We are living in a digital-led world. The new reality is that those businesses and brands who are reluctant to embrace being online are becoming left behind, or worse, forgotten.
Social media is the most widely used aspect of digital life and as of October 2023, more than 5.04 billion people worldwide have at least one social media account*. What’s more, the average social media user accesses 6.7 social media platforms on a monthly basis*.
These are your customers accessing social media, frequently.
This data tells us just how important social media marketing is today. But how we think about social media and its purpose has an impact on how you perceive its effectiveness and whether it’s a good investment for your business.
The value of social media to business
When done right, social media is an important part of your marketing mix to help achieve business goals. Some of the goals of a social media strategy can be to:
- attract your right fit customers and audience
- build brand awareness and affinity
- convert your audience into new leads
- drive website traffic and sales
- develop and nurture customer relationships
- provide customer service
- enhance business credibility and trust
When you build affinity with your audience, and enhance credibility and trust with your brand, you increase buyer intent.
Social media can be a powerful tool in your business. This is why we advocate for taking your social media marketing seriously as a platform to educate and engage your customers. How you manage your social media looks different for many businesses, depending on their resource capability.
The role of a social media manager
Social media managers are becoming a common role within marketing teams. For some businesses this role sits inhouse, as part of your internal marketing team. For other businesses, you may outsource this role to a marketing agency, a freelancer, or communications specialist.
But what does this position actually do, and can they really help to achieve business goals?
Put simply, a social media manager controls the online presence of a brand by managing all of the business’ social media accounts. They are responsible for crafting a social media strategy, developing and posting content, responding to comments and managing audience engagement, and managing the brand’s social media presence.
Benefits of hiring a social media manager
Building and maintaining a social media presence is not a strategy or task to be taken lightly. It takes time, requires a strategy that aligns to business mission and goals, and quality content that understands your customer, their needs and desires.
Engaging an experienced marketing or communication professional to manage your social media presence will relieve pressure from a resource constrained business owner or small team.
Hiring a social media manager will leverage your marketing effort and elevate your social media presence.
What a social media manager can do for your business
Enable strategy development
A social media manager can create a strategy that is designed in line with your overall brand position, mission and objectives. This forms the online tone of voice for a brand, which is used to create effective content that resonates with your customer and community.
Having an overarching social media strategy will improve your brand’s online presence, and align social media effort with broader business goals.
Produce quality, creative content
Content plays an important role in the marketing funnel. When content aligns with your brand’s purpose and community values, it can build affinity with your brand, increase your visibility, and feed into the multiple levels of your marketing funnel.
Crafting compelling and valuable content is the largest aspect to a social media manager role. When done effectively you are ensuring the right type of content goes out to the right audience on the right social platform. Through thoughtful and creative posts, brands can showcase their personality, provide valuable information, and drive audience engagement – and ultimately, action.
Community engagement and customer service
A brand may have a comprehensive social media strategy that targets the right audience with great content, but that’s only half the job done. To develop a deeper connection with your audience, you need to engage with them. Social media is social in nature. It therefore lends to your business engaging with your community online.
Social media is the number one choice for customer care. Every month, customers and businesses exchange 1 billion Facebook messages*.
76% of consumers notice and appreciate when businesses prioritise engaging with their audiences*.
A social media manager becomes the online spokesperson for a brand. By engaging with your customer directly, you will foster new relationships and create a sense of community that builds brand loyalty – your marketing gold.
Stay ahead of the curve
The digital landscape is constantly evolving. It’s near impossible to run a business, manage staff or a team, develop product, and stay across developments in the social media space. This isn’t the highest use of your time either.
Social media managers stay abreast of the latest trends and platform updates. This ensures your brand remains relevant and adapts its strategies to leverage emerging opportunities. Staying ahead of the curve allows your brand to maintain its competitive edge in a crowded online space.
It’s time to give social media managers a seat at the table
When you consider your social media as a key element of your marketing mix, it’s important to bring your social media manager in, to understand your business direction and goals.
A good social media manager will consider creative ways to align content with business goals. Content should no longer be viewed as a numbers game to simply feed the algorithm. It’s about delivering quality content that has meaning and value to your audience.
Social media managers know the ins and outs of social media – so you don’t have to. Different social platforms and those audiences have nuances that need to be factored into your content strategy.
With a seat at your table, your social media manager can leverage your marketing effort into consumable, creative content that engages your audience and motivates them to take an action with you.
Is it time you hired a social media manager?
If your time would be better spent on managing your business or team, rather than worrying about what to say on your next social media post, it’s time you hired a Social Media Manager.
At Sage PR & Marketing, we’re marketing communication specialists who use social media daily. We manage social media accounts for our clients either as a standalone service or as part of an integrated marketing and communication strategy.
Schedule a free discovery call with us now to find out how the Sage PR & Marketing team can take your social media to the next level and elevate your business.
Let’s create meaningful marketing, together.
* Data taken from Datareportal
* Data taken from Sprout Social
