Business owners and leaders of organizations can no longer ignore social media and the benefits of a strong social media presence. Social media is now a powerful tool that can grow your company’s relationship with the target market to drive sales. However, as a busy executive with many responsibilities, writing tweets, and making posts on social media platforms may not be tenable. As such, you need the help of a seasoned social media manager to strengthen your business’ online presence.
Why you should get help with social media
There is no doubt social media manager will be an invaluable addition to your business marketing team. The manager will help improve business operations in several ways. The following are the reasons why you should always go for a social media expert over existing employees:
Frees up your time
Once you hire a social media expert, you and your employees will have more time to concentrate on running the business. Achieving a robust social media presence is a lot of work, and when you focus too much on building your social media presence, a lot of other essential duties can be put on the back burner. But when you hire help, you will have time to focus on all the important projects.
Consistent updates
A company page with insufficient data that has not been updated for ages will drive traffic and potential customers away. One essential duty of an asocial media manager is to post consistently across all the platforms. They can also determine the type of content that is suitable for each forum. Posting consistently helps build a big social media following, which you can easily translate to sales.
Better engagement with visitors
If you are a busy professional, it will be challenging to respond to social media messages. A social media manager will promptly respond to all the social media messages, keeping all customers engaged. Apart from being a marketing tool, social media is also a customer management tool, and you need an expert to enhance the company’s customer relationship strategies.
Boosting of brand engagement
A social media manager will help use the platforms to its full potentials in terms of marketing. They will use their creativity to ensure your business brand is well represented in social media platforms. Some of the fresh and innovative ideas to use include sharing of customer testimonials, promoting company culture, and reflecting on the company brand through these platforms
Generation of new customers
The right social media manager will use both paid and organic efforts to promote your newest offers on social media platforms so that your brand will connect with new customers. The social media manager can use analytics tools to examine the number of leads social media marketing efforts have brought.
Top tasks that social media can take over
A social media manager is responsible for all your brand’s social media activities such as social media planning, content creation, advertising, automation, publishing, and analytics. It is a vital role that can complement your marketing team’s conversions and return on investment efforts. Other top tasks of a social media manager include:
- Designing and implementing a social media strategy that aligns with company goals
- Generating, editing, publishing, and sharing ideal content that engages the audience
- Performing research on audience preferences and benchmark trends
- Monitoring of SEO and web traffic metrics
- Overseeing the social media’s account designs
- Staying up to date with new technologies and trends in social media, applications, and tools
- Determine specific objectives and report on ROI
10 tips for outsourcing your social media
1. Good understanding of the brand
The right social media manager should adapt to your brand’s voice to connect with its audience on social media platforms. The right person should ensure ideas for social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook are in sync with your business
2. Well versed to manage multiple channels
The ideal social media manager should juggle the management of multiple accounts. The right person should also be familiar with the tools to make social media management more effective and productive. They should be well versed with management software such as Sprout Social or Buffer.
3. A great team player
It is not mandatory for a social media manager to come to the office daily. You can even hire a remote expert provided they are willing to collaborate with other departments. They should strive to stay up to date with critical happenings in your company that helps them run social media accounts effectively. A good manager should be familiar with communication tools like Trello or Slack that offer successful collaboration between teams.
4. Excellent writing skills
Increasing engagement and sales is not all about posting beautiful images on social media platforms. The manager should have excellent copywriting skills for the creation of content that helps converts. They should write engaging, convincing, and persuasive posts using short sentences to hook the audience and nudge them to buy.
5. Look for analytical skills
Undoubtedly, there is more to social media management than just updating company profiles and posts. The ideal social media manager should boast of an excellent analytical mind. They should also be on the lookout on the latest industry trends that the company can borrow to expand its social media reach. They should also understand the fundamentals of analytics and reporting.
6. Strong online presence
The right candidate should have a robust online presence. A social media manager with no or little online presence is like a job seeker applying for a job without a CV. Before you hire an ideal candidate, do some diggings, and check the candidates’ social media profiles. Check what they usually post and the number of followers they have.
7. Customer service skills
The ideal social media manager should boast of excellent customer care service skills. Most clients will message a brand due to a great experience or when they have issues. Therefore, much of social media management will be responding to opinionated followers, and the right person should be well-versed in handling customer service issues.
8. Design sensibilities
The right social media manager should have excellent design skills. If you can get a candidate who has an eye for design, by all means, go for them. Apart from creating content, the social media manager can help the design team ensure the final result is top-notch.
9. Flexibility
Social media platforms’ strategies keep changing, and finding a social media manager who is flexible and can easily adapt to new techniques is essential. Such a person will help tweak your social media strategies to meet the changing needs of the clients. Your current clients, who could all be on Facebook today, may move en-mass to another platform the next day. The right person will help move the brand to the platform the clients prefer
10. Excellent organizational skills
Social media managers juggle several tasks simultaneously. You need to find someone who is extremely organized to help manage several accounts effectively. Such a person ensures everything is done to perfection, from planning, content creation to analyzing posts and comments.
Key Takeaway
There is no doubt you stand to benefit a lot if you outsource the management of your social media platforms. If you lack potential in-house talent and have turned to all traditional job boards and freelance platforms with little success, don’t despair. You can leverage hiring solutions offered by Zirtual to hire a talented social media specialist who will be a massive asset to your team.