Is your brand a social media fail? How to fix it.

Everyone knows that if you have a business, you should be on social media. But what most businesses (and even marketing departments) don’t realize, is that to truly make your social media use effective, it takes more than creating a social media account and posting every now and then.

Wait, what?!?

Just kidding. Deep down, you probably already know this.

Marketing departments (or business owners managing their own marketing) are spread too thin. And most tend to put social media management on the back burner. Because there are other things to do, right? Emails to curate. A website to maintain. Design. SEO. PPC campaigns. Pretty things to create. On top of all this, marketers are expected to be a magical freaking unicorn that weaves timely, relevant social media engagement in between all these other tasks.

Have you noticed that the bigger brands out there are hiring full time positions for social media marketers? Crazy, right? But sure, they have the budget, so why not?

The truth is this: the smaller companies will remain small if they don’t do the same.

I’m not saying that you have to hire a full time social media marketer. There’s a compromise to be had. Hire a freelancer to manage your social media for you. Take it off your marketing team’s plate, so they can focus on those other very important day-to-day marketing tasks.

A freelancer will:

· Eat up less of your budget than a salaried employee (think: no benefits, no equipment/office space costs. Just the contracted rate – and you can set it monthly, so you’ll never go over budget).

· Be less of a risk if you’re not seeing any ROI from the partnership. You can end the contract when you see fit.

· Offer specialized expertise.

The specialized expertise cannot be stressed enough. Your marketing team doesn’t have the dedicated focus (and time) to constantly brush up on the latest social media trends. They aren’t in the “social media zone” enough to truly understand how to effectively get the most out of your brand’s social media presence.

I’m a social media freelancer, and here’s what I provide on a daily basis to my clients:

· Message/notification monitoring: You know those clients or customers that sometimes message you or ask questions on your posts? I answer them or elevate the interaction through the appropriate channels. Timely customer responses are everything if you actually want to keep customers – and yes, they DO expect responses on social media platforms. Think of it as an extension of your customer service department.

· Content creation & posting: I handle the copywriting & actual posting for your social media posts, optimizing send times so it’ll be seen by the largest number of clients.

· Community Management: this is probably the most time-consuming task that your good ol’ marketing team (or you, the business owner) just doesn’t have time for. I search keywords and hashtags relevant to your business within social media, and I interact with them by sharing them and responding to them when appropriate.

The benefits of social community management.

If you’re struggling to see the benefits of the aforementioned community management, let me explain. Social community interaction opens up the door for finding and accumulating new customers (think: the more social threads your brand pops up on, the more visibility you have within the market).

It also allows you to have conversations with your current or potential customers (Oh, you’re having #furnace trouble, Cynthia? Here are the possible causes, and oh by the way, check out my heating & cooling business, which can come fix this problem for you since I’m in your metro area).

The other positive outcome for sharing valuable content is that you’re constantly establishing your business as an authority in the field. You’re in “the know;” you’re on top of the latest industry news because you’re constantly posting about it online.

So, the only question I have left for you is, what are you waiting for? You can turn your brand’s social image around TODAY with a social media freelancer. Let’s schedule a call this week and discuss your next steps for being a social savvy business.

Contact: jspahrmarketing@gmail.com 207-615-4530

#socialmedia #blogging #consultant #socialmarketing