In today’s interconnected world, social media has become an integral part of our personal and professional lives. With the increasing influence of social platforms, it’s essential to have a solid grasp of personal social media management. Whether you’re seeking to build your brand, a freelancer looking to expand your network, or someone simply wanting to curate your online presence, taking control of your digital footprint is paramount. In this blog, we will explore the importance of personal social media management, discuss effective strategies, and provide practical tips to help you navigate the dynamic realm of social media while presenting your authentic self to the digital world. Get ready to harness the power of social media and shape your online identity with confidence.
What is Social Media Management?
Social media management encompasses the art of crafting, scheduling, scrutinizing, and curating captivating content across diverse platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Its purpose extends beyond mere online presence; it intertwines with your social media marketing strategy to amplify your brand, enhance your online reputation, and foster meaningful engagement within your community.
In today’s marketing landscape, managing your social media channels is paramount, irrespective of whether your brand or business operates primarily digitally. The significance of social media presence and strategy rivals that of a physical storefront, where crafting an enticing window display beckons potential customers or networking at key events for B2B enterprises.
However, the task of social media management surpasses the simplistic notion of mere posting. Contrary to the stereotype that assigns this responsibility to interns or junior team members, handling a brand’s social media requires a nuanced understanding of human behavior, impeccable writing skills, analytical prowess, and remarkable organizational abilities.
Personal Social Media Management Use Cases
Social media management offers a host of practical use cases that can help organizations use social media platforms more effectively to achieve their business goals. Below are the most common use cases – and some of the reasons why your organization may want to implement social media management. It’s worth noting that each one of these use cases has its own set of objectives and KPIs.
1. Social media content strategy
Content plays a pivotal role in the marketing funnel, exerting a powerful influence on your brand’s objectives and target audience. When your content aligns harmoniously with these factors, it can strengthen your brand identity, enhance visibility (surpassing other tactics), and ultimately drive positive outcomes for your business.
In personal social media management, content marketing entails the creation of compelling and valuable content coupled with a well-defined distribution plan. This ensures the right content reaches the appropriate audience on the most relevant social platforms. By strategically aligning your content with the needs and preferences of your target audience, you can maximize engagement, foster brand loyalty, and achieve your desired impact on the bottom line.
2. Online reputation management
Your brand’s online reputation refers to the perception and discussions surrounding your brand, products, and services in the digital realm. Understanding the significance of your brand’s online reputation is crucial to comprehend its impact on your business.
Let’s begin by exploring the value of online reviews, as evidenced by the following statistics:
- 92.4% of consumers rely on online reviews to inform their purchasing decisions.
- 70% of consumers utilize rating filters to view businesses with four-star or higher exclusively.
- 74% of consumers indicate that reviews contribute to their trust in a company.
- Almost half of all internet users share online reviews every month.
Furthermore, customer experience plays a pivotal role in shaping your online reputation. A recent survey conducted by Statista revealed that 94% of respondents stated that a positive customer service experience increased their likelihood of making future purchases. In the same survey, 82% of customers were willing to recommend a company based on excellent customer service.
It is worth noting that consumers are more inclined to voice their grievances online rather than provide recommendations.
Living in an interconnected world means information can spread rapidly across the internet. Consequently, if a consumer has a negative experience with your brand, other consumers will likely become aware of it. Thus, effective management of your online reputation is paramount.
Online reputation management involves proactively monitoring and shaping the perception of your brand among consumers online and across various social channels. Therefore, online reputation management and personal social media management are intrinsically intertwined, as they work together to shape and maintain a positive image of your brand in the digital landscape.
3. PR and crisis management
As previously mentioned, the speed at which negative information can spread online underscores the importance of crisis management in social media management. Regardless of an organization’s size or industry, any business can face an online crisis that can cause long-term damage to its reputation and even result in financial losses.
Online crisis management involves proactively identifying and strategically handling crises to mitigate their impact on the brand’s image and overall business. This practice of continuously monitoring and analyzing social media channels and conversations to gauge sentiment, gather feedback, identify negative narratives in development, and effectively address customer concerns to de-escalate the situation.
By promptly and effectively managing crises in the digital sphere, organizations can minimize the potential fallout, preserve their brand’s reputation, and safeguard their business interests. The ability to navigate online crises adeptly is an integral component of successful social media management.
4. Online community management
According to a recent study by HubSpot, a staggering 90% of social media marketers believe that establishing an active online community is vital for a successful social media strategy. Online communities play a pivotal role in enabling brands to cultivate trust among their customers, and they serve as a cost-effective tool for generating leads and driving sales.
Social media community management entails the proactive engagement and nurturing of online communities closely associated with your brand or organization. This involves building meaningful relationships, fostering conversations, and providing support to your audience through various social media platforms.
Online community management and social media management are intricately intertwined, as social media platforms, particularly the larger ones, serve as the primary channels for interacting with consumers. By effectively managing and fostering online communities, brands can foster a sense of belonging, encourage brand advocacy, and leverage these communities as powerful assets to boost their overall social media strategy.
5. Paid social media strategy
Paid social entails leveraging advertising options on social media channels to accomplish specific marketing objectives. Social media advertising enables brands to reach broader audiences, target different demographics, enhance brand awareness, and amplify online visibility.
Paid social ads complement organic efforts such as social media posting and community engagement, allowing brands to maximize the impact of their social media presence. By combining paid social advertising with organic strategies, brands can effectively engage with their target audience, boost online visibility, and drive desired outcomes.
To optimize the effectiveness of social media advertising, brands that run ads on social media can greatly benefit from implementing social media management practices and utilizing paid social media analytics tools. These tools enable brands to monitor their campaigns, benchmark their efforts against industry standards, and measure their paid social initiatives’ return on investment (ROI). By leveraging these resources, brands can make data-driven decisions, refine their advertising strategies, and achieve greater success in their social media marketing endeavors.
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Key Roles and Responsibilities in Personal Social Media Management
Today’s social media world is highly diverse, and different roles in social media may perform completely different functions, each requiring a specific set of skills and knowledge.
Let’s review the top four focus areas in social media-related roles.
1. Content creation
Content creation takes various forms depending on the organization’s nature and goals. Different organizations may approach content creation differently to align with their specific needs. Here are a few examples:
Business with an In-House Content Manager:
Some businesses have dedicated in-house content managers who assess and plan the type of content the company should create, publish, and promote. These content managers collaborate with internal and external content writers, overseeing the content strategy and inbound and outbound communications. They play a key role in shaping the brand’s content identity and ensuring its effectiveness across social media and other channels.
Behind-the-Scenes Content Managers:
In many companies, content managers work behind the scenes, coordinating with internal and external content writers to craft compelling content. They oversee the content strategy, ensuring consistency and alignment with the brand’s objectives. While they may not appear directly in the company’s social media posts, their efforts are reflected in the published content.
Content Managers as the Face of the Company:
In some cases, content managers take on a more prominent role, serving as the face of the company. They frequently appear in the company’s social media posts, sharing insights and expertise and engaging with the audience. They act as brand ambassadors, representing the organization and establishing a personal connection with the target audience.
Specialized Content Creators:
Apart from content managers, organizations may have specialized content creators, such as content producers or brand ambassadors, who are heavily involved in crafting content for social media and other platforms. These individuals possess specific expertise and focused skills, enabling them to create content that resonates deeply with the target audience.
2. Community management
Community management is essential to social media management, requiring distinct focus and expertise. While community managers collaborate with other key stakeholders in social media, their responsibilities revolve around cultivating and nurturing an organization’s online community of followers.
Especially for larger brands, community managers play a vital role in handling questions, feedback, and interactions from the online audience. Their primary tasks involve moderating conversations, facilitating discussions, and enhancing the overall community surrounding the brand. They engage with community members through direct messages and comments on social media platforms and within internal communities, ensuring consistent representation of the brand’s voice and values.
At Brandwatch, we have established our own Brandwatch Community, which serves as a platform for industry professionals within the Brandwatch network to engage in discussions about social media intelligence. This community provides a space to share business cases, expand professional networks, learn from peers in the industry, and find inspiration.
Organizations can effectively manage and nurture their online communities by having dedicated community managers. These managers foster a sense of belonging, encourage meaningful interactions, and ensure that the brand’s community remains engaged, informed, and aligned with its goals. Community management is a crucial aspect of social media management that builds a loyal and enthusiastic community around the brand.
3. Social data analytics
Social data analytics has rapidly transitioned from a “nice-to-have” to a “need-to-have” function in social media management. As the volume of data escalates, companies seek to deepen their understanding of their industry landscape, emerging trends, competitors, and consumer behavior. In this pursuit, they prioritize crucial metrics such as sentiment analysis, brand awareness, and customer satisfaction, recognizing their significance over superficial social media metrics like likes, follower count, and impressions.
The increasing demand for data science skills among marketing and social media professionals is undeniable, with publications like Forbes asserting that “all marketers should be data scientists.” This shift reflects the recognition of the value that data-driven insights can bring to decision-making and strategy formulation.
Social data and insights specialists go beyond traditional social media management tools. They engage in listening and monitoring online conversations by harnessing the power of social listening solutions. These specialists employ advanced techniques to gather and analyze data, extracting meaningful insights from social media platforms and other relevant sources.
Social listening is pivotal in uncovering valuable information about consumer sentiments, market trends, and competitive intelligence. It enables businesses to comprehensively understand their target audience, identify emerging opportunities, and make data-informed decisions.
In summary, social data analytics and listening practices have become essential to effective social media management. By embracing these methodologies, businesses can harness the power of data to gain valuable insights, stay ahead of the curve, and make informed strategic decisions in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
Also read : Mastering Social Media Analytics: A Comprehensive Guide
4. Social media strategy
What does a manager of social media do? Social media managers focus on strategic planning. They aim to raise brand awareness, increase website traffic, and produce leads. Develop a brand’s social media plan.
Creating compelling campaigns is another duty of a social media manager. Smaller businesses often have social media managers that handle various tasks, from creating social media postings and reacting to online comments to managing paid campaigns and social ads.
Learn more about the common social media job titles and the responsibilities of those positions.
Also read : How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 9 Easy Steps
What does social media management look like in your day-to-day marketing?
Social media management is certainly not a one-size-fits-all job, and the responsibilities may vary depending on the specifics of the role.
A social media manager’s typical duties include the following:
We are creating a social media strategy.
Social media managers not only develop but often work on adjustments to their social media plans daily. That encompasses everything from defining goals, choosing the right social media platforms and tactics, and realigning social media campaigns and messaging.
Content creation.
In many organizations, social media marketers are solely responsible for writing copy, sourcing imagery, and filming videos. Often, they craft content on the go, facing tight deadlines, such as when covering live events.
I am finding the best times to post.
Engagement is one of the most important social media KPIs. And finding the best times to post to maximize brand engagement online is one of the top priorities for social media marketers.
Scheduling posts
Scheduling posts in advance gives social media managers more visibility into what’s going on across the brand’s social media channels, keeping the brand top of mind – and marketers organized.
Responding to comments and feedback
It is another important daily function of the social media manager. Audience engagement encourages relationships with consumers rather than leaving them disappointed. And actively engaging with your audience online can help your organization stand out.
Handling analytics and insights
It is an integral part of social media management. Reviewing the data allows marketers to make informed decisions regarding social media strategy and beyond.
Managing and maintaining influencer relationships:
Collaborating with social media influencers is a great way for brands to reach a new audience. Social media managers looking to get the most out of their influencer partnerships should nurture those relationships regularly, ensuring all social messages shared on behalf of the brand align with the brand values and target audience.
The specifics will vary depending on what the company wants from its social media presence and how many resources it has to dedicate. For example, an architecture company could have the following:
- A LinkedIn profile for their executives to talk about projects and innovations or to promote company culture for recruiting
- A Twitter account covering updates from their sites and sharing industry news
- An Instagram account to showcase imagery from their projects and inspiration
- A Facebook page to raise awareness and engage the communities
Also read : How To Become a Successful Social Media Influencer : Full Guide
What are the benefits of Personal social media management?
There are several reasons why brands should formalize how they manage their social media, from time-saving to getting messaging right. Below we’ll go through four of the big ones.
1. Boost brand awareness and visibility online
With effective social media management, your channels will often be updated regularly with new information. This implies that even if they don’t always interact with your postings, your followers will find it impossible to forget about you and will help keep your brand in their minds.
For those who are not followers, there are further advantages. We frequently Google a company when doing initial research on it. Along with ranking highly, their social pages are also likely to be visited frequently by many people seeking information about the brand.
Social media channels give you a chance to either reinforce the perception you give off with your homepage or let you focus on more specific areas (such as showing off what a great place your company is to work through Instagram posts).
Regularly updated social channels are also a good way to up your visibility and reassure your audience that you’re still up and running and reachable.
2. Proactively manage social media customer service
Users can easily get in touch with businesses on social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If these channels are active, you need to be on top of things, whether tagging the company’s handle with a complaint or following up on a delivery with a direct message.
If you receive a lot of messages, properly handling social media is crucial; interactions must be recorded, given to staff members, and followed up on. With planning, this can be done successfully, and attempting it runs the danger of upsetting others.
Monitoring and responding to untagged mentions of your brand on social media is another aspect of customer care.
Here’s an example: a potentially dissatisfied customer isn’t looking for a response from the brand; they are simply sharing general opinions or conclusive statements about your brand on social media. Keeping an eye on such conversations and jumping in where it makes sense may help brands shift consumer perceptions of the brand for the better, showing consumers that they care.
3. Discover valuable consumer insights in social data
Social media management is monitoring what material receives the most interaction, what people are saying about it, and what generates the most conversions, in addition to being aware of the customer support inquiries you receive.
This information is useful for knowing your target market and clients. Then, you can use this feedback in your social media plan to improve outcomes and adjust your strategy. To acquire even greater insights, employ social analytics tools or ensure you take notes as you go.
4. Schedule social media content
Although managing your social media accounts on the go is entirely possible, it is not recommended for businesses with several launches, initiatives, or campaigns.
By making a strategy in advance, you may collaborate with the appropriate coworkers to ensure social media advertising reaches the mark, that you are aware of the launch itself, and that you have time to devote to content creation beforehand.
How to get started with social media management?
Here are a few tips for personal social media management from the experts and some of our customers:
Pick your social media channels carefully and be realistic
Not every channel necessarily needs to feature your brand. For instance, a design business can use Instagram to let its work speak for itself rather than devoting time and resources to building a following on Facebook. Spend time, money, and resources on the channels that best serve your brand and concentrate your efforts there.
Use social media management tools.
Using social media management tools to schedule posts allows social media managers to work proactively rather than reactively. Tools that offer reports on how your brand is doing are particularly useful and provide accountability and prove return on investment (ROI). These are the top social media management tools we recommend looking at.
How to choose the right social media management tool?
Finding the tool to make your social media management efforts more efficient is the key.
Here are five things to consider when looking for a social media management tool:
- Define your needs: What are the top three-five functions you want to perform with the tool? Does the tool in question offer such capabilities?
- Ease of use: How much training will the new tool require?
- Integrations and compatibility: Check if the social media management tool integrates well with your company’s other platforms.
- Training and upskilling: Are learning resources readily available to help your team upskill?
- Customer support: Consider the level of customer support provided by the vendor. Is there a dedicated support team or channel where your team can get help promptly?
Social media analytics and reporting
You can’t measure the results of your work without looking at the performance of your paid and organic social media marketing initiatives. Here’s how to make sure data drive your social media campaigns:
- Set objectives and key KPIs to help you measure the success of your social media initiatives
- Monitor real-time data to understand how your social media initiatives are performing in real-time
- Analyze relevant metrics and set benchmarks
- Use dashboards to create engaging reports showcasing the data to the wider team
Get familiar with data and social listening
Managing your social media accounts involves knowing what your audience wants to see. This transforms it from a simple task to a vital brand perception and marketing component. Making an effective approach requires digging deeply into the popularity of your top pieces and what your audience is discussing.
Discovering valuable insights into social data
Social media and unprompted consumer opinions are a rich source of insights, but only if you know how to get to them.
What can social listening do for your brand? By listening to online conversations, you can:
- Understand consumer perceptions around your brand
- Learn more about consumer needs and preferences
- Identify key influencers and communities where your target audience is engaged
- Understand key industry trends and the competitive landscape
Don’t know where to get started? Brandwatch Consumer Research can help you understand the big picture.
Don’t burn yourself out creating content.
Creating social media content requires serious consideration. Often, social media managers have few resources, so user-generated content (UGC/Instagram pictures from customers or buzzing hashtags on Twitter) can be a win-win. UGC generates engagement and helps your brand appear authentic.
Conclusion
In conclusion, personal social media management is not just a choice but a necessity in today’s digital landscape. By actively managing and curating your online presence, you can shape your brand, build meaningful connections, and showcase your authentic self to the world. From setting clear goals and crafting engaging content to maintaining a consistent and positive online image, every action you take contributes to shaping your digital identity. Embrace the power of personal social media management and take control of your digital narrative. Remember, your online presence is an extension of yourself. Careful management can be a powerful tool to unlock new opportunities, connect with like-minded individuals, and make a lasting impact. So, start today, and let your social media journey begin.