Explore the ins and outs of social media management with this complete guide. We unpack the key components of social media management and what’s critical to make sure your brand stays relevant.
Social media management is a catalyst for positive business impact. A strong social media presence amplifies a brand’s awareness, supports customer care and extends reach to new audiences. Effective influencer collaborations can create lasting audience connections. Well-timed creative visuals and copy can change how consumers perceive an organization.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched businesses like Duolingo and Patagonia earn new fans—and customers—from their innovative brand accounts. Their success is part of a carefully crafted approach to building and maintaining a social media marketing strategy.
In this guide, we’re breaking down all the moving parts that go into making social strategies run smoothly. Use these social media management fundamentals to inform your company’s processes, so you can build a follow-worthy presence across the platforms that matter most.
Social media has become an indispensable marketing and brand awareness tool for businesses and organizations of all sizes. However, without a clear strategy, it can quickly become overwhelming to manage multiple accounts across different platforms consistently and effectively.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore proven tips and best practices for successfully managing your social media presence, building engagement, and transforming channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter into powerful assets.
Crafting Your Social Media Strategy
Before diving into posting and community management it’s crucial to step back and create a high-level social media strategy. Here are key elements to define
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Goals – What does success look like? Goals could include driving brand awareness, generating leads, boosting sales, improving customer service etc.
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Target audience – Get clear on who your ideal customers are and what motivates them to follow brands online. Create focused buyer personas.
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Platforms – Which social networks align best with your audience, goals and resources? Don’t spread yourself too thin.
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Content mix – Brainstorm the types of content you’ll share across platforms to attract and engage your audience.
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Brand voice – What is the tone and style that will allow your brand’s personality to shine through online?
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Metrics – Identify key performance indicators to track the impact and ROI of your social media efforts.
Managing Your Social Media Accounts
Once your strategy is set, it’s time to start managing accounts. Here are tips to streamline workflows:
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Use social media management tools – Platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social let you schedule posts, engage with users, monitor mentions, and analyze performance all from one dashboard.
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Collaborate with a team – Have multiple users who can coordinate publishing content and responding to customers in a unified voice.
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Be consistent – Don’t let accounts go silent for extended periods. Stay active by posting regularly. Tools can help automate consistency.
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Reuse content wisely – Repurpose your best posts, but avoid being overly repetitive. For example, rotate evergreen content on a set schedule.
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Follow trends – Take advantage of seasonal events, cultural moments, and viral trends by creating relevant content when interest is high.
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Curate user-generated content – Make your community shine by sharing high-quality photos, videos, comments, and stories from happy customers.
Creating Engaging Social Content
Content remains king, so put effort into crafting share-worthy updates tailored to each platform’s audience. Consider these creative ideas:
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Videos – From quick tips to product demos, eye-catching videos tend to get high engagement.
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Images – Visually stunning photographs, infographics, and illustrations grab attention in feeds.
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Behind-the-scenes – Give followers an inside look at your brand, office culture, or employees.
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User-generated – With permission, repost social content from customers using your products or at your events.
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Contests/giveaways – Run fun, shareable contests and giveaways to build followers and awareness.
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Live video – Go live on Instagram or Facebook to make authentic connections with your audience in real-time.
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Polls and surveys – Collect feedback, spark discussion, and learn about your followers through quick questions.
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Spotlights – Feature customers, employees, or brand ambassadors to put a human face on your company.
Developing an Engagement Strategy
Driving likes and shares is important, but meaningful engagement goes deeper. Here are ways to connect with your audience:
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Respond to comments – Have timely, relevant conversations with followers and quickly address questions or concerns.
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Like user content – Search hashtags and keywords to find relevant posts by customers to engage with.
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Send direct messages – Occasionally reach out directly to interact one-on-one with followers who are highly engaged.
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Run contests – Increase shares and follows by having users tag friends, like posts, or share their own content for a chance to win prizes.
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Go live – Host live Q&As or behind-the-scenes tours to have authentic conversations in real-time with viewers.
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Use stories – Post daily content in Instagram and Facebook stories to show quick snippets and make connections.
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Send polls – Learn more about your audience and spark discussion by polling their opinions on lighthearted, relevant topics.
Analyzing Your Social Media Performance
Measuring performance is crucial for understanding what’s working and optimizing your future social media efforts. Analytics to track regularly include:
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Follower growth rate
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Engagement rate
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Click-through rate on links
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Impressions and reach
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Website traffic from social
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Sales influenced by social
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Return on spend for social ads
Dive deeper by analyzing performance by network, post type, posting times, etc. Use the insights to guide your strategy.
By taking a strategic, analytical approach to managing your social media presence, you can truly maximize its impact. Define your goals and audience up front to inform thoughtful content creation and engagement tactics. Adopt tools to streamline managing multi-channel accounts. Analyze performance regularly to refine your approach.
With these social media management best practices, you’ll transform scattered social accounts into a focused, high-impact asset for your brand.
Find your brand’s target audience on social
The key to creating impactful content is identifying your target audience. These are the people that sit within your brand’s total addressable market. Zeroing in on these individuals will allow you to create more effective messaging across your social media profiles.
To better find and appeal to your brand’s target audience, ask the following questions:
- Whos your current audience?
- What kind of information are they looking for and why?
- Where do they go for this information?
- What topics and cultural moments interest them?
- Which brands do they trust and what can you learn from them?
The answers to these prompts will inform your approach to social—what platforms you’re present on, how your brand sounds online, what trends appeal to your audience and how you connect with customers.
Getting to know your audience isnt a one-time-only practice. Asking yourself and your team these questions on a routine basis can keep everyone in a customer-first mindset.
Social media planning and content creation
Content creation is a fundamental aspect of social media management. According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2023, people aren’t using their favorite social networks for just connecting with friends and family—they’re using social to discover new brands, discover deals and watch entertaining content. A majority (68%) of consumers say they primarily follow brands to stay informed about new products and services.
A successful social media management strategy will create lasting connections with your audience, but the competition is stiff. On social, you’re up against direct competitors and other elements vying for attention on these platforms. Marketers need to account for other sources of content, like media outlets, publications and creators. They also have to consider the audience social media was originally built for: friends and family. Brands aren’t just competing against other brands, but against a best friend’s vacation photo dump and cute pet photos.
To stand out, you’ll also need to know what people want. Index data shows that consumers want more authentic, non-promotional content, transparency about business practices and sourcing, educational posts and customer testimonials from brands.
Our data serves as a great benchmark, but remember to pay attention to what your specific audience seeks from your brand on social. Does your audience enjoy funny or educational content? Commentary on trending topics? A community? Tips and tricks? Finding out where you fit can help your business maintain relevance in an always-on social landscape.
Centering your audience also supports your content planning. For example, if you discover your audience wants more short-form videos, you can plan for this with your content calendar.
Video is a powerful way to capture your audience’s attention without requiring a major time commitment on their end. However, a diversified social media marketing strategy makes use of all types of content. This may seem overwhelming, but it’s an opportunity to save time and resources because you can repurpose and reuse the content you create to further promote your brand.
You can use a single live video stream to create dozens of short-form video clips, GIFs, text posts and more. At Sprout, we use our Social Creatures podcast to inform posts across networks like Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok.
Data from The Sprout Social Index shows 64% of modern social media teams are organized by network, which means one member is responsible for a specific platform. For example, one member might oversee only TikTok while another focuses on Instagram.
This popular structure is changing as consumer preferences shift and new platforms emerge. Teams must commit to ongoing development and nurture social media skills that prepare them for a changing landscape.
Here are four skills to work on as you build your social media team:
- Reporting and analytics: As you move into a people management position, you’ll find yourself having to speak for your team’s efforts more often. Understanding how to gather and synthesize information through storytelling with data is key to explaining the impact of your social media management strategy.
- Time management: This one is especially critical in hybrid or remote work. Stand-ups, one-on-ones, project kickoffs and all the other meetings that need to happen to execute a strategy can quickly eat away at your calendar. Protect your time by scheduling designated focus hours and conducting regular meeting audits.
- Feedback: Being able to give and receive constructive feedback is more than a skill. It’s a catalyst for improving performance and a pillar of workplace culture. Gallup data shows employees are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree theyre motivated to do outstanding work when their manager provides daily (vs. annual) feedback.
- Empathy: Most social media professionals have to stay online through brand crises, world tragedies and times of uncertainty. Don’t wait until someone is battling social media burnout to start taking preventative measures. Advocate for your team and keep mental health at the forefront of your conversations.
Have you ever thought about buying from a company only to find out they have poor online reviews? Did you follow through on that purchase? If you didn’t, you’re not alone.
A Brightlocal study shows 91% of consumers say local branch reviews influence their overall perceptions of brands. Consumers also use social networks like Instagram (34%) and TikTok (23%) to research businesses as alternatives to local business review platforms.
Social media reputation management is a critical yet often overlooked aspect of social media management. While it may not fall under a social practitioner’s core responsibilities, it’s vital to the success of all businesses.
If you’re new to reputation management, here are three rules to guide your strategy:
How To Become A Social Media Manager – Beginners Guide
How do I start social media management?
Now that you have the basics of social media management down, it’s time to get to work. Hash out your social media goals, map out a content calendar, create branded content, and start building relationships with potential partners to grow your brand effectively. Get started on saving time and energy on your own social media management!
What is social media management?
Social media management is the process of creating and scheduling content to grow and nurture an audience across social media platforms. It’s about strategically creating content, fostering connections and building a loyal audience. Effective social media management goes beyond posting great content. It’s about nurturing a community.
How to manage social media effectively?
Here are 17 social media management tips to help you stay productive and organized: 1. Identify the best platforms for your brand From longstanding favorites like Instagram and YouTube to newer apps like TikTok and BeReal, there are so many social media platforms to choose from.
How to use social media management tools?
Use popular social media features such as Instagram stories, Facebook polls, and Twitter Live to engage and interact with followers. Social media management tools like Hootsuite make it easy to plan, create, and publish content for your various social networks in one place.
