Do you need a social media manager?

Is your effort on social media half-hearted? No time to post. Wondering what to post. How to utilise all the features of the myriad of social channels available.

Posting and managing your social media can be daunting. It may only take a few minutes to upload an image, write a simple caption and post, but the reality is that a successful social media strategy that achieves your goals, takes way longer than a few minutes a day. And that’s even before you factor in the time to respond to comments and outward engagement.

And should you post every day? The jury is out on that one. Oh wait. It depends on your strategy and what you want to achieve.

Should you post every day on social media?

If you want to build numbers of followers then posting every day is recommended to be optimal, to a maximum of two posts a day. However, it has been documented, that accounts with less than 10,000 followers experience a drop in engagement when they post twice in one day.

While staying top of mind by posting every day might be important, being memorable is also key to staying top of mind, which means posting regularly; not strictly once a day, but several times a week. There is an element of quality over quantity when it comes to social media.

Feeling daunted already?

What do you want social media to achieve for your business? Is your goal to build a large community, generate traffic to your website, drive up enquiries and sales?

Deciding what your goals are will influence the type of content you need to be posting.

A social media manager will…

Here’s what you can expect from your social media manager:

The all-important social media strategy

It’s all about strategy. You’ll need to put some time in at the start with your social media manager to have a good chat about your business and your goals, and what you want your social media accounts to achieve.

Setting out the goals for your business six, 12, 24 months’ time, for example, is the first step for any social media manager in working with you and your business.

Creating the flow of engaging content

They will create the images and captions to capture and hold the attention of your target audience, working in alignment with your goals, your tone of voice and brand values.

Actual posting to social media

It’s not just pressing a button. Your social media manager will post to each platform you are utilising, ensuring that posts are optimised for each particular channel. Whether it’s a story on Instagram, a TikTok, or a LI post, they will know the tools relevant to each channel and use them.

Outward and on-platform engagement

Commenting and following of other accounts is a necessary part of any strategy in building a community. You can’t just post and leave it at that; it’s like having a party by yourself. Think community – this is what your social media manager is building for you.

They will, as appropriate, and inline with your goals, like and reply to comments, and research other accounts to follow and comment upon in your name.

Analyse the data

They will analyse and evaluate your engagement and reach on each platform. They will be able to understand, from the data of each platform, what type of content most engages, what time of day is best to post and what outreach/tags are working most effectively, etc.

Analysing the data will enable your social media manager to revise and evaluate your strategy and make the necessary adjustments to keep those all-important business goals in sight.

Social media not just for sales

Social media is not just for sales and marketing (we can feel another blog post coming on). A switched-on social media manager will encourage you to use your channel for campaigns and other business goals, such as public relations, crisis management and recruitment.

Putting campaigns into action

Particularly if you are encouraging customer interaction through your channels, the opportunity may arise for you to take care of customer service, to a greater or lesser degree, through the interaction on your socials. Your social media manager will be able to advise you.

If you need to announce an emergency development, or crisis, social media can be effective for this. Similarly, for encouraging applicants if you’re expanding your team to come and join you.

There are countless opportunities for you to utilise social media in ways that move your business forward. A social media manager knows this and can help you explore the possibilities and put them into action.

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