Social Media Management (SMM) is not about posting posts on any of social platforms. It focuses on people engagement, through which you can generate your followers. It not only ensures the support for your social image (personal or professional). Also, helps in marketing your product or service (individual or organization), ensuring that no customer is left behind.
Social media management is the ongoing process of creating and scheduling content designed to grow and nurture an audience across social media platforms. The benefits of social media management go far beyond raising brand awareness and staying current on the latest internet trends. The channel is key to building more personal connections with target audiences at scale.
Platforms and trends are constantly changing, meaning the responsibilities that go into managing a brand account are always changing as well.
A social media manager is a marketer who creates and schedules content, engages with followers, monitors social media trends, and reports on account performance.
As a social media manager, you’re responsible for sharing messaging on behalf of a company or public figure and responding to public and private engagement. That means you have to know how to communicate clearly both visually and in writing.
Social media engagement can be in terms of posting photos, opinions, events, creating online groups of like-minded people, posting the need (e.g. job, work-related), provoking the target audience, tapping future customers, using advertisement campaigns, sharing articles, discussion over a particular blog post and many more.
A focused approach and planned strategy are required, to handle and manage the SMM, as it is your tool, with wide reach and minimal cost.
1. Purpose: It’s not required to have your presence on an ever-possible online social platform. Choose social media platforms, more wisely. Be clear about the purpose of joining. E.g. If anyone wants to use it for marketing the product, he or she should find the platforms, which are used by their target customer and their friends and relatives.
2. Appropriate content for the appropriate platform: Your content must be suitable for the platform. You should not share a post with professional language, on the platform which is surrounded by your family members and vice versa.
3. Visual Contents: One picture is equal to 1000 words. Images are always better to catch the attention. Especially in women-centered or child-centered businesses, visuals are much more important. Platforms like Pinterest and Instagram demand original and high-resolution images, continuously. It dramatically increases the chances of engagement. While posting images, never compromise on the size of the image. Check the required permissions or use royalty-free images.
4. Natural language: Excellent writing skills are not required. Use the simple language, with the command over the language. Used words must be known to maximum audiences. Avoid simple mistakes, like misspellings. If your audience is not able to understand, then you will not able to engage them. Make sure you are sharing value-oriented content, each time and every time.
5. SEO & Content: Basic knowledge about Social Media Optimization, is all-time beneficial, to reach the target. If your contents/blog/article, do not appear in the search results, then what's the use? One has to work on SEO and content, consistently.
6. SMM Tools: Some of the major tasks involved in SMM are creating posts, scheduling the content, creating polls, engaging with followers, reposting content, commenting on the content, sharing others' content, community management and the list is nonending…
These tools, considerably, save your time and some are free, too ..
7. Be Consistent Many people always complain about no or less response from online media, compared to the time and the cost consumed. Main reason is lack of consistency. Your presence must be consistent, creative. Your approach, your interactions should be in synchronization. Your social and desired identity must go hand in hand. Reply to the queries. Interact with your followers. Provoke them to read out your content.
8. Be honest: A lot of businesses try to present themselves as big corporations, which is a mistake. This may result in identity conflicts and a lot of time is required to spend, in order to resolve the unnecessary conflicts.
People need people. And that's why you need to connect with them. Add a personal layer of communication, while interacting with them.
Every business (Small or Big) needs SMM. It’s not a matter of choice. But, it's about the existence. . The importance of social media management, in business, can only be understood, once you start applying what we discussed.
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