In an April 2022 report from Kepios, 58.7% of the global population or 4.65 billion people are on social media. These users spend an average of two and a half hours of their day scrolling through their feeds and interacting with content. In 2021, 91.9% of large US companies are expected to use social media to market their brand. No wonder it’s a perfect touchpoint to use that guarantees reaching a wide range of audiences. But when not done right, it can be a waste of your company’s most precious resources. Enter social media management.

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Social media management is the creation and distribution of content using different online channels to create brand awareness, establish reputation and increase conversion. It comes with analyzing audiences and developing strategies tailored to your business goals. It is an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy and plays a big role in the success of your brand.

Social media management can be overwhelming especially if you’re working with a new brand. It can take up most of your time and effort, and you might lose sight of some of your priorities. The need to strike a balance between efficiency and quality will be difficult to achieve, but not impossible. Here are six things you can do to make the most out of your time as a social media manager:

Find the best platform for your brand

There are quite a number of social media platforms available at your disposal. However, this does not mean that your brand should be in all of them. Narrow down the ones that suit your business best to ensure that you are reaching the right eyeballs.

Start by identifying your target audience. Where does your target market usually go to? If your targets are millennials you might want to consider focusing your efforts on Facebook and Instagram. For much younger audiences like Gen Zs, TikTok might be a good platform to introduce your brand. If your market is made up mostly of working professionals, LinkedIn would be your best bet.

You can also check your competitor and create an analysis about the platforms they are using, their best practices and how engaged their audiences are in each channel. Consider your social media marketing goals and the type of content you plan to share. Once you’ve identified the best channels to use, don’t forget to research how each of them is used effectively to communicate to each type of audience and maximize reach.

Define your brand identity

Defining your brand identity is essential to creating a solid social media presence for your business. A consistent tone and design layout will not only make it easier for your posts to properly represent your brand but also takes away the guesswork when it comes to creating content for your pages. 

Establish your brand voice on social media by identifying your key message and tone. Create a guideline for your word choice, tonality and language. Take into account the market that you are targeting and try to describe your brand voice in three words. Come up with a description for each of these adjectives and from there, you can formulate the dos and don’ts when writing for your brand. This will serve as a guide when writing copies for posts, captions, or even auto-reply templates for your community managers.

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A visual identity guideline will make it easier for you and your team to understand and properly communicate your brand through visual content. It should contain your logo usage guidelines, color palette, iconography and graphic style, typography guideline and templates. This way, in-house and contributing designers know how they can play around with their creative materials without compromising your brand identity.

Once your visual identity and brand voice have been properly laid out, it would be easier to create materials for your posts that are cohesive and tell your story well.

Create a social media calendar

Keeping a social media calendar is a tried and proven way to plan and organize upcoming content. With this at hand, you come prepared with content for the foreseeable future to help lessen the risk of missing crucial posting dates and ensure that you have a well-thought-out content mix for your page.

When creating a social media calendar, make sure to audit first your social network and content. Make use of analytics to identify the time and days your audience are most present on your chosen platform to maximize reach. Use the 80-20 rule when it comes to your content mix. This means 80% of your posts should be informative and educational while the remaining 20% are dedicated to sales and conversion. This way, you can keep your audience engaged enough to scroll through and read your more sales-aggressive content.

Once you’ve identified the times, dates and posts for your calendar, lay it down on a spreadsheet, calendar or dashboard for the rest of the team and your stakeholders to see or review. Dedicate specific days to do sanity checks to tweak, proofread and reschedule posts as needed. You may also check for opportunities to strengthen your messaging across all your channels.

Use automation to your advantage

Repetitive tasks can be a waste of time but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t as important. Automation can optimize social interactions by means of tools that can help reduce the time and effort spent in growing your brand. With automation, you can do the following:

• Post regular content – Posting a steady stream of content can be a struggle. More often than not, some social media marketers sometimes might even miss a day or two from their schedules. Automating your upload time can help lessen mistakes in schedules and ensure the brand stays afloat on social media even when you’re on vacation.
•  Schedule publishing – Make the most out of your post by scheduling them during peak audience time. Research on what days and times are your audiences more active in order to optimize reach. 
•  Respond to basic customer queries – Level up your customer service through automated responses for simple comments and queries. Make use of a chatbot where you can set up templates to reply to customer messages. You can also respond to comments on your posts to keep engagement high.
•  Analyze data – Generate reports on your key metrics through automation. There are also a number of tools that allow their users to customize reports according to their needs. This way, it will be easier to track the performance of your page in real-time. 

Outsource any work you can

Trying to do everything on your own may not be the best thing for both you and your brand. Outsource the work to save you time and avoid added burden from tasks that you’re not the best at. If no one in your team is an expert on copywriting, design, or community management, putting these tasks in the hands of an outsourced specialist will help free up your workload. If your business is new or if you’re exploring the idea of reintroducing yourself to the market, getting a trusted rebranding agency can help while you focus on bigger goals.

Through outsourcing, you can experience getting expert insights and get more scalability, target specific outcomes that are in line with your goals and improve your relationship with your audience. Get all these without needing to put on extra man hours. 

Invest in tools

Tools can be your best friends when it comes to social media management. There is a plethora of choices available online both for free and for a subscription. Here are a few kinds of tools that you can use:

• ‍Creative tools – these are tools that help make content creation fuss free. These are copywriting tools or photo editors like Instasize that help you create appealing and engaging content for your brand easily.‍
• Social listening tools – this type of social media management tool allows you to monitor how users from across different platforms perceive your brand. You can keep track of mentions and tags or even set up alerts for relevant keywords. It’s perfect for social media reputation management without having to check each platform one by one. Through listening tools, you may also check for the latest industry trends, conduct competitive analysis, and determine what’s relevant to your audience.‍
• Competitive analysis tools – these provide a more in-depth analysis of your competition from across several channels. You can use this kind of tool to get a solid understanding of the best practices in your industry and discover untapped niches that you can take advantage of.‍
• Publishing tools – these tools are perfect to integrate with your content calendar. They allow you to post across multiple channels at the same time and schedule posts during optimal days and hours. All you have to do is set up the post, configure your preferences, schedule and wait for them to be posted on the platform of your choice.

You may choose to get one of each of the tools mentioned or you can maximize your time and budget by going for powerful all-in-one platforms like Iconosquare. Analyze data, optimize social media management, and schedule content using only one convenient platform to help lessen the hassle of jumping from one to the other.

Conclusion

Social media management is no easy task. Once you get the hang of it and have come up with a system that works, it’s much easier to work on your targets. It is important that you maximize the resources that you have and find the right tools that will help you become an effective social media manager. Try these tips and save yourself some time so you can focus on more important business goals or even on yourself.