Social Media Account Management
In today’s world, businesses need social media account management. However, we find most companies don’t have the time to consistently post and engage with their followers.
Having social media accounts is only a small part of the equation — actively posting with relevant content and engaging with your audience is the most critical aspect of any social media strategy. And because most companies can’t seem to find the time, they seek out firms with experience in Social Media Management.
Customers today are more web-savvy, and they have grown up with expectations regarding how legitimate companies should operate online. The age group that doesn’t care about social media is getting older and older, and the generations that have grown up with this technology continue to replace them. Make sure you don’t lose customers because you aren’t engaging with them.
What Is Social Media Management?
Social Media Management is creating, sharing, and analyzing content posted to Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It also includes engaging with users who interact with these posts.
Why Use Social Media Management?
There are many – like, many – benefits to using Social Media Management in an effort to maintain an active Social Media presence. For your benefit (and ours), we created a list that includes only the most important benefits.
Editor’s note: Every business is unique and has different needs, but most of these reasons are applicable to just about any business.
- Social Media Is an Extension of Your Customer Service – Whether you want them to or not, customers are going to reach out to you on social media for customer service-related issues. If you aren’t paying attention, you are going to leave that customer with a bad experience.
- The Startup Cost Is Negligible – Do you like the sound of “free?” Signing up for social media channels is just that – free. And when it’s time to run paid ads for your business, the cost is usually much less than standard advertising.
- Expand (or pinpoint) Your Audience – Social Media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to reach users all over the world, or those within a few miles of your business. And when it’s time to advertise, you can focus your messaging, well, wherever, and do so at a significantly – like, significantly – less expense. This is why Social Media Management is CRUCIAL for businesses big and small.
- Social Media Management Helps You Manage Your Reputation– Whether you’re active on social media or not, your customer base is going to talk about you online. Control that experience the best you can by actively managing your social media accounts and engaging with your customers. Give them a reason to say nice things about you. Most people look at reviews and what is being said about a particular company before picking up the phone to work with them.
- Social Media Builds Your Brand Presence– Your brand is so much more than your logo. Social Media allows you to keep your brand in front of people and gives your brand a voice.
- Social Media Builds Trust– Whether you use social media as a way to generate reviews or not, your social media accounts are an excellent way to build trust. If someone is researching your company and they look at a Facebook profile with very few followers and no posts in the last 6 months, they are going to wonder what is going on with the company that they are no longer engaging with their customers.
- Gain Real Customer Insights and Learn from Them– People are going to tell you things on social media that they wouldn’t otherwise tell you to your face. Sometimes these are good things, sometimes they are bad, but it’s always better to know what they think and be able to act on it. Engaging with your customers on social media encourages them to give you valuable feedback that you can use to grow and improve your business.
- Social Media Is a Great Way to Announce New Content– It’s a natural channel to let your audience learn about any new content published to your website or new services you offer. It gives you a vehicle to get nearly immediate feedback from your customer base.
- It Lets Your Customers Engage With You– People love to work with people they know and companies they like. Social Media gives your customers the opportunity to engage with you like never before. It allows them to build a relationship and get to know the personality behind your brand.
- Social Media Will Drive Website Traffic– Social Media will drive traffic to your website in multiple ways. The most obvious is from direct clicks from your social media websites, which is easy to track. In addition to that, social media is a positive SEO signal, so being active on social media and getting high engagement will help your website rank better.And that new content you promoted? People could end up linking to it from their own website, and this leads to referral traffic while boosting another SEO signal.
Customers Use Social Media to Learn About Products and Services (which includes yours) – Guess what? A lot of people are on Social Media. A lot. How many? Well, we’ll break that down later, but just take my word for it – a lot. And according to GlobalWebIndex, 54% of Social Media users utilize Social Media platforms to research products.
Oh, and this is equally compelling – 71% of users are more likely to purchase services and products based on referrals from Social Media. What this means to you: Use Social Media to market your products/services, offer helpful information, and provide examples of your products/service at work or “in the field.”
Need help managing your Social Media accounts? Contact us today.
What Social Media Platforms Fall Under Social Media Management?
Because you can’t have Social Media Management without Social Media, we thought it integral to offer more in-depth information regarding popular – and effective – Social Media platforms.
We also want you, dear reader, to learn more about the following platforms so you’ll know which one offers the most value for your particular business.
We’re starting with the most popular. And by popular, I’m referring to the 1.82 billion people who interact with it daily.
With a significant number of regular, active users, and an all-encompassing age demographic, this Social Media platform is great for businesses considering its access to a massive, diverse audience.
Who uses it: From the perspective of age demographics, the answer is everyone. And that means everyone from teenagers to seniors. That’s right – seniors (because the “soc-meedz” isn’t just for young whippersnappers). In fact, in 2019, the age group that saw the biggest user increase was born before 1945. It’s still the smallest group served, but it saw the biggest spike in users.
What it’s good for: Drumming up a few reasons we already mentioned, Facebook helps build trust, strengthens your brand, and creates or maintains relationships with customers.
Why it’s awesome: You have a gigantic, diverse audience to serve paid ads to, and a variety of ad formats to present. If your target audience is hot dog enthusiasts, you can absolutely find people interested in hot dogs on Facebook.
And let’s not forget about sharing your message in various forms – text, videos, live videos, images, annoyingly large letters, GIFS (and that’s pronounced with a hard “g’”), etc.
Boasting 500 million daily active users, Instagram is an integral platform for social media management services.
Focusing more on sharing images and video, Instagram allows for a great deal of creativity when engaging with your audience and presenting your brand.
Who uses it: This particular platform attracts a younger audience, with 75% of all users falling between the ages of 18-24.
What it’s good for: Instagram helps promote branding in a strong, visual way. And being visual, it can help present the brand/product/service in the field, or its visible benefits (which is why Instagram is perfect for the retail, entertainment, and beauty industries).
This is another great platform for building relationships with – and engaging with – fervent followers and uninitiated newcomers.
Why it’s awesome: People loooove this platform. They love it. On average, 60% of users check in several times per day. And that means people have several opportunities to see your post, and then leave a friendly comment or emoticon.
Is it really the largest professional social network in the world? Yes – it has 760 million users, and 260 million monthly active users. And it’s perfect for businesses looking for skilled candidates, and candidates looking for the perfect career.
Who uses it: This platform is popular among college graduates – over 50% maintain a LinkedIn account.
What it’s good for: It’s great for sharing news related to businesses and industries. It’s also a great way to share informative content that may entice a targeted business group.
Why it’s awesome: Looking for more leads? Well, it turns out 80% of B2B (business to business) leads from Social Media come from LinkedIn. And that’s why digital marketers rely on this platform for more business.
What Actually Happens During Social Media Management?
Wondering what’s included under Social Media Management? Wondering what tasks a Social Media Manager undertakes to improve Social Media accounts, engage more effectively with users, and transition visitors to paying customers? Let’s dig in.
Discovering and Researching Your Target Audience
Your company needs to know who its customers are, what their interests are, how old they are, and where they go online.
If you sell baseball cleats, you’ll want to create content and advertisements for an audience that actually likes baseball. And you’ll want to create content and advertisements on the Social Media platforms where there’s access to those who like baseball.
Developing a Social Media Strategy
Before launching a Social Media campaign, you really need to figure out a well-developed strategy. And a different strategy will probably exist for multiple Social Media channels since they each present their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Coming up with a good strategy involves turning down the painfully loud, Norwegian Heavy Metal and giving serious consideration to the following points:
The goals for your campaign. Do you want to increase brand recognition? Increase engagement? Convert visitors to customers? Whatever the goal, there are ways to present Social Media content in service to your desired outcome.
What does your audience want to know? If you’re in a particular industry, consider the kind of content your audience wants to see. Is there a deficiency of online content your company can fill with informative posts leading to inciteful blogs and/or website content? If you see a need, use Social Media to satisfy it.
Nailing the Look of Your Social Media Accounts – Social Media Design
Your Social Media accounts? They’re part of your brand and should carry the same visual punch. Social Media Design is an important aspect of Social Media Management. It’s focus? To make a great visual impression on visitors by applying professional images and branding to Social Media accounts.
Social Media Design usually deals with static images placed throughout the account. A few examples:
- Your Facebook header, profile, and icon.
- Your Instagram profile.
A visual presentation has an astounding effect on a visitor’s impression of your business, so a professional-looking Social Media account is an easily achieved advantage.
Creating a Content Calendar
This is the perfect way to plan, organize, reference, and then launch your Social Media content. This monthly calendar maps out the kinds of posts needed for specific days, which allows an overseeing eye regarding output and content themes. If you’re using a Content Manager, they’ll share this calendar so you can approve any content before posting.
Creating Your Ads
If you want to gain more dedicated followers, boost engagement with your brand, and eventually transition visitors to consumers, Social Media Ads are a necessary aspect of any Social Media campaign.
Dependent on your goals, ads can be created to increase brand visibility, improve online engagement, capture more leads, convert viewers to buyers, etc.
Each platform utilizes ads a bit differently, with various ad formats created to achieve various goals.
Just be sure to know your audience, determine your goals, and determine the best platforms to utilize ads based on the prevalence of your audience.
Engaging Means Responding
Social Media is exactly that – social. It’s not about posting and ignoring – it’s about posting and interacting. An important task for any Social Media Manger is interacting with followers, and whenever appropriate, replying to comments.
They’ll also respond to negative comments in an effort to determine a solution to any perceived issues. This is especially important since it shows a company’s customer service practices in action.
(Of course, any sort of interaction or response is always guided by a company’s conveyed attitude, messaging, and branding.)
Are interactions important? Actually, they’re golden – they tell viewers that a business actually cares. And consistent, thoughtful interactions can be a discerning strength that elevates your brand above the competition.
Keeping an Eye on Your Success – Social Media Monitoring
A Social Media Management company will provide information showing the performance of any Social Media strategy or campaign. And this kind of information relates to simple posts and paid ads.
Want to know if you have more views on your posts? How about comments and other forms of engagement? Want to know how many people are seeing your ads and taking the actions you’re compelling them to take?
All this can be reported to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. And based on the data, you can either continue the campaign, or tweak it based on positive, measurable results.
What Does Social Media Management Cost?
Companies can spend $200-$350 per day, or about $4000-$7000 per month on Social Media Management.
This includes creating a strategy, creating content, managing the account(s), creating ads, and the amount of money spent on serving ads across various platforms.
Depending on the size of your business, Social Media Management costs can be much lower, or much higher.
What Does Amity Digital Charge for Social Media Management?
Here’s what we charge for basic Social Media Management without any ad spend (per channel).
Our tasks:
- Creating a custom Social Media strategy tailored to your audience and Social Media platform(s).
- Maintaining your Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn accounts.
- Creating unique content to post.
- Creating a shared content calendar to assure all posted material is considered valuable and on-message.
- Engaging with customers as they interact with you on social media.
- Utilizing Social Media Design to make sure your Social Media channel(s) is(are) on-brand and professional.
- Discounts are available if servicing multiple channels.
Our Pricing:
- $950 a month for two social networks.
- $350 for each additional platform.
With Ads:
We create your ad for a $250 setup fee, and then manage them for 10% of the amount you spend (with a minimum management fee of $250 per month).
Why Should You Use a Social Media Management Company?
(Like, for Example, Amity Digital?)
You’ll probably save money. The salary of in-house Social Media Manager/Digital Marketing Specialist can cost your company $60,000-$80,000 a year (plus benefits, paid vacation, etc.). Even if you paid $4000 per month for an external Social Media Management firm, you would only be looking at $48,000 per year.
Meet your team of experts: When utilizing an outside firm, you’re getting a dedicated team and the benefits of their collective experience. The responsibility of your Social Media presence won’t be relegated to one poor, overburdened soul.
Save yourself time, and the eventual guilt. Lack of time is the main reason why most companies abandon their Social Media. And when someone happens across it, they’ll probably abandon it as well. Save yourself the time and that clenching feeling in your gut by hiring a dedicated firm – a firm who will create a schedule and stick to it.
Reach your goals: You want to see more engagement, more followers, and more positive reactions to ads. And you want to be able to measure these accomplishments as you reach the goals you set.
A Social Media Management team can help you reach those goals with branded posts tailored to your audience, and maintain the consistency of a developed content strategy.
Why Should You Use Amity Digital for Social Media Management?
Prior to starting Amity Digital, our team worked at SuperHeroStuff.com. In fact, the owner of Amity Digital, Brian Welch, was one of the owners of SuperHeroStuff.com. We worked on that website prior to Facebook being a thing. We were one of the first companies to jump on board and start a business page and we built it up to over 500K followers.
We successfully managed a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Snapchat account for that brand and drove a significant amount of business through our engagement on those platforms. We sold SuperHeroStuff in August of 2018, and we are now offering our services and expertise to other businesses.
We are the ideal partner for your business as we have been doing this from the very start. We have seen the changes, learned how to adapt, and continue to find success using social media as a channel for ourselves and our customers.
Need our help? I mean, you’re already here, so you might as well hit the button.
