Social Media Marketing: Why Hire a Social Media Manager?

Well, before we start, let me tell you what a social media manager is! A proper social media manager starts with strategy. They dive in deep to determine your target audience. Without knowing your target audience, it is difficult (or more like a guessing game) to determine what social media channels will serve your company or organization best. By starting with strategy to determine your audience and developing messaging strategies to speak to them based where they are in the funnel (awareness, action, decision, etc) and determine objectives and goals, you are more likely to not only see more followers and engagement as well as brand awareness, but define measurable goals to determine if the strategy is working. 

Many of my clients are small business owners. This means you wear all the hats! Since social media is considered “free marketing” it is one that you might try to tackle yourself. But, as we often see, the daily work of your business prevents you from developing and executing a plan to reach and attract new followers on your social media channels. What we also see is business owners often only utilize social media channels they are comfortable using personally, like Facebook and Instagram, so they miss other key audience segments that can be found on other social media platforms. Social media marketing can help your business grow, but you need fundamentals in place – knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, understanding ad strategy on each and dedicating time to develop and execute a strategy that is consistent. If you are a one or two person small business, this can seem overwhelming and all too often this gets pushed to the backburner. Am I right?

Let’s dive into a few reasons to hire a social media manager to monitor and manage your business or organization’s social media accounts.

1. It starts with strategy. A social media manager worth their weight will start with a social media strategy that identifies your target audience, determine the appropriate social media channels to speak to that audience and create meaningful and engaging content to start conversations and lead to new customers (as well as communicating to your existing customers). Rather than posting sporadically or posting just because you have made it a goal to post 2-3 times weekly, but no real value to the content (posting for the sake of posting) is not strategy. 
2. Develop as a thought leader and create awareness. First things first, your social media team will know your company, your organization and your brand – the voice/tone you use to interact with your audience, relevant hashtags to utilize, and correct logos and branding assets to keep your brand on point. Not only will we stay on message and on brand, but they will work to create consistent and engaging content that will set you up as thought leaders in your industry/area. Engagement is available; a social media manager will stay on top of your comments on posts, reply to direct messages and can even set up automatic responses in Messenger to direct customers to your desired mode of communication. Bottom line – we develop the content and we keep the conversation going!  The content we develop will help solve problems for your customers, give insight and help your customer to really understand what you do and why you do it! 
3. It’s not guesswork. It is measurable. A trained social media manager will be knowledgeable about social media analytics. They will check the data to see what is engaging, driving new likes/followers and resonating with your audience. By analyzing the results of your posts, they will know the best days and times to post, what type of content your audience engages with (videos, static images/photos, testimonials, behind the scenes, employee or volunteer features, etc). We create monthly content calendars, craft engaging captions, design branded graphics, and then schedule it all at optimal times. And, we look at the data to ensure it is working.We plan our work and work our plan!
4. Quality content, based on strategy, takes time. Do you have it to spare? Particularly for small business owners, we see you and we hear you! Running your business is work and often long hours. Squeezing in precious time to develop social media content can be challenging. Often, you are posting on the fly, without much thought to it, just because you feel like you have to or you see competitors doing it. By hiring a social media manager, you will save time – they work behind the scenes to create content specific to your needs that is strategic! And, they look at your data so they know the best times and days to post, plus they are consistently studying their craft and reading up on the latest trends to keep you ahead of the competition on what social media platforms are best for your business. We also utilize social ads to target your ideal customer by looking at median income, hobbies, zip codes, etc. We analyze each of these before launching your custom social ad campaign. You set the budget; we’ll handle the rest. Running your own social media organic content and social ads can be like throwing darts blindfolded and can waste precious time and valuable resources. Let us save you from that!
5. At the end of the day, you want to grow your audience and gain more customers, right? A social media manager knows how to post through paid and organic channels to best reach your audience. They use various strategies to reach your customers through the appropriate channels and flex when needed to adjust the strategy. They pay attention to your audience and their growing needs so they can create content that not only builds awareness, but builds a loyal following and helps to move them through the sales funnels to gain new customers!

About Our Social Media Team: We manage over a dozen client social media accounts and have over three years of experience in the art of social media management. We offer partial and full management packages for social media. We keep your social media on track with efficient planning and proactive methods. Don’t leave social media to chance. Contact us today to see how we can help you save time and resources and ENGAGE your customers like never before.