Tag: social media

The road to social media nirvana need not be as hard going as you think. This simple 10 step process will help you build a killer social presence.

So, you’ve got a website and you’ve got content. Your social channels are primed and ready for action. What you now need is a killer formula for creating social media updates that help you achieve your key business objectives. But where do you start? Let me help you out with that:

Step 1. Know what you want to achieve

Before diving straight into posting your content on social media, think about your business objectives. What are you trying to achieve? All of your activity on social media should help you achieve your key business objectives. If it’s not doing that, what’s the point?

Step 2. Know your audience

Once you know what you want to achieve, you need to work out how to grow and leverage your audience to help you achieve your objectives. Build audience personas and get to know your core audience. Find out their desires and needs. Can you meet their needs whilst achieving your objectives?

Step 3. Test the water

Now that you know your audience, you can test the water. By now you should have a good idea of what to post, to where and for whom. Play with things like posting time and try different headline formats. Make sure you’re regularly collecting data!

Step 4. Measure your effectiveness

Now it’s time to put that data to work. With a few simple spreadsheet exercises, you should be able to work out which posts resonate most with your audience.

Step 5. Create your formula

Now you have the data to create killer social updates and know how best to use them, it’s time to codify that. Try to boil the process down to one simple sentence. Apply that simple process to all of your future social updates.

Step 6. Test your formula

Now it’s time to reap what you’ve sewn by putting your formula to work. Run it for a long period to build an even more comprehensive data set.

Step 7. Tweak it

You’ve been up and running for a while and you should still be collecting data. Use the steps above to further tweak your process.

Step 8. Run it

Now it’s time to get your game face on. This is where you go from beta to release. Your social updates should already be delivering real value. Collect the data that matters most in terms of your business objectives.

Step 9. Measure it

It’s measuring time again. You should by now have a comprehensive dataset that should show a direct impact on your business objectives.

Step 10. Repeat it

Over time, things change and you’ll need to make allowances for that. Build the time into your schedule to continually revisit this process and keep your social media updates optimised ad infinitum.

In conclusion

Now you should have everything you need to start building a process for creating social media updates that really impact your business objectives. If you’ve got this far but want help delivering something special to your social audience, get in touch.

Social media has been a thing for a decade and a half but brands still think it’s black magic. This post explains why it ain’t so and how bringing it in-house will pay dividends.

I think it’s safe to say that day-to-day social media management for most brands isn’t difficult these days. If you’re reading this, chances are that you found it on Facebook, X (Twitter) or some other social platform. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily make you a social media specialist but that’s okay. You don’t need to be.

Whatever the size of your business or budget, you can and should bring your day-to-day social media management in-house and here’s why:

Social media agencies are expensive

Expensive is an understatement. If you’re a large brand and you need 24/7 monitoring, you’ll probably be paying agency day rates that could be anywhere from £300 to upwards of £1,500 depending on the agency and level of service. That’s JUST for the day-to-day management of your social channels. Campaigns, design work, content… all of these things will be added on. You could build a kick-ass in-house team for that kind of money. Your already in-house marketing team would love having the extra budget to play with. Just imagine what they could do with all that extra money.

If you’re a smaller brand and you’ve only got a few thousand pounds a month (or less) to spend, you’re literally going to get a few minutes a day from an agency. Trust me, I know. I’ve worked across many accounts with budgets of varying sizes at various agencies. With the best will in the world, social media agencies with expensive overheads just can’t produce the kind of value you should expect for that kind of money. Again, a few thousand pounds a month will probably pay for an in-house social media executive.

If your budget is virtually non-existent, you can probably do everything you need to do yourself. You might not have much time but you’ll know that time equates to money and unless your day rate is higher than that of an agency, you’re throwing money away by employing one.

I don’t have time

Nobody has time to do their own marketing. I certainly don’t. However, I make sure I plan about half an hour into my day to get things done. You can even do it on your coffee break. If you don’t want to splurge out all your updates at once, there are tonnes of free tools for advance scheduling. For smaller businesses, I’d recommend Buffer for this. It’s free, easy and even allows you to track how well your posts are doing by tracking clicks on links. For larger businesses with bigger budgets, there’s a lot more available but if you hire an in-house social media manager, they will no doubt already know what the best tools and techniques are.

Doing it better

Let’s say you’ve already got an in-house social media team but you want to take your social media marketing to the next level. Perhaps you want to build your audience with high-quality followers and/or influencers. Maybe you want to drive sales for a product launch or want a campaign to drive engagement; that’s where agencies and consultants are useful. When you want to do something that’s outside of your ability or comfort zone, that’s when to get help. What social media agencies and consultants can offer is experience, specialist knowledge and resources above and beyond your own. That’s where the smart money is.

Getting started with social media management

I’m not just going to leave you dangling. If you’ve read all of the above and think it makes sense but don’t know how to get up and running, again, agencies or a consultant like myself can help you out by looking into what you want to achieve and making a plan to help you do it. Get in touch.

In conclusion

Day-to-day social media isn’t as hard as many agencies would like you to think but like anything, there may be aspects that you need help with. Stop wasting money on things you can do yourself and hire experts to do the experty stuff.

If you need help getting started, or want to run a kick-ass social campaign but don’t know how, get in touch and we’ll work out a plan of action that suits your budget and provides real business value. If you’re already farming your day-to-day stuff out to an agency, I can also help you transition to an in-house model. Doing it yourself doesn’t necessarily mean doing it alone.