How to handle social media with ease: A comprehensive guide

submitted 3 years ago by socialmedia-blog to post

As a person responsible for social media, it's a hectic life. Between developing effective strategies and overseeing multiple social media accounts, you have to be on top of finding new opportunities to increase your marketing and be able to report on your performance and all while under the pressure of time. And if this wasn't challenging enough the social media teams are growing. This means you need solid management know-how to build efficient workflows, and then deliver outcomes. We're aware that the task can be overwhelming. That's why we created this step-by-step guide via Inflact explaining how to manage social media better - from persona analysis and the creation of content to monitoring.

 

What is the definition of social media management?

Management of social media is the act of studying the audience of social media and creating a strategy tailored to them, creating and distributing content for social media profiles, monitoring online conversations, working with influencers, offering community service monitoring, measuring and monitoring the social media performance and ROI.

These tasks, which were once viewed as a nuisance by business were now thrust into the spotlight of corporations' marketing strategies.

Why? Because social media offers great money-making opportunities - on the conditions that you manage your social media channels efficiently and in a well-organized way.

 

Why is a successful social media management process essential?

The potential for business from social networks is vast. Brands can utilize the social platforms in order to successfully achieve their goals across the entire marketing funnel, from increasing awareness of their brand in order to increase store visits.

However, to accomplish this, they need efficient Social media groups. The more goals you'd like to achieve using social media marketing in the future, the more individuals dedicated to this avenue you're going to need. This will eventually result in the creation of complex social media team structures.

If you're a huge company, you could have multiple teams across various offices and regions of the world, using various strategies to meet different targets.

How can you ensure that all of these individuals work closely to get the most value from social media?

The answer is: build an efficient social media management process.

 

Managing social media Where do I start?

If you're not sure how you can begin to optimize your approach to managing social Don't fret. It's something many marketers are unsure about. To be able to start from the best possible place it's important to take care of three crucial things:

Conduct an audit of social media

Decide on the right social media platform

Analyze your target audience

We have identified the three tasks we have in particular?

Because they will provide you with the fundamental data that will guide your marketing on social media in the proper direction. In the end, you'll be able focus your efforts on strategies that are effective and minimize strategies that aren't.

Let's look a bit closer at each of the tasks:

Conducting a social media audit

A social media audit can always improve how you manage social media:

It will provide you with an accurate picture of the effectiveness of your strategy

It will help you find out where you're losing your money and time

It will also reveal what social channels bring the greatest results

It will demonstrate the impact that social media has on web outcomes

How do you conduct your social media health check?

Step 1: List all of the social media accounts of your business, including those from different regions , and those belonging to your diverse sub-brands.

Step 2: Utilize social media analytics to evaluate your key performance metrics like followers' growth, engagement (including the average engagement rates for particular months) publication frequency, most engaging formats for content most popular posts, top-performing content traffic sources, sentiment in the community, the response rate as well as the average time to respond, audience interests, demographics and behavior.

Step 3: Put all the information in a tidy Social Media Audit Template.

 

Step 4: Review the data and identify areas where you could benefit from improvement. For instance, if you see a dip in your engagement levels It could be the result of low quality content quality or an ineffective targeting or wrong publishing frequency.

This is precisely the type data that will help you point out any weaknesses in your strategy. Then, you'll be able to start the first steps toward improving them , and make your social media management processes more efficient.

Pick the most appropriate social media platforms

Another crucial aspect of managing social media more effectively is choosing the best platform.

After conducting a social monitoring exercise, it may be discovered that certain platforms just don't work for your brand. In that situation you need to take the time to understand the work required to achieve the results you desire.

Much also is dependent on where your audience is. If in your research you discover your audience is predominantly on Twitter For instance, but your presence on the platform isn't very strong It is advisable to look to improve.

If your performance isn't impressive and your customers are elsewhere, you may want to be thinking about switching your efforts to a new channel. However, before doing so, ask yourself the following questions:

What are my goals for business (improving brand awareness leads, lead generation, web conversions, traffic, etc.)? Do I have the ability to meet my business objectives on the platform? What amount will I need to spend to meet my objectives?

Can I effectively enough to achieve positive ROI from the platform? Is the amount enough to justify the cost of marketing on the platform?

What are the demographics of the community on the platform? Are they in line with the demographics of the audience I'd like to reach?

Are the people I want to reach present and active on the platform? Can I get them to join my list?

How well-known among marketers is the platform? How much content will I need to create to stand out?

Is my direct competition present there? What is their performance? Can I outperform them?

If you're in need of help selecting the best platform for your company This is a guide from Socialbakers (now an affiliate of Emplifi):

 

Analyze your target audience

The analysis of your social media communities is vital when managing your social media effectively. There are numerous advantages for analyzing your audience - such as building stronger customer relationships making better content that is relevant, as well as boosting social media conversions.

On the other hand in the event that you don't conduct the market research in advance there's a chance of being on the wrong pathand end up wasting both money and resources.

How can you create an accurate image of your social media followers?

Start by segmenting your target audience into personas according to their shared characteristics - you can do that using this free template for creating customer personas.

If you're looking to make life easier and make your life easier, let AI do the job for you. Your customer personas are diverse. For example, you can create a community of teenagers fascinated by sports and thirty-year-olds who are on Digiday's page on Facebook and interacted with their content.

The information you have will allow you to make better use of your resources and focus on the best ways to interact for your community. Are you having trouble analyzing your intended followers via social networking? Look into this audience insight document from Socialbakers (now component of Emplifi).

 

Stock up on the right tools to manage social media

Advanced social media management tools are essential to building, executing, and measuring your social media marketing strategy efficiently.

Here's what you'll require:

Top-to-middle-of-the-funnel tools

Examining your top-to mid-funnel customers is crucial. That's because people at these points, which is sometimes referred to as an unknown audience, could be your future customers.

The better you are aware of these individuals the more efficiently you'll be able nurture their conversion through targeted marketing campaigns.

What tools are likely to prove useful at this point?

Native social media analytics. The audience data you can find on social media platforms is quite detailed and includes:

Facebook audience insights: demographicsand page likes, locations, activity

Instagram insights: top spots or times that your followers are active

Twitter analytics are about lifestyle, demographics and consumer behavior, mobile footprint

LinkedIn analytics includes demographics, job function and seniority, industry size of the business, employment status

Audience Analytics: These tools allow users to see their Facebook fans grouped into individual personas in accordance with their demographics, preferences, and other behaviors. Therefore, you'll save time and effort you'd spend doing manual research on your audience.

You'll also be able immediately put the outcome of your audience analysis into an action.

Bottom-of-the-funnel tools

Find the bottom of funnel users, which are often referred to as a "known audience, and use Customer relationship management (CRM) software to focus on all aspects that makes up the experience for customers (CX).

These will give you an understanding of the customers who bought your products, which includes their demographics, their touchpoints on their customer journey and the content that led them to click the purchase button.

 

Tools for managing content

The creation of content is an important element of the management process , but it can also be a really challenging one. To make your content workflow quicker and more organized, try these tools:

Content ideas and tools

Social media monitoring is a way to find popular topics online that you can tap into

Social media analytics. See what your competitors are posting and get inspired by some of their most effective ideas

Analysis of the audience - know the type of content your audience responds to positively

Content curation tools can help you find trending articles online that you can republish

Content inspiration - explore thousands of top content ideas for social media that connect with all of your audiences

 

Content creation tools

Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay Visit these websites for low-cost, high-quality stock photos of high quality.

Canva, Makeagif, Awesome Screenshot - create amazing images for your posts

Biteable and Lumen5 Shakr Make fun social video your viewers will love to be sure to share with their friends.

Google Docs, Grammarly, Nuclino and Nuclino - work with your team to create social media content

Social media editorial calendars

Google Calendar - use Google's visual calendar to quickly insert your blog posts

Google Spreadsheet - create an editorial calendar, custom to your requirements

Free calendar templates - make your life easier with pre-designed social media calendar templates

Content calendar calendar scheduler: access visual representations on your media content that you can schedule and review (also accessible from mobile! ), and have your teamwork on all content-related tasks right from your calendar.

Tools for publishing on social media

Social media publisher - handle social media publishing more efficiently by publishing on different platforms with one click. Furthermore, you'll receive precise recommendations on the best publishing times, so you can boost your visibility and engagement. Below is a look into the most optimal times to post based on the data of Socialbakers (now a portion of Emplifi).

 

Social media listening tools

Be aware of the online conversations concerning your brand is important to understand the effects of your advertising campaigns. This goes beyond just likes and comments.

Social listening - check social media for trends and inquiries, find opinions of your brand and look at the tone of voice around them

Google alerts - Create alerts for specific phrases or topics that are appearing on the internet and receive periodic email updates so that you will never forget to mention your brand

Tools for collaboration with Influencers

Managing influencer relationships is a relatively recent addition the social media management scope of work. Yet, it's also become one of the most crucial tasks on their agendas.

Here's how to effectively control influencer marketing related activities:

Find influencers tool with AI - discover your most valuable influencers to your social media audience within a matter of minutes. Get a quick overview of their demographics, audience size and engagement, as well as an easy-to-understand score for performance, making it possible to match with the most effective influencers.

Social customer care tools

Social media is a preferred channel for many customers to express their opinions or to ask questions regarding your business. To be able to manage all of the messages you receive there are several things you should consider:

Community management - engage with your community in a well-organized way using automated notifications with clearly defined team assignments and roles. Check your messages from all channels in one spot and keep track of your team's performance with filtersable feeds, to ensure you provide the best customer service.

Tools for social media analytics

Monitoring the performance of social networks is crucial to understand the effectiveness of your campaigns and identifying the most effective methods, and then fixing the flaws - that's why it's essential to be equipped with the right tools.

Social media analytics – get an accurate understanding of the performance of your channels using all crucial metrics, which include:

Overall engagement

Distribution of interactions

Most engaging post types

User activities

Quantity of interactions per 1000 fans

Amount of fan post

Most interesting posts overview

The number of posts promoted and the interactions that they produced

You'll also be able to assess how you stack up against your top competitors by these metrics to see who's ahead of the game. In addition, to provide more context to your results by comparing your ad spending and video strategy's effectiveness against your sector, region, or even your country.

Google Analytics Learn which social media platforms generate more traffic for your site

 

How do you monitor and analyze social media audience personas

As previously mentioned, understanding your audience personas should be the foundation the social media strategies. Before you can create any piece of content or launch a campaign, you must understand your audience on a deeper level.

How do you manage and the analysis of buyers' personas?

Step 1: Analyze audience data. Use the data sources listed earlier in this section. The more information you have an accurate representation of your audience that you'll be able build. In the ideal scenario, you'll use software that aggregates different information sources about your audience, thus saving you time and manual labor. Tips: Certain data on audience members won't be readily available in the native analytics of platforms or Google Analytics. If you're in need of answers to a specific question, such as one's favorite destinations for travel, think about running polls or doing market research.

Step 2: Consolidate your audience data. It's likely that after you have gathered the information, it will be dispersed and difficult to comprehend. For a comprehensive view of your social media community, you need to bring all the data and analyse it in one area.

Step 3: Define your audience personas. Your social media users are varied: they are made up of groups sharing different demographics, location, behavior and interests. If you can segment your followers by these traits, you'll have an in-depth understanding of who your target audience is. In turn, you can create tailored content that entices people to engage and effectively nurtures your customer base through the marketing funnel.

Step 4: Keep tabs on your personas for your audience frequently. It's not enough just to look at your audience one time and rely on the data for years. Be aware that your audience is always growing - you'll see new users who are beginning to follow your page and your "old" users could show an interest in different content. In order to be able to recognize these trends and act on them in time you should analyze your personas of your followers on a frequently.

Check out this guide on the analysis of your target audience to get a greater insight into studying your social media's target audience.

 

How to control the creation of content for social media?

After you've analyzed your personas of your audience, you should be able to determine the direction your strategy for content should take.

But, deciding on the right content formats and topics isn't all there is. As your business grows you'll be faced with the task of producing big volumes of content at a fast speed. To tackle this problem, you're going need to optimize your content workflow.

Here's how you can effectively control the creation of content for social media activities:

Step 1: Add an online calendar to Your Google Calendar with one click. It covers all national holidays for the whole year.

Step 2: Assign team roles and responsibilities. This step is essential to improving your efficiency, no matter if you're an agency or an organization with multiple offices across the globe. In order to produce content efficiently you need to be able to fill the following roles on your team:

Content manager – In charge of establishing a social media content strategy, overseeing an editorial calendar, and distributing the budget for content promotion and monitoring KPIs.

Content creator - in charge of coming up with relevant ideas for content, creating interesting content, and optimizing it to be suitable for various platforms.

Content editor - Responsible of working with all employees involved in creating content across the organization, and reviewing the content, and then approving it to publish.

It's also important to have a structured approval process in place. Due to the huge amount of content you need to create, it's easy to be entangled by undefined processes. To ensure that no post is buried in a single line ensure that you manage your content with a central system.

Step 3: Use data on your social media user personas. Be aware of their interests, as well as the influencers they are following. This information will help you focus your efforts on developing content that is tailored to your audience, making this type of social media management much more effective.

Remember that the more personalized the content you share on social media will be, the more efficient it will be in achieving your business goals.

Check out this guide for step-bystep instructions on how to customize your social media marketing efforts.

Step 4: Gather content ideas by analyzing the competition using social listening to monitor and join in conversations on the internet and analyzing your personal website with analytics, and curating interesting articles.

Step 5: Determine the amount of content you'll need to write. Obviously, you do not want to publish very little content and then disappear from the feeds of your readers or publish too much and look like spam. Understanding how many posts you need to create on a daily or weekly basis can help you control your time better and become more efficient. What amount of content do you need to be creating?

Facebook 3 times per day

Instagram - enough to publish 2 or 3 times per day

Twitter - enough to post several times per day

LinkedIn - enough to publish 5 times per week

Step 6: Create amazing content with a variety of available online tools to create content, which we've discussed earlier. Pay attention to formats that are compatible with every platform:

Facebook video content (75 million users visit Facebook's video site every day) Learn how to make the most of the video format on Facebook

Instagram - photos (Instagram's followers are 28% bigger than Facebook's audience)

Twitter - tweets that include video (receive 10x more engagement than without videos)

LinkedIn - posts with videos (your video content will receive 5x more engagement)

If you want to scale your production of content and improve efficiency then you require a complete solution. With Emplifi, it is possible to efficiently manage all your social media posts for every day, week, or even a month. It will allow you to reduce time and effort by having your team schedule and publish posts with photos, videos, and user mentions directly within the calendar.

Additionally, thanks to the design of the calendar you'll get an instant review of the content you share on social media.

Step 7: Monitor your content performance and then report on it. Monitoring how your posts connect with your personas allows you to pinpoint the most effective components of your marketing campaign, and then focus your efforts on re-creating them in the future. These are some of the indicators that you must be tracking:

Awareness metrics: engagement overview the number of interactions per 1000 followers, the most effective posts

Campaign goal completions: link clicks on the website, sign-ups for newsletters, purchases

You can receive an instant overview of these metrics with customizable dashboards. And to keep your team members in the loop on the latest data, you can use automated reports which are sent straight to the team members' mailboxes at the frequency you want.

 

How to manage social media listening

Listening to social media is a crucial part of the management. If it is done on a regular basis, it can help you complete a range of tasks, which include:

Monitoring @mentions and how campaigns impact social media

Find out what people on social media are saying about your competitors

Offering better customer care

Finding brand new influencers on social media as well as brand ambassadors

Avoiding and preventing any brand-related social media crisis

By pointing out larger discussions your company should be a part of

How do you stay on top of social media?

Step 1: Pick the appropriate keywords for your queries. Depending on the task you'd like to finish then you'll need to pick the right keywords you'd like to zero in on.

For example, if your goal is to find influencers via listening, start by creating questions related to your topic. Within the query, make a list of relevant keywords, hashtags and mentions you wish to monitor. Finally, pick the platform you'd like to monitor, along with the default language and the region. Thus you'll capture precisely what you're looking for.

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