Ever wonder why the people and companies that post most often on social platforms have so many more followers than others? Of course, they have quality content and seem to have social media marketing expertise, but many outsource this work. You probably already knew that the insanely popular fitness guru you’ve been following has their posts written and managed by someone or a team that knows what they are doing, but have you considered doing the same?
Social Platforms and Different Formats
Social media marketing is more than posting occasionally and reading user comments, and HootSuite explains that the first step is to pick social platforms that meet your company’s needs. You have to know your audience, which platforms they prefer and how they use them. It is essential to understand how platforms perform and which emerging ones will continue to grow. For example, while Facebook remains in the top position, relatively new ones like TikTok are significant players.
Social platforms also have newer formats that you will need to work into social media marketing strategies. Instagram Stories and Reels are big now, and their popularity shows just how important videos are for social media marketing. The field is fast evolving, and users want to watch video tutorials and clips in different lengths instead of looking at a few static photos.
Disappearing content formats, like Snapchat and Facebook Stories, are also wildly popular, as are live streams and closed community platforms. Platforms and formats have features that may or may not work for your business, so understanding how they all work, choosing the right ones, and knowing how to use them takes time. You also have to keep your strategies up-to-date, which means constant, time-consuming, consistent research and monitoring.
Posting on Social Platforms
If you are choosing the right social platforms to post on, the Connection Model shares some best practices that can provide some insight. As the industry leader, Facebook has 1.79 billion daily active users and is best for business-to-consumer brand awareness and advertising. Instagram, which primarily targets millennials, has 1 billion monthly active users. This post lists the other major players, users, audiences, and image sizes for photos and videos and information for posting other media.
Business News Daily describes some of the basics for posting on social platforms, but each has specific ways to go about it. With Pinterest, users save and share content through digital bulletin boards organized by category. Twitter is for short updates, with a maximum 240-word count per post. Platforms like Snapchat are mobile-only, and LinkedIn targets professional networkers.
Successful marketers design social media marketing strategies and incorporate them into overall marketing plans to get the most from social platforms. These include other digital marketing components like websites and traditional methods like paid magazine ads. Like your other marketing content, your social media should be high quality, informative, and entertaining. Social posts should be consistent, but you won’t want them to seem smothering to audiences; finding the right balance is vital.
Outsourcing Social Media Management
The time and expertise needed to run a lucrative social media marketing campaign can be overwhelming for many companies and difficult or impossible to manage in-house. Social media management requires much more than occasional postings; it becomes an ongoing responsibility after implementing the initial strategy. Outsourcing social media management is usual for small, medium, and large companies and frees up the time needed to run the rest of the operations.
Deciding to outsource your social media management requires careful consideration, and you can think about a few things as you make your decision. Search Engine Journal recommends asking yourself how much time you have to devote to a successful social media campaign. Remember, it is not a one-time, bi-annual, or quarterly task; it is every day.
Also, think about your social media skills. If you have a current campaign, are you seeing results? Is your brand voice established, and do you have user engagement? Not everyone is a social media butterfly. It is a learned skill, as is knowing how to manage the plan. You will need to think about the kind of content you want to share. Recycling information is unwise because audiences are tuned to that and will look elsewhere.
Saving Time and Money
A social media management provider can work with you to develop your content, choose the appropriate platforms and formats, post your messages and monitor them. From the start, they can identify any shortcomings and new opportunities in your current plan, offer platform-specific knowledge, and produce specific outcomes like more leads and growing your presence on chosen platforms. By managing your strategy, design, content, and community management, they can save you valuable time otherwise spent learning how to use platforms, create content, post and monitor.
If you don’t think you can afford to outsource, think again; there are many affordable options. Larger companies and corporations can use enterprise social media management, but it can be the costliest choice. Smaller agencies are less expensive and can provide more personalized experiences. You can choose contracts of different lengths, and you may have to pay more for social media tool subscriptions. The time you save from having to do all the work on your own will be well worth the investment of outsourcing your social media management to a professional.
Contact Wordsmyth Creative Content Marketing today for help with your social media needs.
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