7 Reason’s Why You Should Hire a Social Media Manager

It is no longer possible for small companies to avoid social media. Yet so many have still not embraced or truly seen the benefits of social media marketing.

Chances are you are a small start-up or SME business owner with a considerable amount of responsibility. This means posting photos on Instagram and writing tweets cannot take precedence over other more functional and important business operations. However, done right social media has the ability to super charge brand awareness, increase conversions, reduce marketing expense and allow you to hire more staff to grow your business.

When looking to build your online presence it is always beneficial to start by hiring a social media manager (freelance or in-house).

Having a social media marketer as a team member can enhance your company operations in several ways. It is definitely worth the short-term expense vs the long-term benefits.

A professional managing your social media

Although it is good to have an employee contributing to your social media efforts, it is more beneficial to recruit a social media expert to manage these projects. Opposed to posting randomly, these individuals can design a strategic plan to assist your company to obtain the most out of your social media presence.

The time you spend posting on social media sites could be wasted if you or your employees have no marketing experience.

By recruiting an expert, you can be confident of the time and resources being spent in this area. At the time of your introductory meeting ask them to provide you with a roadmap to social media success and how they would go about designing and implementing a social media plan.

As a professional social media marketer, they should be aware of the type of content that functions best and how often to post on individual platforms. This exercise will enable you to decide if the candidate understands your business and how social media can assist in increasing sales and elevating customer services, alongside many other goals.

Have time to focus on other initiatives

If you or your team have social media tasks on your to do list, it can be a massive relief to delegate this role to a professional. It may have been that other aspects of the business have had to go on the back burner, because you have been trying to build up your social media presence.

By employing a social media manager, you will have more time to focus on new projects, while the social media manager continues the work for you.

Consistent social content

There is nothing more shocking than searching for a business on social media only to discover that their page has not been updated in months, sometimes years.

A social media manager will ensure this is a top priority and aim to post frequently on each channel, opposed to just posting the same message on each individual profile.

Posting continuously will assist in building your social media following. If you are struggling to attract new followers, or you aren’t gaining many click throughs, consistent and optimised posting will change this.

For example, Facebook users who post regularly and then decrease how often they post, will see their traffic fall by as much as 50%. This is why it’s crucial to stay consistent when it comes to social media.

Additionally, by continually posting social content you will also have another means of driving traffic to your company website.

Your social media manager will create interest in your social networks by sharing unique offers, blog posts and a variety of links that lead followers back to your website.

Social posts are just another way of advertising your brand and your service/product offering.  It is single handily the largest and cheapest form of marketing your business can undertake.

Someone to respond to social messages

It can be challenging responding to customers on social media, in addition to other channels like customer relationship management (CRM) programmes, voicemails and emails (to mention just a few). A social media manager will be responsible for responding and dealing with all social media messages.

This means that there is no risk of customers being ignored or waiting too long for a response. Several company owners are unaware that social media is not just for advertising products and services, it is a customer management tool too.

Furthermore, you may not realise it, but a growing number of customers expect that your company will provide customer services through mediums, such as Facebook or Twitter.

According to Convince & Convert, only 23% of businesses actually deliver this, the same goes for Twitter with 70% of customer service complaints being ignored by companies.

If you do not address feedback on social media and choose to ignore it, you may lose customers. According to Forbes, 66% of buyers stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service on social media.

An oversight on your customer service efforts could threaten customer retention and decrease the opportunity of obtaining new clientele across this medium. This is the reason why social media managers communicate daily with customers. This will ensure a rise in customer satisfaction. By using social media for customer services, you are able to respond rapidly to customers, as well as provide ideal PR opportunities.

If your company is committed to promptly acknowledging customers questions and concerns, they will be aware that you value each one of them individually. They will also welcome the fact, that you are not just using social media to promote products and services, you are also utilising it to form relationships.

Boost brand engagement

If you are not using social media to it’s greatest potential in respect to branding, a social media manager can really benefit you. Recruiting a social media manager, who is creative and can bring innovative ideas to the table can be extremely valuable.

They will ensure your company brand is clearly and consistently presented on each social media channel. This can be achieved by sharing customer testimonials, promoting business culture, or by simply reviewing your business brand and positioning.

Consider, how you want to represent your company on social media, and what you would like potential clients to see when they visit your profiles. It is essential that they are able to get clear insight into what your company does, and how it stands above it’s competitors.

Your social media platforms are an ideal place to clarify your brand. Try to ensure that this is a project your social media manager concentrates on.

An avenue to generate new customers

A social media manager will be aware of how to post your company’s latest offers on social media, through both organic and paid efforts. Over social media you can connect with new customers, and now you will have someone who will fully concentrate on this initiative.

As previously mentioned, social media is a practicable way to master customer service and branding. However, remember, you should always be seeking to obtain new clients through all your marketing endeavours.

How your social media manager carries this out will be dependant on the type of company you own and the industry you operate in.

For instance, if you own a restaurant your social media manager should be promoting images of restaurant food and ambiance. In contrast, a business in the service industry would benefit from sharing customer testimonials and informative blogs.

Undoubtably, as with any marketing ideas, the social media manager will trial a variety of sales tactics to see what works. This means they should be reporting regularly and be able to quantify their social media marketing efforts.

Recruit new employees

Encourage your social media manager to team up with human resources and begin posting job vacancies on social media. Obviously, LinkedIn is the key place to do this. However, you can also share job vacancies on other channels, such as Facebook.

To target job seekers, share links on Twitter with accompanying hashtags.

More importantly, do not forget about Facebook, the social network with the most active users. Your social media manager can operate this platform and discover groups that apply. By inspiring your new manager to use this social platform, you will have different areas to post job vacancies and human resources will value the additional help.

Convinced?

Recruiting a social media manager will contribute to the long term success for your company. Having an expert in this field will improve your social media presence, enhance customer service, branding and increase sales.

Get in touch with us today and find out about our social media management packages.