Social media management: the perfect juggling act
Social media management is one of those jobs that ten years ago, you’d never heard of.
Growing up, I knew I loved videos and pictures. I loved getting my friends together and “creating content” in a sense. The difference was, this content was shared and viewed among VCRs and TV screens in our basements and not across a worldwide platform.
But here we are today, sharing our stories with the world, waiting on the edge of our seats to see the number of engagements our content gathers, and hoping for that viral content that explodes into audiences you didn’t even know existed.
Managing social media accounts will definitely keep you on your toes. This is the only marketing channel that allows you to interact with your customers in real time. So why not use that to your advantage? This is a 24/7 communication tool that you’ve got at your fingertips. Social media is also the fastest way to get a message to the largest audience for a very low cost, or sometimes even free!
Social media channels are always changing and morphing. Just as you think you’ve got the hang of it; another platform is launched, and everyone is talking about it! Quick, now you’ve got to learn a whole new algorithm, a whole new audience and a whole new social media language.
In today’s world, if you don’t have a strong social media strategy for your company, you’re missing out on prime real estate and a customer connection like none-other. Getting your footing in this world can be intimidating. What works for one company, may not work for you. It takes time and a lot of pivoting to find out what your audience really connects with. And you’re going to have a lot of questions along the way.
Question 1: How do I delete negative reviews and comments from my page?
This has to be the number one question I get asked when it comes to managing social pages.
Not every comment and review will be sunshine and rainbows. Your company is human, and yah, you’ll make mistakes along the way. But the biggest mistake in my opinion is deleting and removing these negative comments. Now, there is a time and place for removal, but I will get into that a little later.
Instead of removing these negative reviews and comments, you should be finding ways to resolve the issue. Publicly responding to these comments, in a kind and understanding way, shows other followers that your company cares. You’re not ignoring the comments, you’re addressing them.
This is why it’s important to have a designated social media manager who can respond to these comments in a timely manner. The longer the negative comment sits, the longer other audience members have a chance to jump in and join the negativity train.
Have a plan on how you’ll deal with these negative comments and reviews as well. How often will you be responding to comments? Will you send the reviews to upper management to review and respond? Will you be responding and forwarding to the appropriate departments yourself? Who needs to be involved? These are all great questions to ask before you put your social strategy in place.
Now, there is a time and place for removing certain comments. And you and your company will need to decide at what point this happens. Instead of actually deleting the comment, Facebook does give you an option to hide the comment instead.
Hiding a comment will remove the comment from the business page so that the general public and your followers no longer see it, but the original poster and their friend circle will still be able to view the post. This saves you from the original poster, repeatedly posting on your wall after seeing their comment was deleted. Deleting comments will only fire them up even more! Reply in a calm and understanding tone to the original comment, and if the customer continues to attack, hide the comment and move on.
Question 2: How do I know if I’m on the right platforms?
As I mentioned earlier, just when you think you’ve mastered a social platform, a new one comes along and rocks your world.
The main social platforms that have been strong and steady for the last few years are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Does your company need to be on all of these platforms to succeed? Absolutely not! Each one of these platforms has their own audience and their own language.
Let me break it down for you.
Facebook is all about connections. Its algorithm is always changing, but currently it looks for content that users are engaging with, by tagging friends in the comments, or sharing to their own personal pages. The Facebook audience enjoys high visual content such as pictures and videos, interacting with friends and family, and feeling as part of a community. Facebook is undoubtedly the largest social platform, giving your company the largest audience to market to in one stop. Because there is so much going on in the Facebook world, it’s important to keep your content short, sweet and entertaining. You want to catch the attention of your follower before the scroll right past you.
Instagram users are all about photos! That was until Instagram Stories were introduced in 2016. Stories started out slow but have taken over as of recently. I know many people who only view the Stories portion of Instagram now, and completely skip scrolling through their feed today.
Stories allow you to create instant content for your audience, such as behind the scenes footage, real time question and answers, polls and face to face interactions. This is a great platform for creative companies, or companies who have fun and interesting stories to tell.
Twitter was a monster that has slowly lost the social media race. That being said, Twitter is still a very large platform that has the ability to reach many users, if you know how to wrangle them.
Twitter is more of a “newsfeed” type platform. People will go to Twitter for up to date news on what’s happening in the world. Here they’ll find trending topics. If your company isn’t posting regular content that has to do with what’s happening in the world, Twitter will be a very difficult platform for you to live on. Once your Tweet is posted, it has a shelf life of about 4 seconds before another Tweet replaces it, so think fast!
YouTube
YouTube is the king of video! If your company wants to create a ton of video content or even a short mini-series, YouTube is the place for you. YouTube is also the second largest search engine in the world beyond Google. Many people come to YouTube looking for how-to videos, educational videos, or just plain entertainment.
The most difficult part of YouTube is targeting. If you want to target certain audiences with your content, you better stick to Facebook. YouTube videos will be pushed out how they see fit. That means someone in another country may be served your video. If you’re an online company who ships worldwide, maybe you’re okay with that!
LinkedIn is the business mogul of social platforms. Wanting to boost your business' reputation, find new talent, or connect with others in your industry? Then LinkedIn is the place for you. The majority of your audience here will be like-minded professionals, so your content here will need to be relatable to them or encourage discussions amongst this group of people.
My best advice would be to start on one or two of these platforms and really master them before diving into something new.
Question 3: What kind of content should I be posting?
This is the ultimate question isn’t it? What is your audience going to connect with? What is going to get them talking? To answer this question, you’ll have to just go out there and wing it!
Another thing to think about before you start creating content, is what is your end goal? Are you looking for leads? Brand awareness? Are you wanting to drive people to your website? Keep your messaging simple and to the point, with your end goal in mind. Don’t try to cram all your messages into one post and hope for the best. Follow the K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) rule, and you’ll be just fine.
As you post, keep an eye on your insights. This will give you all the information you need. The top insights you’ll want to look at, are your engagements and your reach.
Engagements are how your audience is interacting with the content. Likes, shares, clicks, comments, etc. If people are stopping to dig into your content, this is a great sign that this type of content is working. If engagement rates are low, maybe it’s time to pivot and trying something else.
Reach is how many people have been served your content. If you take your post reach and divide it by the number of engagements it received, this will give you an engagement rate. Anything above 3% is considered good content, so shoot for this or higher when posting.
With that being said, if you’re looking for an easy win, it wouldn’t hurt to give video a try.
Video gives you the power to grab the attention of the viewer quickly. It also allows you to condense information down into an easily digestible “story” for your viewers to see.
It’s also said that social media posts with video have 48% more views. So why not give it a shot?
Question 4: How often should I be posting?
There’s no right or wrong answer to this question either. There is a sweet spot that you’ll have to learn with your specific audience. Posting once a day might make sense for your company if you have a lot of content to push out. If you are struggling with what to post, remember that quality over quantity always wins.
You don’t want to over saturate the market with the same content over and over. This will leave a bad taste in your audience’s mouth and cause them to start hiding your posts, leaving nasty comments or removing themselves from following your page all together.
Play it by ear. Post at a minimum weekly and at a maximum daily. If you find that you can do more and are still getting good engagement, awesome! If three times a week doesn’t seem to be making any difference in your engagement rates, then you can either slow down, or go back to question 3 and re-evaluate your content. Why isn’t it working?
Question 5: Who should have access to these social channels?
It’s important to limit the amount of people who have access to the backend of these social channels. Having too many cooks in the kitchen is a recipe for disaster.
This will be another important step in building your social media strategy. Delegate your roles clearly to anyone who will be involved in posting and responding on social media. You don’t want someone replying to comments, if they haven’t been properly trained in how your business wants to approach these comments.
Facebook’s “Page Roles” setting in Facebook Business manager, allows you to limit the amount of access certain people have. Everyone who works on your page can have a different role, depending on their job, while you maintain control over just how much freedom others have to act on behalf of your business.
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