Social Media Management Service in Delaware

You know the definition of social media management and what social media management for businesses typically focuses on — now, learn how to bring those practices to life in your social media campaigns with this breakdown of the 11 most critical processes:

1. Auditing your existing social media strategy

Are you already marketing and advertising your business on social media? Then, you’ll want to set aside some time to audit your existing strategy. With a social media audit, you look at what’s working and what isn’t within your social media campaigns.

Typical steps within a social media audit include:

• Reviewing your social media goals
• Ensuring your branding across social media networks matches
• Compiling your social media metrics, like followers, engagement rate, and more
• Analyzing your social media metrics to find trends, like content preferences
• Reviewing your competitor’s social media presence
• And more

Your audit will provide immediate insight into your social media strategy. Plus, it’ll offer a foundation for improving your campaigns so you can achieve the results your business wants to see from social media, from more followers to better client satisfaction.

If you partner with a social media manager, they’ll take care of this step for you.

2. Researching your target audience

Investigating your audience is a core part of social media management. If your agency — or your company — doesn’t know who your audience is, it makes developing a social media strategy challenging.

Know who your audience is, and you’ll know where to find them online.

That’s critical, as you want to maximize your investment in social media management. By targeting your audience on their preferred platform, you can earn a bigger return on investment (ROI).

As an example, imagine social media marketing for dentists. While one dentist provides pediatric care, another offers implant services. They each operate in the health and medical sector, but they have completely different audiences.

When their social media management services include audience research, these practices ensure they invest their marketing budget and ad spend creating content and advertisements that target the right users, versus anyone that needs dental care.

Invest in social media management services, and you can expect your account manager to ask about your target audience at the start. In some cases, an agency may take the initiative to ask about your target audience when you call to discuss their services.

3. Choosing your social media platforms

Next, you’ll decide which social media platforms to use. Time is one of the most valuable resources when it comes to social media management for businesses, so it’s essential to focus your efforts on the networks that matter most to your audience.

While you should have a profile on the top social media networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you shouldn’t divide your time between them evenly. Instead, prioritize social media platforms by how much your audience uses them.

You can find which networks matter most to your target market by reviewing demographic data. If you conducted a social media audit, you could also reference your engagement rates to see which networks performed best. Check competitor activity, too.

If you use social media management services, don’t worry. Your account manager will provide platform recommendations based on their research of your industry, audience, and goals.

4. Creating your social media strategy

Before your account manager (or your internal team) can launch your social media campaign, they need to develop your strategy. In most cases, they’ll focus on building a strategy for each platform due to the different roles and uses of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

In addition to considering your audience, they’ll also look at the following factors:

• Your goals: What does your business want to accomplish with social media? Do you want to build more brand awareness among consumers or establish brand loyalty among existing clients? Or, is there another goal you want to accomplish?

• Your industry: What do audiences in your industry want to know? Are there content gaps that your company can fill, such as with blog posts or guides that you can then share on social media? Or, are there industry leaders you can connect with on different platforms?

• Your brand: What is your brand voice? Do you have a set of standards or processes when engaging with clients in a public forum? Or, how does your branding influence the colors and media that you use?

Some of these questions, such as your branding standards and goals, will require your direct input. At VentCube, we’re always curious to learn about your company — it’s that curiosity that lets us create powerful and personalized social media strategies.

5. Designing your social media profiles

When you create or update your social media profiles, making sure they fit with your brand is essential.

That’s why social media management services can also include social media design. This service focuses on creating professional images that capture your brand and make a great first impression on users.

In most cases, social media design will focus on your account’s static images, such as the following:

• Your Twitter header and background
• Your Facebook header, icon, and profile picture
• Your Instagram profile picture

Once they’ve designed your social media accounts — and you’ve approved of the designs — your social media specialist can start working towards your marketing goals, such as increasing post engagement or driving conversions.

6. Developing your social media ads

Depending on your business’ goals and service plan, your social media manager may develop an advertising strategy for your company. If you want to earn more genuine followers, as well as encourage user engagement, social media ads are essential.

Platforms, from Snapchat to Facebook, vary in their approach to ads. They feature different ad types, as well as different goals. Facebook, for example, offers the option to create ads for increasing brand awareness, generating leads, earning store visits, and more.

Some other ad features that your social media manager will look at include:

• Audience
• Media
• Content
• Calls-to-action (CTA)
• Cost-per-click (CPC)
• And more

These are all critical factors that influence the success of your advertisements. You may create an ad with a compelling CTA, but if you target it to the wrong audience, you won’t see the results you expected.

Before launching an ad campaign, you should have the chance to review and sign off on your ads.

7. Building your social media content calendar

Another deliverable included in most social media management services is a content calendar for each of your social media accounts. This calendar serves as a reference point for you and your professional social media management team.

In your content calendar, which will include the current month, you can view scheduled posts for your social media accounts. These posts may include company announcements and holiday tidings, as well as shared content, such as a blog post from your website or an image from a client.

Before publishing these posts, your social media manager will likely request that you review and approve all the content. While this requires some effort on your part, it guarantees that the only content that goes live is the content you want.

8. Creating platform-specific content

A social media specialist does more than build a content calendar for your company — they also create the content in it. In some cases, they may oversee every aspect of content creation, from developing the topic to writing the copy to selecting the media.

To create the best possible content, however, many social media specialists will work with graphic designers and copywriters. The result is a piece of content that resonates with users and accomplishes your company’s goals.

If your calendar includes content from a third party — maybe you’re sharing an influencer’s blog post that mentions your product — your social media manager will ensure they have the appropriate link and caption to share on your social media accounts.

9. Responding to your social media followers

A day-to-day responsibility included with many social media management services is interacting with your followers and commenters. For many businesses, this service is invaluable as it has a direct impact on brand awareness and brand loyalty.

As a part of this service, your social media manager will adhere to your brand and company standards when engaging with your followers. They’ll also respond to users that leave negative comments, such as about a bad experience.

For social media users, your company’s interaction with them demonstrates that you care. In many industries, that will set your business apart from your competitors. It can even become a selling point for consumers, especially since more than 65% of people use social media for customer service.

10. Growing your social reach

Ads are not the only way that your social media specialist will increase your followers and social media presence. As a part of your social media management services, your provider may reach out to influencers and trusted organizations in your industry.

That can lead to coverage of your company by those individuals, which can connect you with their followers. The result is more exposure for your brand, as well as the chance to earn more followers and clients.

If you sell kitchen cabinets, for example, an influencer could highlight your product as a purchase for their renovated kitchen. They’ll create a post highlighting the experience on their social media account, which you can then share to yours.

It’s a chance for you, as well as another organization, to gain coverage.

11. Monitoring your social media performance

A critical part of social media management is monitoring the performance of your efforts. That’s why your team of social media specialists will track the performance of your ads, as well as creative content, and share those results with you.

With MarketingCloudFX from VentCube, we make sure you can see the performance, as well as the returns of your investment. This proprietary application, which IBM’s artificial intelligence software powers, also offers numerous other useful tools for your digital marketing efforts outside of social media.

When you invest in social media management services — or any digital marketing service — it’s essential that you partner with an agency that not only monitors the performance of your social media accounts but also reacts when that performance drops.

You want a partner that develops an action plan for improving low performance too — not someone that excuses it. Adopt this mindset, and you’ll find the best agency for your business. That kind of partnership leads to better results and a better ROI.

The social media metrics your company uses to measure success or find opportunities should be based on your business goals. These are common metrics used to measure social media marketing performance:

• Impressions – Are you growing the number of people who see your brand on social?
• Engagement – Are people joining the conversation and sharing your posts?
• Mentions – How often are people talking about your brand?
• Social Referral Traffic – How many people click through to your website?
• Followers – How many people are in your immediate social networks?

To get the best picture of how social media is benefiting your company, look at social media metrics in tandem with the other channels. For example, are leads from social media referrals more qualified than those from paid media?

We have more recommendations for social media KPIs – and KPIs for other marketing channels.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype about new social media platforms, but every social channel you adopt requires time, energy and budget to effectively meet your business goals. To start, choose one or two that makes the most sense, and really capitalize on them by making frequent, high-quality posts. Read our blog about choosing the right social media platforms for your business to see more specific tips.

When your social media properties are managed appropriately, you see growth through targeted boosts or ads, carefully crafted copy, highly shareable resources, captivating imagery and platform-specific best practices. We believe in the value of gaining quality followers and qualified traffic, meaning your new followers should be members of your target audience – not just all breathing humans. So avoid buying followers or using other questionable tactics, as it’s unlikely to help your business. When a social media account has vibrant and regularly posted content, backed with some professional strategies for promotion, quality followers grow naturally.

Very. Your company’s social media strategy should absolutely include video, especially for platforms like Instagram and YouTube. Every mainstream social media channel can support video assets, and 81 percent of businesses use video marketing to boost brand awareness and sales (HubSpot, 2018). Try incorporating a mix of live and produced (scripted and edited) videos into your social media strategy. These days you can create social media–worthy videos with just a smartphone and an editing app – and there are free apps out there to help with this.

If you’re looking for a more professional-grade video, perhaps with an optimized landing page, hire an agency like ours that offers video marketing and production supported by other digital content experts.

Many businesses fail to curate content specifically for each platform. While cross-posting on Facebook and Instagram may be convenient, we recommend at the very least optimizing your posts’ descriptions for each platform.

Another common issue we see is improper use of hashtags on each platform. By making sure your content is optimized for specific platforms, you align with user expectations. This makes your brand appear proficient in social media, which is a form of social proof.

Social media is now an integral part of an effective digital marketing strategy. Many brands use social media for top-of-funnel marketing and then utilize paid advertising on social media to drive middle-of-funnel or bottom-of-funnel efforts. It has heavily influenced design and video strategies, as users today expect to get information very quickly. For example, videos that can be understood while muted are popular now, as people want to consume that content while in public. 

At the very least, social media is great for increasing brand awareness and building a community of prospects. At most, social media can be a major revenue driver. It’s a facilitator of conversation. It’s one of the best ways to make an audience feel like a part of your brand, which drives purchases. Finally, audience targeting is a great reason to invest in social. Boosted/promoted posts and display advertising are great ways to launch a retargeting or brand awareness campaign.

Above all, social media costs you time. It’s important to spend time creating your assets, writing description copy and participating in community engagement (answering comments, sharing content to your story, etc.). There are true costs associated with social media marketing if you pay for professionally designed assets, hire an agency to manage your channels for you, or utilize advertising or boosting capabilities. Cost varies drastically by vendor, and you get what you pay for if you go too cheap.

To help you focus your efforts on aspects of your social media platforms that will get you the highest return on investment, we recommend auditing your social media platforms. We offer a free social media audit checklist so you can identify your top priorities.

An effective social media marketing strategy involves many moving parts. We recommend using a planning tool like our free social media calendar so you can keep track of all your assets in one place. There are other options available, like Oneupweb’s Condario calendar, which can include design, content and other execution support. You may also benefit from social management tools like Loomly or Sprout Social, which allow you to automate future posts.

On average, companies spend $4000 to $7000 per month on social media management. This investment includes building and maintaining a social media marketing and advertising strategy, as well as a monthly ad spend and tool subscriptions.

Depending on your business, you may have higher or lower social media management costs. You can use this price range, however, to establish a realistic budget for your social media marketing and advertising strategy.

Social media offers your company a tremendous opportunity to grow your brand and your business. It’s a challenge, though, for many organizations, especially small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), to set aside the time and resources for social media management.

That’s why many invest in social media management services, which offer the following advantages:

• Save yourself time: Time is one the most common reasons companies abandon social media. When you hire a social media agency, you get a partner that handles all your social media efforts. You save time without sacrificing a revenue-driving channel.
• Get a social media expert: Professional social media management services also partner you with an expert. You don’t have to worry about the time or cost of hiring a social media specialist in-house. Instead, you can immediately access the expertise of one.
• Maintain a quality strategy: A social media agency also ensures your social media strategy remains active and top-notch. They continuously (and proactively) monitor and improve your approach to drive the results you want, from brand awareness to follows to sales.
• Achieve aggressive goals: Like most companies, your business probably wants measurable results from social media. You may even have some ambitious goals, like achieving a certain follower count. A specialized social media agency can help you reach these goals.

If you’re struggling with social media management, you’re not alone.

A lot of businesses try to launch and maintain social campaigns, including your competitors. Get ahead of your competition and use social to its full advantage by exploring and investing in social media management services.