You probably already have an idea of which marketing channels get you the most bang for your buck. You may even have tried some of them, but there seems to be a slight problem—you’re not getting the expected results. Perhaps, you’re not spending enough? Or maybe you’re using the wrong platform? Maybe you’re getting nothing out of your social media marketing efforts because you don’t have the right person/company for the job?
Not all people who manage social media accounts are experts in social media marketing. This means that simply hiring someone to manage and run your social media accounts will not get you the results you expect from your marketing campaigns. Instead, you need to hire the right person, the person with the skillset, knowledge and experience required to get the most out of your social media marketing campaigns.
Why Hiring a Social Media Expert Makes Sense?
No business can grow without marketing and a marketing channel that has the edge over all others is social media. For this reason, hiring a social media expert for your business is crucial. When I say hire a social media expert, I do not mean that you go out and recruit the first person who claims to be an ‘expert’ in social media. What I mean instead is that you should allocate some of your resources to hire someone who has proven themselves in the field of social media marketing. It could be a person or a company.
You can choose to manage your social media accounts on your own. However, in all honesty, this wouldn’t get you anywhere. Half of the time, you’ll be thinking about how to increase engagement on your pages and other half would be spent cleaning the ‘mess’ you’ve made. Therefore, you’re best advised to leave the job to the professionals.
What Makes a Social Media Expert?
So, how do you find the right social media expert? What makes a great social media manager? What is that makes them effective? And what are the practices that make them great at what they do?
There was a time when marketers learned to use social media in-between their job functions. They would read books or online articles on social media marketing, attend seminars about it, or simply ask colleagues for advice. That no longer works! Today, social media managers are required to fulfil a variety of responsibilities and they must have the expertise to perform them. These responsibilities include (but are not limited to):
- Curating content
- Scheduling posts
- Managing a publishing calendar
- Engaging with customers and partners
- Experimenting to optimize social media posts
- Listening to networks for brand mentions and keywords
- Checking in with the rest of the company for announcements to publish
- Following up on projects with connections
- Reviewing analytics and determining future steps
Teaching someone to be a social media manager isn’t enough for them to be effective at their job. In addition to the required skillset, they must have the mental capacity to work through problems. Is everyone who can put together two sentences an accomplished writer? Of course not! And, this same rule can be applied to people managing social media accounts.
So, how can one develop the mental capacity required for managing social media and become an effective social media manager? I go back to the responsibilities of a social media manager as they are key to becoming an expert at the job. Following are some of the habits that make a social media expert.
They Have Go-to Sources to Curate Content
Though it is a time-consuming task, curation is one of the cornerstones of social media marketing and thus, crucial. A social media expert is always on the hunt for great content that would interest their followers and knows exactly where to find it. They don’t spend hours searching for the content because they know where it lives. Moreover, to avoid spending most of their day curating content, they dedicate a specific time of the day to the activity, such as the first two hours of their work day. Once the clock strikes 11 a.m., they move swiftly onto another responsibility.
They’re Always Thinking of Ideas
A common problem in social media marketing is running out of things to post about. This is the reason an effective social media manager is always in ideation mode. They are always thinking of ideas whether they are walking in the park, window shopping in the mall, or buying grocery from their local retailer.
They try to make connections between things that they noticed during the different time periods and this collective thought is what helps them to post new ideas and large volume of engaging content on social media each day.
They Focus on Building Relationships
A primary quality of social media experts is that they focus on building relationships. Interacting with a wide range of people and building relationships is crucial to the success of any business. For this reason, it is imperative that the people managing a business’ social media accounts treat relationships on social platforms as crucial to the growth of the business.
In addition to social listening and engaging, effective social media managers network and build relationships on social media. They focus on giving—helping and serving—rather than trying to make a quick buck off their audience.
They Document Your Processes
Perhaps the greatest quality of a social media expert is that they document your processes. Before they start marketing for you, the experts will document your existing process of curation, creation and publishing including:
- What processes you use to curate content
- How you come with a headline
- What type of image you use
- What tool you use to schedule the content to be published
- What reports you pull
- How you analyze the data
Only after answering the above questions, the social media experts think about their own processes and what they will do to achieve the set objectives.
If you notice the above qualities in the person/company managing your social media accounts, then you’re on the right track. If not, try and find someone who fits the bill.
by Bobby J Davidson
I love our companies and we love what we do. For more information on the Davidson Family of Companies, visit www.bobbydavidson.com/about. Sign up for my Newsletter at the bottom of this page.