for the future, so start posting early. They may start looking for holiday decorating ideas before Halloween or start planning Valentine’s Day spending right after January 1.
• Twitter – Audience Insights can help you learn about your potential customers to create time-sensitive handles, vines or video clips aligned with their interests and other compelling material.
• Snapchat – Snap Lifestyle Categories allows you to see what audience segments watch and breaks interests into categories like politics, parenting, and entertainment.

However, tailoring content doesn’t mean you always have to start from scratch. Streamline social media management when you repurpose popular material. Turn parts of longer articles into tweets or post a high-impact quote on Pinterest.

The Importance of Engaging With Users

Social media management requires actually being social. Part of your strategy should address how you will do so and which staff member will be responsible. Create specific written guidelines. For example, how quickly should your organization respond? How should your brand handle common situations?

Engage with positive comments by offering a reply or thanking customers for their interaction. Use negative feedback as a chance to be helpful and genuine. Apologize for inconveniences and help users feel heard.

Simultaneously network with your peers and build relationships with users when you promote other industry leaders. If they offer products or services that complement your own, build goodwill and show customers you’re interested in being helpful by sharing their content. Join LinkedIn groups to find networking opportunities.

Post During Peak Engagement Times

Each platform has times of peak user engagement. Recent findings indicate the following:

• Facebook – Thursday is the top day to post. One p.m. receives the highest level of user engagement, but get results any weekday from 9 to 3. Saturday has the lowest traffic.
• Twitter – Post Monday through Thursday between 12 and 3 p.m.
• Instagram – Post any weekday, at almost any time. However, activity drops every day around 3 p.m.

Track, Adjust, Repeat

People talk about what they love, hate, and are hungry for. Use metrics from Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights and Twitter Analytics. See what resonates and use that to drive content creation. As your understanding develops, fine-tune your social media marketing strategy for even greater success. Measure, adjust, repeat.

Related Article: Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing ROI

Hire an Expert Social Media Agency

A solid, well-executed social media management strategy will dramatically improve user engagement. It will also have a measurable impact on your bottom line. Let Spade Design help you turn social media Tyler into a powerful, revenue-driving machine. It all starts with a quick conversation with one of our social media management strategy experts, contact us to schedule an appointment.