One thing that I'm personally learning in my communication with my clients, is to be more precise when setting expectations.
If you are a business owner or if you are in marketing and you are responsible to communicate with agencies, this will really help you today. I realise that a lot of people don't understand the different stages that are a part of social media. A lot of businesses are not using the potential of what social media could offer in terms of income. I want to reference Facebook and Instagram today, because those are the most used social media platforms in our market.
I's very broad to say “Help us with social media” when you hire a company or contractor. It needs to be very very clear what exactly needs to be done and who does what.
Just to give you some examples, you have:
Social media you have management. This is the posting of content, creating the design of the content that needs to be posted and keeping the social media page active.
Social media marketing and advertising. This is usually not the same person. This is someone with training in buying and bidding on ads. This goes way beyond just pressing a button and sending your information blindly to over 3 billion people online. You need someone that knows how to target to your desired market and retarget based on engagement, then converting. This is how you get the most out of your budget. Technical training to work with the platforms is a MUST.
The tricky part that I encounter in my business is social media engagement and community management. This includes responding to messages, replying comments, monitoring that there are no people with negativity or unwanted links in your comments etc. Maybe your business has a Facebook group , the community manager would manage this as well. The community and engagement manager will help grow your following and interactions organically. This is a full-time job. Someone doing this task is typically someone in-house on your payroll. There will be a lot of people commenting to ask about prices, sizes, colours, options. For an agency it is impossible to be in your store or business 24/7. Or to know such product specific information.
I encounter that a lot of clients expect for the social media manager to be responsible for the engagement. That is simply something that needs to be paid extra for. Or, if you don’t yet have the budget, do it in-house. There are ways to outsource this if you have the budget. On your behalf, we will then follow other, comment on other people's pages, send messages etc…all that it takes to make new friends organically. This is a great addition to adding followers through ads. In this instance there is a setup fee to get to know the products and culture inside out, so that the followers feel like they are talking with you. With cheat sheets and a list of frequent questions, templates will be created so that we can respond and interact on your behalf. There will also be batch content creation days to create videos, stories and snapshots, which will be used later to look like it’s a spontaneous capture.
That is a full-time job, so you need to be clear to either have someone to take care of that in-house. Or have a budget ready to add that to the social media management package. It’s a completely different type of work and I want you to be prepared and knowing what it takes.
Don’t just spend money to get your social media active. DO something to engage with your new followers! That is how you get the most profit out of your marketing budget.
If you have a small budget, just hire someone for the social media management. You do the community management and engagement. Grow your social media followers organically. After some sales come in, then you spend money on ads with a specialist that knows how to do them. Lastly, when you have more budget available, you can outsource the community management and engagement as well.
At SHANNY SOMMER BRANDING we have packages available for the small business entrepreneur and we also have packages available for the multi-billion dollar car dealership. Wherever you are in your journey we would be happy to help you. If you need help figuring out the best next action step for you, I can help you by doing a one-on-one session. Book a free session with me. We'll brainstorm how you can monetise your social media and get more of what you want. click here: https://calendly.com/shannysommer/free20min