You’re undoubtedly already aware that your company needs to be active on social media. Around 49% of the global population uses social media to a certain degree, that is almost 4 billion individuals.
Social media is one of the most efficient ways to expand a business. However, it can also be one of the most time- and resource-intensive promotional strategies. The good news is that controlling your time online can be done through a few innovative methods that save you time. It only requires a little planning, a powerful social media tool, and a dash of imagination.
Even though creating good social media content can take up a lot of time, your business can benefit enormously from being active on social platforms. You can eventually
- Expand your clientele
- Amplify brand awareness
- Establish credibility in your sector
Social Media Management Best Practices
Managing social media significantly enhances customer interactions, develops a comprehensive strategy for providing high-quality content that will engage your target audience, fosters a great user experience, and encourages return visits.
In this post, we are sharing the top 5 social media management practices to save time and increase your effectiveness.
Set social media goals
Without goals, it can be challenging to gauge the effectiveness of your social media approach, and you waste a lot of time. In addition to advancing your plan, clearly defined goals help you save time.
A goal must be time-bound, specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic to succeed. These are known as SMART objectives. One of the oldest and most well-liked goal-setting frameworks for businesses is using SMART goals.
Specific: It will be simpler to understand your intended objectives if you can be more detailed when outlining your goals.
Measurable: How will you assess your level of success?
Achievable: Is your objective realistic?
Realistic: Your business objectives are strongly matched with a relevant goal. Does this objective support your company’s goals, vision, or values?
Time Bound: Give your objective a due date.
Some examples of social media goals are:
- Increase website visitors by 2x within 60 days
- Doubling Twitter and Instagram followers
- Promote a product or service through social media
- Increase revenue and lead generation by N%
- Build your online authority
You can also effectively track your key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics after you have a set of well-stated goals.
Identify the best social platforms
Prioritizing the best social channels concerning your business vertical and the size of your social team is essential in saving time. Based on the goals and objectives you have set, choose the platforms. The issue is that there are far too many social platforms to participate in all of them actively.
Every social media site has its personality and means of communication. While LinkedIn is fantastic for exchanging professional skills and business information, Twitter is great for conversations and hot topics.
You can follow this two-step process to find the best social platform for your business.
Step 1: Identify your target audience
To find your target audience, we suggest doing a competitor analysis. In order to start with, you can find answers to the following:
- Which platforms do they leverage?
- What’s working and what’s not?
- How attentive each channel’s following is?
You can do your own research to find out which platform works best for you based on your products and services, interest, and business vertical.
Step 2: Find your target audience
Now that you have an idea about your target audience, find which platform they are present on the most.
Your set of SMART goals and objectives will also influence your decision. Depending on the type of content you post, a number of networks will work if you want to share it and interact with your followers. However, if providing excellent customer service is one of your top priorities, Twitter and Facebook should come before Instagram.
Create good quality content
Creating content and reporting are the two tasks that might both require a significant amount of time. If you don’t produce content, there won’t be anything to schedule, check, or evaluate in your calendar.
Although it is always beneficial to have a steady stream of updates and content, it would not work if your post content contains inaccurate or unrelated information. You want to be sure that the content you publish is worth enough to be shared and interacted with on social platforms. Although, with the increase in publicity for the posts, you will also have to face a lot of unwanted responses like bad comments across social media platforms like Facebook. In such cases, you can try hiding comments on Facebook that aren’t relevant or beneficial to your brand.
Consider this: Will you engage with a nasty piece that someone writes without acknowledging sources and publishes on social media? What does the content indicate about your brand’s credibility? You can create a content calendar in order to save time and produce good-quality content. Some examples of quality content are:
- Create your own brand identity while designing creatives
- Share useful tricks and techniques in your field
- Promote social causes
- Share and repurpose user-generated content
- Make your content personal
- Don’t overuse sponsored content
- Post social evidence and testimonial videos
- Use controversial subjects carefully
- Regularly interact with your audience
- Create “how to” posts and videos
Analyze and evaluate
Analyzing and evaluating your social metrics is a mandatory part of social media management. Based on the results of your analysis, you will know if the time you have spent on social media is worth it. It helps you to make major decisions on reworking your social media strategy and the investments you have to make.
The audience insights feature that most leading social media networks provide is fantastic for analytics. Comparing follower counts, for instance, might show you which platforms are more popular.
You may gain valuable information about how your audience reacts to your social media content by combining the analytics for each platform. To decide what to share more of on your timelines, you can examine which posts and advertisements do the best.
Depending on how long the accounts have been active, you can choose metrics from the last three, six, or twelve months. Another essential metric to analyze is your company’s Google reviews. The reviews will help you understand what your customers and clients are facing. Thus, managing Google reviews is also essential.
Make use of social media software
Social media is evolving, and managing it involves more than publishing and engaging. Whether you’re working alone or with a team, robust social media management software can help you save time and achieve your goals by increasing productivity. Social media software could help you with the following:
Scheduling and Publishing
Your social media management tool should enable you to link with leading social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to schedule your posts well in advance. Scheduling social media posts is essential. Instead of manually posting, you can concentrate on engagement and creating fresh content by scheduling articles in advance.
You can also check your content calendar and decide on the type of content you want to share. This helps you save an ample amount of time.
Engaging and reporting
Successful interactions with your followers and future clients depend on social involvement. Using a solid social media platform tool should be simple and quick for you to spot possibilities and act on them.
You should be able to export reports on the data gathered using your social networking platform. Look for rapid reporting and analytics to share with your team or clients. Automated reporting helps you decide wisely and accurately about your social media plan, saving you a ton of time.
Many different social media tools are available, and as social media science evolves, so will the tools. You can choose the best social media management tool based on your budget and the required critical features.
Final Thoughts
For a long time, social media will play a significant role in how businesses sell themselves. The best social media management practices involve many moving components, including setting reasonable goals, identifying the best social platforms, developing and creating high-quality content, tracking interaction, and making the best use of social media tools.
Recall that everything comes down to providing quality content to the followers and making their time worth it. With the proper preparation and tools, you can spend less time on social media while still getting the most out of it.
Enjoyed this post? Get more great articles just like it from across the industry – register now for our monthly roundup email >