Four years ago, there were just 3 million active advertisers on Facebook.
As of 2017, more than 5 million brands were advertising on Facebook.
So far this year, another 1 million have entered the fray.
This clearly shows how important Facebook marketing has become for businesses today – not to mention all the other popular social networks that each boast millions (or billions) of users.
The job of the social media manager used to be mainly governed by interns or specialists, only requiring them to post organic content to gain any benefit from the various social media platforms. Today, however, you face a new social media landscape. Here are just a couple of major changes we saw this year:
Updates and changes within social media platforms are indeed abundant and quick.
Staying up to date on these changes requires a subject matter expert to keep a keen eye, to make sure that the brands they work for have continued success in social media platforms.
It’s great to have an existing employee who perhaps works on other tasks within the company, contributing to social media efforts.
However, you’re far better off hiring a social media manager to help manage, maintain, and execute social media campaigns and provide a better return on your spend and investment.
Here are the top five reasons why you need to have a social media manager.
1. The Social Landscape Is Always Changing
A social media manager can keep track of any algorithm changes and new trends within the platform, but also adapt your strategy and the content based on the latest updates.
A social media manager can take in what changes are either happening or soon to take place, and be agile, so can go back to the drawing board with their clients and change campaign objectives, and content to provide continued success with regards to their goals.
2. You Need a Social Media Strategy
An employee posting at random on your social media profiles, having no plan, will do a disservice to your brand.
If that’s your current state of being, I strongly advise that you go back to the drawing board to find out how you can either:
- Have an existing employee who is passionate about this space take over the social media efforts full time.
- Or reconsider if your brand is ready to be in this space.
Social media is not a set-it-and-forget-it tactic. In many ways, this approach can do greater harm than good.
Having a plan developed for social media requires the social media expert to come together with all other people executing other marketing campaigns (direct mail, email, paid search, TV, radio) on your brand’s behalf.
Doing so will prevent your efforts from being siloed and increase the synergy of all your marketing efforts – online and offline.
For example, if you’re planning on pushing out a direct mail piece, one that is more costly than perhaps paid search or email, your marketing team should think about how your direct mail piece can be partnered with emails and social media campaigns after its in-house date to magnify your message.
This will provide better leads, engagement, and results.
Your social media manager will be able to bake in their campaigns to all other campaigns you’re working on.
The social media manager will also be able to gauge what your primary goals are for the year and translate them into social media content and campaigns.
Speaking of content, a social media manager will not only put together the strategy, being mindful of other marketing efforts but will also develop a social media calendar which they should share with you monthly on what campaigns paid and organic they plan on executing on your behalf.
3. Protect Your Reputation & Help Your Customers
Social media manager(s) are constantly on high alert to each message, review, and comment happening within social media regarding a brand.
Not only do they have the right process in place with regards to triaging, but also they’re aware of how to conduct themselves within the platform, representing the brand.
Hiring an individual who has a great deal of experience in this area is huge, as within seconds a social media manager can help mitigate and solve an issue which would have otherwise turned into a disaster if a less-seasoned individual would have put in the role.
It’s vital that the social media manager develops not only the right voice and language of the brand within social media, but also work with other individuals within the business, like customer support and PR, so contingency plans are put in place, well before a social media crisis takes place.
The action of responding to a comment, whether it’s good or bad, should also be done within a certain timeframe. The sooner, the better.
Your brand can either help solve a problem for an existing or future customer or client, or make someone respect how your brand conducts itself on social media.
4. Perspective – Inside & Out
If you’re a brand that is debating on hiring in-house versus outsourcing to an agency, there are benefits to both.
Advantages of Hiring a Social Media Marketing Agency
- It might be more financially feasible.
- The social media manager may have fresh new ideas that you may have not have considered.
- The social media manager may not be jaded by the culture that comes with your brand and can bring in new innovative ideas that your executives may appreciate.
- They also most likely have an edge in working with similar brands within your specific agency, which also can help with best practices, what works in your particular industry and what doesn’t.
Advantages of Hiring an In-House Social Media Expert
Once trained, the in-house staff will:
- Know the intricacies of the company culture and what red tape is involved.
- Understand the brand boundaries when brainstorming campaign ideas.
5. Reporting & Tracking
Having a manager who is in charge of all your social media efforts can help you improve the existing campaign.
But a social media manager can also keep your brand agile – switching objectives, creatives, or content if your current efforts aren’t doing as well as they could be.
A social media manager will check their campaigns regularly – turning underperforming ads off and optimizing other campaigns to make sure you’re money is being well spent and your goals are being met.
A social media manager will look at campaigns over time and will know if a tactic is becoming fatigued or if the strategy should be adjusted.
This provides tremendous value at the end of the month reporting as they will provide documentation telling a story of:
- What was executed that month?
- How well it did compare to previous months.
- What should be done next?
Sometime campaigns will have a continuing success and can lead to other great ideas, which wouldn’t necessarily be the case if you didn’t have someone dedicated to these efforts around the clock.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you now can see that you’d be far better off hiring a social media manager than not.
Someone who can contribute 100 percent to your brand’s strategy and goals will yield a much better result than having an intern or low-level employee posting content at random on behalf of your brand.
Article by Victoria Edwards @tallchickvic
