More than 4.26 billion people worldwide were active social media users in 2021, with projections that the number could rise to six billion by early 2027. That’s why a significant chunk of your marketing budget and strategies have to focus on social media marketing. But because social media is a ready market that’s up for anyone’s taking, the competition is extremely tough both from local and international competitors. You can’t just post content online and hope for someone to stumble upon it. You need a firm social media management strategy in order to maximize your social media reach, appeal, engagement, and conversions.

Social media management involves 8 fundamental processes:

• Research your target audience.
• Developing a social media strategy.
• Designing your social media brand.
• Creating content.
• Determining when and where to publish the content.
• Engaging potential clients.
• Monitoring content performance.
• Tracking competitors

When handled by a professional social media management team, each process will greatly improve your overall marketing plan. Here is how:

1.  Researching your target audience

Defining and understanding your social media target audience stops you from throwing content at all social media users and hoping that someone gets interested. Target audience research:

• Tells you the exact demographic you need to appeal to in terms of age, job title, location, spending power, spending patterns, education, and shopping behavior.
• Tells you what content your audience will naturally relate to and what tone or voice you need to use. Speaking the same language as your audience increases your brand’s chances of catching the attention of high-value potential customers.
• Looks into your social media current numbers and ongoing marketing campaigns to understand the existing audience’s pain points.
• Surveys your existing customers to help you figure out your brand’s buyer persona.

2.  Developing a social media strategy

The most significant benefit of a good social media marketing strategy is that it helps you build consistency. It maps out a road for your social media marketing journey so you don’t go off the rails down the road. In that regard, a social media management team will help you strategize around the following:

• An outline of the content you will be posting.
• The social media platforms you’ll prioritize.  
• The role of your social media team, if any. It helps you set expectations and get everyone aligned with the bigger picture.
• The goals and KPIs for each social media campaign. Examples of social media marketing goals include increasing brand awareness, launching a product, promoting an event, or rebranding.
• The place of social media in your overall digital marketing master plan.
• Your social content guidelines and creative plans.
• Brand’s voice and positioning.
• The profile of social media influencers you may want to work with.

3.  Designing your social media brand

This builds brand recognition, image, and reputation. It makes it easy for potential customers to discover, relate, and associate with your brand. It also helps you make a great first impression upon which you can then build a robust social media presence.

Furthermore, proper social media management helps you:

• Design a profile picture, cover photo, logo, and other visual elements that make your social media brand unique and relatable to the target audience.
• Align your profile with ongoing trends, both visually and contextually. For example, you may want to display a pride flag during the pride month or add a Christmas theme around December.
• Align each of your social media posts with your overall brand messaging. This helps you build a strong connection with your audience.
• Get creative around your social profiles. You can bring creative professionals on board to help you elevate your design in terms of image sizing, contrast, visual weight, color, space, texture, and other visual elements.
• Build consistency and cohesion, especially with regard to brand colors and logos across the social media spectrum. Using the same colors and logo for all your social media profiles helps you build trust and loyalty with your audience.
• Use colors to mirror your brand identity for a strong reception and positive perception.
• Share honest and descriptive customer testimonials to personify your brand and make it more authentic.

4.  Creating content

You don’t want to suffocate your audience with content they don’t need or can’t use. You want to develop content that provides value to the target audience, keeps them engaged, and convinces them to buy from you. A good social media manager will help you:

• Create educational content that addresses your customers’ pain points.
• Create downloadable and shareable content e.g. infographics, charts, ebooks, and videos that are both entertaining and beneficial.
• Create messages that are short, clear, straightforward, and that hit the key points right from the outset. That boosts your likes and comments.
• Take and edit authentic videos/photos that explain your brand story. That eliminates the need for you to use stock photos in your social media posts. Stock photos have been proven to be ineffective for social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

• Spark up your campaign with relatable, shareable stories & reels on Instagram and Facebook.
• Research the right hashtags to use in order to expose your content to a much wider audience.
• Encourage and manage user-generated content as per your goals and theme.
• Manage social media influencers and the content they post. Social media influencing is a sure way to spark more engagement.

5.  Determining when and where to post the content

There are too many social media platforms these days, each with unique rules of engagement. It is almost impossible to effectively campaign on every single one of them. Besides, campaigning on all available networks simultaneously has never been proven to be effective. What you need to do is use your understanding of your target audience to determine the channels you’ll prioritize. A social media management team will help you not only determine where to post but also when to post.

Knowing where and when your audience is most active isn’t straightforward because every demographic has its unique characteristics. For example:

• As of April 2021, youthful users between 25-34 years made up about 38.5 percent of worldwide Twitter users. This age group also constituted the biggest demographic group on Facebook as of January 2022.
• Twitter users aged 50 or above accounted for only about 17 percent.
• If you’re targeting teenagers and users in their early 20s, Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram are the top 3 influential advertising channels for this demographic.
• According to a 2022 survey published by Statista, About 45.5% of social media users in Southeast Asia log into social media past eight in the evening. Less than 7% log in early in the morning.

These are just a few stats to show you how much research goes into finding the most appropriate platform and time to post your content. There are just too many permutations and combinations in terms of age, gender, location, and social status that you must put into consideration. This sounds like a job you should leave to social media management experts.

6.  Engaging clients

The primary role of social media is to facilitate social networking. Posting funny videos and using trendy hashtags won’t do much for you if you don’t interact with the crowd that those efforts bring. Users want to have a conversation with your brand. They want you to listen, respond, and act accordingly. They feel heard, valued, and appreciated when you interact with them, and that drives customer loyalty. Social media managers engage your followers on your behalf so that you can focus better on the core functions of your business.

7.  Monitoring content performance

The more marketing campaigns you launch on social media, the more insights you need to track. You need to know how effective a campaign is so that you don’t waste your money and time on futile campaigns or continue underfunding promising campaigns. A social media manager will track insights such as how much traffic campaign X on platform Y drives to your website or blog. They may use insights such as Instagram’s Account Insights or Facebook’s Page Insights to tell you how many new followers or how much engagement each post gets over a given period of time.

8.  Competitor research

You cannot go in blind and expect to have an edge over social media competitors. You need to understand who and what you are up against. A professional social media manager will conduct thorough competitor research and tell you, among other things:

The biggest social media brands in your niche.

• The kind of voice these brands use.
• What makes them stand out?
• The visual strategies they’re using and how consumers are responding.
• Are there loopholes in their social media marketing strategy that you can exploit?  
• Who are they appealing to the most? What’s the general persona of social media users who respond to their posts?
• How do the big brands respond to and interact with different users?
• What social networks do they prioritize?
• Which hashtags or keywords do they use?

These insights will help you create an edge over the competition.

Final thought

There’s no denying that social media marketing is among the most powerful tools for driving customer reach, online traffic, conversions, brand awareness, and profitability. The good thing is that with proper social media management and a little creativity, leveraging social media doesn’t have to be overwhelming.