You’ve heard it before.
“It’s no longer acceptable for small businesses to neglect activity on social media.”
But chances are, as a business owner with a vast array of responsibilities, writing Facebook posts and posting photos to Instagram isn’t high on your priority list. And that’s okay. It’s a full-time job. One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is to open all possible social media accounts and then forget to maintain an active presence. Without consistent engagement on social media, your customers are likely to become turned off by your business and move on to a more engaging competitor.
It might sound great to have an existing employee pitching in with social media efforts, But you’re better off hiring a social media expert to manage these tasks. If you and your employees don’t have any social media marketing experience, the time that you’re spending posting to these channels may be a waste of time and money. For starters you may be paying for ads that are improperly configured and not reaching the target audience thus rendering them a waste of your hard earned money. Also you may be doing damage to your business with unprofessional looking graphics and lastly you need to be running your business and this burden is taking you away from where you are most needed.
Here are 5 reasons that will help you understand why and how social media management will increase the impact in your business.
Reason # 1: Grow Business
As a small business owner, you’re wearing many hats in the business. In between answering emails, phone calls and all the other tasks that are part of your job, you’re expected to magically squeeze in time to actually sit and work on social media content. Believe it or not, this problem can be solved. By hiring a social media manager, you will save so much time as they work behind the scenes creating beautifully branded content specific to your business needs.
People today are spending a lot of time on social networks, thus making them the perfect medium for driving traffic to your website and gaining clients. Social media campaigns, when done effectively with a goal in mind, can be used to drive traffic to your website and brick and mortar business. Campaign goals could include marketing objectives such as multiplying your audience, brand awareness, expanding reach, growing engagement, or informing your clients on your services. All this on a consistent basis and relatively affordable price point.
Reason # 2: Curate Content
There’s nothing worse than searching for a business on social media, only to find that their page hasn’t been updated in ages. A social media manager will obviously post consistently on each platform. They’ll also know what format and type of content will work best on each platform – instead of just posting the same post on each profile your business has regardless if it works or not.
The content created and adapted for social media is a crucial part of marketing. Using graphics, pictures and video for Facebook and Instagram, writing short and effective twitter posts, creating several iterations of post copy, or creating professional looking graphics are just some of the ways a social media manager makes impactful content appropriate for each network. When you pay for professionals to manage and make content, you are also paying for their graphics software, efficient social media management platforms, and creativity.
Reason # 3: Target Audience
A social media target audience is a group of people that you’ve identified that you want to appeal to. This can be based on demographics such as age, job title, income level, education, location, or behavior. Your social media target audience consists of the people who are most likely to be interested in your product.
A social media manager will be able to configure each post to reach your specific target audience thus using your hard earned money in the most cost efficient manner possible and minimize wasted funds with ineffective posts that are not reached the target audience.
Reason # 4: Geo Localisation
Your business likely doesn’t have unlimited funds to spend on marketing. In the advent of geolocation features in social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, It is now easier and more affordable for small businesses to stay competitive and reach more efficiently more potential customers.
But these configurations have to be done by an expert or you will just be wasting funds on inefficient ads that are once again not reaching the desired audience. A professional social media manager will be able to do that and much more.
Reason # 5: Analytics
A social media manager is familiar and knowledgeable about social media analytics and what they mean. They can analyze the results of your posts (what times to post, engagement, post reach etc.) Without analytics, we wouldn’t know if our marketing strategy is working or not, which leads to a huge waste of time and more importantly your hard earned money.
Knowing how to interpret the numbers is just part of the job of being a social media manager. As well as knowing what to do with them going forward. For example managing the ad budget according to these numbers or how to tweak a campaign to get better results. This comes with experience and well as intuition.
Social media is now more than ever a necessary part of any business strategy that can facilitate meaningful connections with consumers. With changes in trends and technology, Social media managers with know-how and experience are key to exercising effective social media engagement and management.
At RSMEDIA we quite often even work as a team, pairing up with colleagues so as to ensure maximum results for your business. If you are interested in knowing more about our social media marketing services give us a shout and it will be our pleasure to chat with you.
