If you’ve landed here and aren’t sure what a social media manager is… well, it’s the person who writes and posts your Facebook posts, interacts with your followers on Twitter, and pins images related to your industry on Pinterest. With so many social media channels available—and with the landscape changing so quickly—it makes sense to delegate these responsibilities to one or more people. And the role is not an easy one. Your social media manager wears many hats: writer, graphic designer, customer service representative, data analyst. Whether you have a social media manager on your team, or you outsource your social media to a firm that specializes in it, following these guidelines will help you achieve better results.
Get a Social Media Manager’s Take on Your Marketing Goals
Not every brand should be on Twitter, or Snapchat, or Pinterest. Your social media management team can craft a plan based on your business’s unique needs. When a new platform gains popularity, it may not make sense to demand that your social media manager set up a presence on it. Instead, they should be evaluating the return on investment and providing you guidance about the advantages of adopting it or letting it pass by. Not every social media platform sticks around. Remember Vine, anyone?
And remember that your social media manager might have some marketing goals to add to yours. He may have a blogger in mind that your brand could partner with, or ideas for a giveaway that might generate buzz for your product.
Give Your Social Media Manager a Heads’ Up
In order to be effective, your social media manager needs to know what’s going on with your company. If you’ve got a big project going on, your social media manager can tease that to your audience, garnering interest in your brand. If you’re going on vacation, isn’t the anticipation half the pleasure? Compare that to being handed the information after the project’s completion. All that momentum is lost.
Learn How to Talk About Analytics
Your social media manager should be providing you reports on a regular basis. In our experience, a lot of clients glance at the reports without really understanding what they mean. A huge sheaf of graphs and charts can be intimidating, but your social media manager can break it down to the basics for you. If there’s a term you don’t understand, it’s perfectly okay to ask. That said, it’s important to understand what terms like CTR (Click-Through Rate) mean. You can find some of the major terms in our SEO lexicon, but Hootsuite has an even more comprehensive one.
If You Have Graphics, Give Them to Your Social Media Manager
Social media managers are typically resourceful types, who will make do with what they have. But they love it when you give them things like your official logo in a high-res format, or high-res pictures that they can use in social media posts. Whether it’s a Facebook post or a blog post, pictures make an item much more shareable. A lot of times this collateral—which is so valuable—just doesn’t make it into their hands. Help them help you!
If you’re following these guidelines already—congratulations! If you need a social media manager, contact I.T. Roadmap. We can work with you to tailor a social media program that’s just right for your business.
