I often get asked, can’t I be my own social media manager?

YES, OF COURSE!

I’ve seen small businesses run their own social media accounts successfully and creatively. The one thing to remember is that your business is you, you’re passionate about it, if it fails, it effects you the most. While a great social media manager still loves your business, they aren’t as invested in it as you are, meaning that they’re not there everyday with the ability to capture photos and videos for content, they’re not interacting with the staff and getting to know the ins and outs of daily life at your business.

So, welcome to my quick guide to get started managing your own social media marketing! By all means is this this thorough enough, but it will give you a sneak peek into what you can expect.

Steps to Run Your Own Social Media Management

1. Figure out what you want to accomplish from social media.

Why does your business want to get on social media? What are you hoping to get from it? Social media can be a farce to deal with, not only are there other businesses (the competition!) to contend with, but there’s also the friends and families of the people you’re trying to reach. With such a huge amount of noise, it can be hard to get your message through.

Come up with 2-3 goals for your business on social media. This can be anything from brand awareness, market research to driving sales and leads. Then make that goal measurable with a targeted date.

2. Know your ideal client/customer.

Marketing to everyone might sound like a good idea, but you’re spreading yourself thin and each client of yours interacts and uses social media differently from the others. You should technically have an ideal client persona already created from when you were putting together your overall marketing plan, but if you don’t, now’s the time to start.

Where and when does your client hang out online? Reddit? Facebook Groups? Instagram?

What are they doing on these channels and what kind of content are they consuming?

What are their pain points in relation to your services or products? How do you help solve them?

What challenges do they face on a consistent basis?

And then there’s the typical demographic questions: How old are they? What do they do for work? Do they live in the city, suburb or in a rural area? Are they married or single? What’s their income?

There’s obvs more to this, but answering the above questions is a good place to start.

3. Focus on 1-2 social media channels.

Just like you can’t market to everybody, you can’t be on every channel.

Can you imagine what your day would look like if you had to manage your accounts on each and every social media platform?

When would you have time to work on your business?

When would you have free time to spend with your fam jam and friends?

Find the top two popular channels used by your ideal client and concentrate on those. Get to know the best type of content that resonates with audiences on each channel, own your market on those channels, and then add another channel to your management roster (if applicable).

If you try to be everywhere, you’ll just end up overwhelmed and frustrated.

4. What’s your customer’s journey like?

Your customer sees your post, but then what? Do they click the link you included? Did that link go to your website or did it go somewhere else? If they land on your website, what URL are they being directed to, is there a call to action for them to take on that page?

A common struggle is: How can you sell to potential customers without being salesy? Subconsciously guide your prospective through the marketing funnel… Starting from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom, it’s okay if they take their sweet time along the way, some people take longer to convert than others! It’s critical to have content and calls to action that take them through your sales funnel, at each point, make sure you’re nurturing them, sharing your expertise and providing value.

5. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

It can be stressful when you’re getting started on social media marketing for your business. You’ve signed up for your accounts, optimized your profiles and are ready to post… But… What are you going to post about?

Pulling out a monthly to yearly calendar ahead of time helps with the content generating process, not sure where to start? Add to your calendar any special events, sales/promotions, seasonal changes, blog posts being published, videos being released, etc. and start from there. Create content around these indicated dates, for example:

Maybe you’re a Realtor and are having an open house next month, what content do you need to publish two weeks prior, a week prior, a day prior and the day of? If you have 15 minutes right now, go create that content, whether it’s a tweet, an Instagram image and/or a Facebook post and schedule it into your social media management tool (I recommend Buffer).

When you’re busy later, you’ll be thankful you took some of your free time to make sure your posts marketing the event are being sent out automatically… No more “Shit, I forgot to post about the open house today!”.

You’ll also want to figure out how much time you have to respond to notifications, engage with your audience. This should be done, at the very minimum, on a daily basis. I know you’re busy, so aiming for morning, afternoon and evening checks, again, at the very minimum, should be your goal.

6. Content, content, content… More content.

Unfortunately, the rumors are true (lol), to be great on social media, you need great content. And yes, great content takes time.

Content Curation

The good news is: You don’t necessarily have to create every piece of content you’re sharing. You can curate content that has to do with your industry and products or services you provide by sharing links to industry blogs, content from “thought leaders” in your industry, etc.

Figure out the percentage of content you’re going to collect and share, then figure out how much content you’re going to create and share.

Make content curation easier, check out this Marketing Beet video with helpful tips!

Re-purposing Content

You invested a lot of time writing a blog post, filming and editing a video, recording your podcast, etc., don’t just share it out once! When you share something on social media your entire following won’t see it. In fact, if you’re posting to your Facebook Business Page, organic reach is only 6.4% of your Page Likes! Boo, wtf!

But that’s why sharing your content more than once, and getting creative about the way you’re doing it is so important. For example, if you wrote a blog post, promote the post on social media multiple times, on different days and at different times, for as long as the blog post is relevant. And you don’t need to always share just the link, you can film a quick video or quick Instagram Story, change up the language of your caption to speak to your different target audiences, etc.

Basically, you spent the time to create content and you want to maximize its life span.

Watch this video for help with your content creation process.

 

7. Managing your social media following and community

Like I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to make sure you have time to check in on your accounts. At the very minimum, here’s what you should be doing on a regular basis:

• Look at your feed from the eyes of your audience
  • Make sure you remove any multiple posts that may have been published by accident (see my Edmonton social media marketing fail video for an example)
  • Update your social media headers/cover images on a regular basis (mix it up, keep it fresh!)
  • If you look at your published posts, are they on brand? Do you need to step it up in the future?
• Check each platform for mentions, replies or comments
  • Acknowledge and respond to any such engagements
  • Reach out to followers on Twitter, start a conversation, show them there’s a human behind your business account

8. Revisit, revise and keep going

How do you know if the energy and time you’re investing in managing your company’s social media is working? If you’re using a social media management tool, check the analytics and reporting at least once a month (or if you prefer, jump into the in-platform analytic tools).

Look for what content and type of content is performing the best, getting the most clicks, reaching the most people and driving engagement.

It’s important to remember that even though a post might have a zillion likes, it doesn’t mean anything unless you can attribute those likes to actual purchases or conversions.

By keeping an eye on your social media and website analytics, you can use the data to inform your strategy. Is what you’re doing currently effective or do you need to take a different approach?

Now what?

Those are just a few of the steps you’ll need to take when it comes to managing your company’s social media marketing.

If you need help and want some formal training where I take you through each step in depth, hit me up and let’s talk.

 

Related posts you’ll want to check out:

Getting Started on Social Media
How to Find Your Audience on Social Media
3 Ways to Increase Facebook Reach
Why Measuring Your Social Media ROI Is Critical
5 Must Haves for a Successful Content Marketing Strategy
How to Choose a Social Media Manager