Should I Hire a Social Media Manager? Things to Consider Before Making a Hire

Social media is hardly a new phenomenon, but it keeps growing: as of 2021, 4.5 billion people worldwide used social media, a figure over 400 million higher than the previous year’s benchmark.

It makes social media a likely answer to the question, “where can I reach my audience?” and a sure-fire way to build an organic conversation around your brand. But remember: with social media, you get out what you put in. 

If you update your page every few weeks, you will find that your platforms lack engagement and fail to create leads. However, if you implement an active and regular content calendar, you will soon see the results. 

Unfortunately, time equals money, and not all small business owners have the time to keep a close eye on all their social media platforms. Enter the social media manager: an expert in social marketing who can step in to free up your time and improve your social media strategy.

If you’re asking, “should I hire a social media manager,” we’ve pulled together some key considerations to help you decide.

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What Is a Social Media Manager?

Social media marketing is not as simple and intuitive as using social platforms for personal networking. However, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes. To excel at social media marketing, you need to understand the platforms and the algorithms, trends, audiences, and best practices involved.

Social media managers stay on top of this rapidly changing world while pulling in crucial skills, such as content writing and video creation, to keep audiences hooked. They also gather and report on essential metrics across your social platforms to inform and develop your marketing practices.

Add in a dash of content optimization, some campaign strategizing, and a lot of interacting with customers—and you’re beginning to get a picture of a social media manager’s wide-ranging skills. 

While your existing team may be able to cover a lot of these bases, having a single dedicated team member who can see the bigger picture, as well as the small details that make it up, can be a game-changer when it comes to saving time and centralizing your marketing efforts.

A Social Media Manager Can Reach Your Audience

Did you know that the average internet user interacts with 7.5 different social media platforms per month? But with more niche social networks and apps appearing every week, it can be hard to know which platforms your ideal audience is using.

By tracking the right social media metrics, your social media manager can build a unique picture of your ideal audience members and their online behaviors. It will help them to pinpoint which platforms will provide the best ROI and how your key audience members want to interact with those platforms.

It will inform a smart social marketing plan that meets your future customers where they are and gives them the content they crave, rather than taking shots in the dark and hoping to hit the right mark.

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A Social Media Manager Can Help You Strategize

While social media has the potential to reach more prospective leads than the rest of your marketing efforts combined, it should never be a stand-alone. With omnichannel marketing taking the eCommerce world by storm this year, it’s critical to integrate social media with the rest of your channels under a centralized digital ecommerce strategy.

It makes a social media manager’s role all the more critical as they can translate your overall business goals into measurable social media targets and report back on how well your marketing strategy is working in a social space. 

Likewise, they can use their expertise in paid advertising, content optimization, and branding within the social sphere to inform future marketing campaigns and goals across social media channels.

A Social Media Marketer Can Keep Ahead of The Trends

The world of social media is ever-evolving, with each of the main platforms evolving and competing to remain relevant. Without an expert at the helm, it is easy for businesses to get lost in the mix, still fighting yesterday’s battles while competitors move on to follow new social media trends.

It is just as much the case with the message as it is with the medium. Social posts need to hit the right mark every time, coming across as organic, spontaneous, and conversational. Even a small gaffe such as using outdated hashtags or overusing emojis, can make your messaging seem awkward and try-hard.

Your social media marketer can keep your tone of voice current while maintaining relevance with your social-savvy audience. 

They will also offer data-driven insights and competitor analysis to help you stay ahead of the trends, giving you a competitive edge and ensuring your campaigns stay fresh. Whether you need to get a voip number or invest more in video content, your social media manager can keep you in the know.

A Social Media Manager Understands Cross-Platform Marketing

Once you’ve settled on the right social platforms for your brand, it’s time to devise a strategy that uses them all to their strengths. While it can be tempting to create discrete social media content calendars for each platform, a smarter way to play it can be repurposing core content to fit the formats of each social space.

For example, a blog post on your main website can be broken down into a range of “top tips” graphic posts to brighten up your Instagram feed, while the same information could be in a quirky video for TikTok or Facebook Watch.

Each platform rewards different aspects of your business’s online behavior with greater visibility and the chance for higher engagement levels. That’s why your cross-platform content needs to be carefully repurposed, so it hits the right targets for each different social site.

Just as you can expect an IT expert to know the best office phones for small businesses, you can trust a social media expert to know which social platforms are best for your message, and how to leverage the quirks and qualities of each algorithm to get your content seen.

A Social Media Manager Can Make Your Brand Voice Shine

Writing social content requires top-level writing and communication skills and a nuanced understanding of your brand voice.

Social media posts need to be concise yet comprehensive, getting across critical information in a friendly yet authoritative way. Furthermore, this voice needs to remain consistent across your platforms, so that audience members feel like they’re interacting with the same entity, whether via email, Facebook, or live chat.

A social media manager will have the appropriate writing skills to make each post feel like part of a broader personality, gently guiding your audience toward the desired action. It can have benefits such as creating organic conversation around your posts and creating a trusting relationship with your future customers.

They also need to incorporate social media optimization into each post, crafting content that will chime with the platform’s algorithm and lend itself to better SEO results for your company. 

With so many elements needing to come together in every post, you can hardly leave it to chance. A professional social media writer is your best shot at capturing and maintaining your audience’s attention and trust.

A Social Media Manager Can Maximize Your Investment

As we said before, time equals money when you’re a small business owner. Running a professional social media presence can become a full-time job if it’s done correctly. Rather than dividing this role between your existing staff and imposing upon the time they need to fulfill their primary roles, you will benefit from hiring a new full-time team member.

The right social media manager can jet propel your content into the burgeoning world of social video, creating captivating content on a small budget with youtube royalty free music and a simple editing suite. 

Not only will your new social media manager save you time, but they can also use their expertise to increase your return on an initial investment in social media. For example, they will be able to optimize your paid Facebook ads to increase conversion and target your LinkedIn posts to reach the right industries.

This will open up whole new platforms to your message and increase the value of each repurposed piece of content. After all, 1 in 4 consumers watches at least one branded video monthly.

The truth is a poorly planned and sporadically implemented social strategy could well be wasting your marketing budget. By hiring someone to plan, create and post content to a rigorous schedule, as well as testing and reporting on what does and doesn’t work for your audience, you can ensure that you spend your budget as effectively as possible.

So, Should I Hire a Social Media Manager?

Social media marketing is a lot more than just posting links. It takes a nuanced understanding of the medium, the market, and the message you wish to convey. It also incorporates testing, reporting, and trend forecasting to ensure your social media efforts are working, as well as out-of-the-box strategizing within specific constraints.

Businesses of all sizes can jump ahead with their marketing goals if they’re willing to invest in an expert team member who can take the weight of social media off your shoulders and lift your social presence to new heights.

Social media marketing is no longer an aspect of your marketing strategy that you can afford to cut corners on, regardless of the size of your company. 64% of internet users typically find out about new brands via social channels, while 77% actively choose social media to find out information about brands and products. 

So perhaps the real question isn’t “should I hire a social media manager?” but “when can they start?”