Social media has become essential for companies to engage with their customers. Running your social media account can be daunting for a small business owner. Creating engaging and relevant content for your audience requires time and effort. Instead of spending hours creating content each week as part of digital management, you can hire a remote helper specializing in helping small businesses manage their social media accounts. At the same time, they focus on other aspects of the company, like sales or operations.
Digital Management: Deciding on Your Social Media Objectives
Before you start, take a step back and think about your brand. How do you want to be perceived? What are your business’s goals? What resources will be available to you to achieve these goals?
For example, if your objective is to increase sales, we can help with that. If it is to generate more leads through social media channels, we can help with that, too! Social media is not linear, so many approaches and tactics can be used depending on desired outcomes.
Digital Management: Scheduling and Posting Content to Social Media Accounts
Scheduling posts is an essential part of any social media manager’s workflow. To be successful, you need to schedule your content at the right time to reach your audience when they’re most likely to see it. For example, if you post at 3 am on Tuesday in the United States, chances are good that only other night owls will see it.
To Schedule Your Posts via Social Media Platforms and Apps:
Facebook:
Go to Settings > Scheduling (on desktop). On mobile devices, tap the three dots icon next to the Post button in the top right corner of a post and select Schedule > Schedule Now. Then, click on the date and time for each post. For more information about scheduling posts, visit Facebook’s help center.
Twitter:
Click Edit Tweet > Schedule Tweet (on desktop) or tap Scheduled Tweets (bottom right corner). You can also use Hootsuite or Buffer to manage multiple accounts from one app. Instagram: Tap More > Archive Photos & Videos > Tap Select Posts > Select A Date & Time
Responding to Comments, Questions, and Messages on Social Media
If you’re not responding to comments, questions, and messages on social media as soon as possible, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with your followers.
You may have heard the advice that you should not respond to trolls. This can be true in some circumstances, but if someone is kind and respectful in their comment or message, they deserve a response. The key here is being polite − don’t attack the person who left the comment by saying something like, “You idiot!” Reply: “Thanks for your feedback” or something similar.
Another common advice is not to respond too quickly after receiving interaction from one of your followers (or any other user), as this might seem desperate or needy. On the other hand, please don’t leave them hanging for days without replying! Try aiming for somewhere between 1 hour and 24 hours; this way, it won’t look like you were waiting around all day for them to interact with one of your posts!
When Responding via Social Media, There are also Several Things Not to Do:
- Do not respond with a generic response such as “Thanks so much!” or “I’m glad my post helped!” This makes it seem like no effort was put into answering them personally! Ensuring that every interaction has been answered individually (even briefly) is better.
Digital Management: Monitoring of Your Brand and Competitors
Monitoring your brand and competitors is vital to social media management. Social media managers must know what’s happening in their industry, as well as the social media activity of their competitors. The following are some of the tasks that a virtual assistant can help you with:
- Monitor your brand to identify trends and how to respond to them
- Also, to monitor your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
- Monitor your competitors’ social media strategies
- Plus, to monitor your competitors’ social media accounts
Creating Reports About Social Media Activity
You can also have your virtual assistant create reports on your social media activity. A report can include statistics giving the number of followers you have on each platform, the number of shares, likes, and comments for each post, how many times a particular hashtag was used in a month, and how many retweets or replies you have received from your posts, etc.
These reports will show you how much engagement each post has generated and which posts successfully solicited people to engage with them. This information will help you decide what types of content work best for your audience and whether any trends in their preferences would be worth paying attention to going forward.
Hire a Virtual Assistant to Manage Your Social Media
Whether you’re a one-person team or you have an in-house marketing team, a VA can help you manage your social media. They can schedule posts, respond to messages and comments, and maintain your accounts. You can even use them to research potential customers for future campaigns.
The Bottom Line: How a Social Manager Can Growth Hack Your Digital Management
A VA could be the right solution to help manage your social media account and digital management. They can help you with everything from creating content to responding to comments and questions on your channels. The key is finding someone who understands your brand and knows how to work with it — so make sure they can do more than post pictures of their dog!