How to manage social media effectively

Do you know how to optimise social media management for your company? Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, which ones should you use to communicate about your business? Which messages to convey and which channels to choose to achieve your objectives? Which tools should you use?

Regardless of the size of the company, the sector of activity and the internal organisation of companies, the effective management of social networks has become essential: the number of users is constantly growing and the trend is increasingly clear. Being present on the networks is already a good start, but working on your presence and animating the community by making the most of each social network is even better!

We would like to share with marketing managers, Community Managers and communicators some tips and tools to work on the brand's presence on social networks and bring to life the bond of proximity created with customers.

See all software Enterprise Social Network (ESN)

The different social networks

It may be interesting to start by looking at the use of social networks in 2019 in Spain. According to the annual study conducted by IAB Spain :

In Spain, 85% of internet users aged 16-65 use social networks, which represents more than 25.5 million users in our country.

This is a very significant figure, since if we start from the last population census, we are talking about a little more than half of the country's inhabitants.

The graph below shows the distribution of the population by social network:

Source: IAB Spain Annual Social Media Study 2019

When looking at the diversity of existing platforms, it is tempting to want to be present on all of them to increase business visibility.

However, it is very likely that it is not relevant for your brand to aspire to the integrity of social networks. You run the risk of doing things half-heartedly, because it involves time and therefore money. It is better to identify the right networks for your business, and engage regularly to increase awareness.

A quick overview of some of the most popular and widely used social networks in Spain and Latin America.

The most used social networks

LinkedIn: a must have

Having a dedicated company page on a professional social network such as LinkedIn or Viadeo is a must. Beyond the institutional aspect, it gives a status to your activity. You and your collaborators can indicate your employer on your personal profiles. Both you and your contacts can see it, and the word-of-mouth effect can play an important role, especially with the intervention of opinions and recommendations. In this way, you can enhance the employer brand.

Facebook: the must-have tool

The social network par excellence is Facebook, with its 24 million active users in Spain in 2018 (source: Marketing Directo). It is very easy to create an account or simply appear as a tab: with address, contact details, opening hours... It all depends on whether you plan to post content there regularly or not. If your last publication dates back to 2013, this discredits you and suggests that your activity has stopped. In this case, it is better not to have an account.

Twitter and the ability to get straight to the point

Tweets have a limited number of characters, making them short and to the point. Popular for news and current affairs communications, Twitter is used for politics, events, etc. Why not add your company to the news stream for advertising purposes?

Instagram: in full swing

Visuals are at the centre of attention: photos, videos and even animated gifs. Filters are proposed to make images more attractive. Thanks to its exponential success since 2012, after being bought by Facebook, it is the ideal network for the fashion and tourism sectors. In addition, the platform allows for storytelling, which, thanks to its playful dimension, promotes engagement and loyalty among its followers.

Snapchat and spontaneity

An even different concept: visual, but limited in time. You post a photo, your followers can see it for 10 seconds. A restriction that plays on the surprise effect and temporary buzz.

Google+

Google's social network is not very popular. Little used in Spain, it is still useful for linking with other applications such as Google Maps, or improving SEO.

YouTube for videos

Exclusively video, YouTube now works with Google. More than a platform for sharing videos, YouTube now asserts its place as a social network: you can create a channel, add videos, like, comment, post videos, etc. Video is an increasingly popular content format that every brand should use for its virality as an effective marketing lever.

Inspirational version of Pinterest

The principle is simple: use only photos and pin them to a moodboard. Pinterest is a visual source of inspiration, it is the realm of beauty.

Social media management: what are the objectives and advantages?

Why use social media? The objectives of a social media strategy are manifold.

Your company's online presence

There are many social networks. As a company, you must ensure your presence on the web and multiply your meeting points with your target audience. But how do you do this? It all depends on your sector of activity, your market positioning and even your communication strategy.

Moreover, each social network has its own characteristics, advantages, type of content, users and responds to different needs when it comes to building an e-reputation. It is up to you to find out where your customers, potential customers or partners are.

By working on your visibility, you ensure that you make your product known, promote your brand and become a reference in your sector. Social media is an excellent complement to your website when it comes to expanding your audience.

Creating a community

Having a corporate account on a social network means taking care of different aspects, which include:

• Posting: news and communications posted by your brand, choosing content with the potential to go viral.

• Responding to comments: it's about interacting with your fans, and that means moderating comments and responding to messages people leave on your content.

• Building a community around your brand: building a community means acquiring fans, getting to know your audience, creating engagement and developing a sense of belonging to this community.

The ultimate goal of thoughtful community management is to generate traffic by sending potential customers to your website and ultimately increase sales.

Gathering key information

Even more than a dynamic web presence, good management of your social networks allows you to benefit from a wealth of information directly or indirectly related to your activity. In fact, your competitors also communicate. You see news specific to your business sector or your geographic region appear. This is an opportunity to keep you informed about the latest trends, news or current events.

Networks as monitoring tools also allow you to follow the behaviour of your targets and, ultimately, to better understand your customers, their habits, their tastes and their needs. All this helps you to gain customer loyalty.

The impact study

By using your network data intelligently, you can more effectively analyse what works and what does not. The content you offer can be refined and personalised to reach your target audience and not the masses.

They are the ones who will be interested in your products or services: gain their trust by talking directly to them and showing how your solution directly responds to the problems they encounter. To do this, define relevant actions based on reports and metrics, which will be generated by dedicated tools.

Use dedicated tools to manage your communication on the networks

Social media management tools help companies to benefit from all the advantages of these wonderful communication platforms.

Advantage n°1: saving time and increasing efficiency

Thanks to a social media management tool, you can get an overview of all your accounts and therefore monitor the activity globally.

Buffer is a tool that allows you to reduce the time spent managing social networks thanks to a centralised management of message flows, as well as an overview of the activity on the different social networks thanks to the dashboards. From a single interface, you can publish, schedule, view notifications and reply to messages. Convenient!

Advantage n°2: relevant and targeted monitoring

Some social media management tools help you keep up to date and also offer you interesting content to share with your community. With a content suggestion tool you can find relevant articles based on predefined keywords.

You can also subscribe to the news section. This is one of the principles of hashtags for some networks: preceded by a numeral, they function as filters. By subscribing to #yourcompany, you will receive a notification as soon as a post mentions your company, for example.

If you are more interested in a geographical location, you should indicate this so that you can receive a notification as soon as a post is identified with this location. This way, you will always know what the public is saying about your brand or any other topic of interest to you.

Likewise, the tools provide advanced functionalities to stay on top of communications and streams in your areas of interest. Tweetdeck is perfect for always staying informed through the Twitter social network, the tool helps you not to miss any tweet and to react directly from the application.

Advantage n°3: in-depth knowledge of your target audience

A tool designed for social networks helps you with the analysis of clicks, the number of views of your videos, the stories viewed, etc. in order to better understand user behaviour and understand your customers' preferences. Thanks to this functionality, you can create your personas and be in a better position to meet their needs.

Among your subscribers, you can also identify influencers or important customers for your business, those who can influence your community.

With a tool like Digimind, for example, you can keep an eye on all communities and analyse activity in real time across all networks.

Advantage n°4: easier interactions

A dedicated solution responds to the need for immediacy in managing your messages and comments: with users constantly connected, it is essential to be able to moderate, filter and respond to your audience's messages in a fluid and instantaneous manner.

Many tools allow you to process these requests in just a few clicks from a single interface. Hootsuite, which connects to over 25 networks, is a powerful and effective tool that makes it easy to engage your audience.

To create even more dynamic interactions, do not hesitate to favour the functionality of creating interactive games, such as contests and activities to animate your communities.

Advantage n°5: rigorously planned content publication

A key asset of a social media management tool is the management and scheduling of publications. It is true that content must be fresh, however, certain types of posts can be designed and scheduled in advance. Some tools offer a content calendar, to make it easier for you to plan ahead, ensure regular publication of content, not to miss any highlights, etc.

You need to set up an editorial calendar so that your content strategy matches your digital strategy.

From this perspective, the eClincher solution fits the bill: it allows you to easily create intelligent queues and publication flows. An interactive editorial calendar visually presents the messages that have been planned and the publications that can be automated, for example, via RSS feeds.

Advantage n° 6: reactive and personalised after-sales service

The use of social networks as a channel for answering customer questions or handling complaints is becoming widespread; it is about being able to respond instantly to a request no matter where your customer is located. With a tool that promotes communication on different networks, you lighten the tasks of your community manager.

Sprout Social software, for example, allows you to increase the responsiveness of your community interactions. It also offers you the possibility of creating a chatbot to improve the quality of your customer service and therefore customer loyalty.

Advantage n°7: organised advertising management

Some tools are designed to manage the distribution of advertisements on social networks. Therefore, the dedicated Ads Manager software allows you to manage your advertising campaigns, from budget to audience, as well as specific broadcasting moments on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. You also receive reports to track and improve the performance of your campaigns.

Benefit n°8: e-reputation under control

On social media, life goes on after hours. If a comment is made during the night, you will have to wait until the morning to moderate it, which can be a risk for your company's image. To avoid this kind of inconvenience and simplify the task of the community manager, there are tools available.

The goal: to manage all accounts from a single administrative platform. Some offer parameters to define moderation rules so that your image is under control at all times.

In addition, for better crisis management (or even preemption), the software includes limited access to accounts with secure access rights.

Advantage n°9: accurate study of metrics

To streamline your social media management, analytical tools are proving to be unprecedented allies. Managing networks to get the most out of them involves analysing the impact of your actions through various metrics, in order to ultimately refine your strategy.

The preparation of reports and relevant analysis allows you to obtain information on:

• The hashtag with the best reach.

• The best time to post.

• The most active followers in your network.

Agorapulse allows you to monitor and produce reports on various networks:

• Facebook performance reports: automatic monitoring of your company's mentions.

• Twitter reports: automatic search by keywords and hashtags.

• Instagram reports: hashtag and geolocation tracking, etc.

Advantage n° 10: the commitment of your employees

To broaden your prospecting horizons even further, we recommend that you make your employees ambassadors of your brand: they will be able to transmit your values and share your corporate culture with their respective networks.

Thanks to certain tools, you can create pre-validated messages to control the publication of content and not run any risk during their dissemination.

See all software Enterprise Social Network (ESN)

Strategies and tools for social media management

Social media offers a myriad of possibilities, which helps to constantly renew web marketing strategies . To take advantage of these opportunities, you should focus your efforts on the actions that have the greatest impact. Taking advantage of social networks cannot be improvised, it requires prior reflection and advanced tools capable of automating actions and generating reports.

With the acquisition of a social media management tool, assistance is often available. A dedicated and expert team is at your disposal to train you, guide you in the use of their tool and support you in achieving your goals, you just have to choose among your favourite tools!

And you, which tool do you decide to implement today to manage your social media effectively?