How to take care of your company’s social media management

Social media management involves various stages and is more than just publishing. Learn about some processes that we use in DR and that you can still apply today in your strategy

Be present in social networks it is no longer a differential for any company. Currently, who stands out on social networks are companies that see the value of that tool and they use it as a communication channel with their clients and as a promotion channel, both for the brand and for the products / services and content. 

As a consequence, more and more companies are creating their profiles on social networks to get closer to their clients and not lose space with the competition. But, many start without any defined strategy and without knowing very well how to manage social networks. How to take care of your company’s social media management hmm,

Lets start…

We have already gone through that challenge in the DR and, even today, we recurrently we question if our strategy in social networks is being the most effective, if our communication with our client is the most appropriate or if we should try another approach. 

We know that it is not easy for a company that is starting its work with social networks to define what type of content will be published, whether there will be a milder or more serious approach, how often they will have publications, what metrics to analyze, etc.  

So I will show you in this article some processes that I learned in my work as a social media analyst here on RD, including practical tips that can be useful for you to apply daily in social media management.

Automate tasks, take your leads to purchase, and generate scale sales with the leader in Latin America. RD Station Marketing

RD Station Marketing is software for your company to carry out better campaigns, nurture Leads, generate qualified business opportunities and achieve more results. From social networks to email, from Landing Pages to pop-ups, from automation to analysis of your results. Free trial for 10 days.Free trial!

What is social media management

Social media management is more than just publishing. Social media management involves various stages, ranging from strategy definition and positioning, publication planning and execution to monitoring and results lifting. 

For all this to be well executed, it is necessary a person or team responsible exclusively for the social channels of your company, because this way the process will be seen as important and necessary for the company and not only an obligation that does not bring real benefits. 

Here in RD, this work is done by a team of social media specialists, who are dedicated in full time to bring more results for the marketing area through this path.

¿In which social networks should I be present?

If you have already bought the idea of investing effectively and working with the management of your social networks, you must be wondering what exactly you have to do.

The first step is to define which social networks make sense for your business to be present. Some social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, due to their public coverage, require that almost all companies, regardless of the type of business, be present. In others, like Pinterest, they might bring far more results for a clothing ecommerce than for a corporate services company. 

In the end, what matters is discover where your audience is. Many times the only way to discover that is by testing. You will not lose anything if you create a profile on a social network and discover that youpersonnot there. In addition to learning, the chance that you will find your client there and manage to bring good results to your company are greater.

Here at RD, we are always looking for new channels to test and expand our strategy. However, in the end, we discovered that the social networks in which we already invested a long time ago are the ones that bring us the most results and are worth our investment – such as Facebook, for example.

¿How to mount my strategy on social networks?

Here is the key: without a well-defined strategy, your company will have a profile on social networks but will not know what to do with it. It is here that many companies make mistakes; they end not seeing the real benefit of investing in social media management and abandoning. 

It is very important define what is the objective of being present on social networks. Here in RD, for example, social networks are among the most important channels of Leads generation, which is what guides our strategy, but we also see them as tools to increase brand reach in RD. 

It is there where our followers and clients feel comfortable to share our content, to comment and give us feedbacks on content and services that we offer or simply to have an open communication channel with us.

However, there are several objectives that may be attached to your social media management strategy. For example:

• Brand disclosure.
• Be a channel of communication with customers.
• Create an admiring community of your company.
• Education through content dissemination.
• Sales.

The essential thing is that only one target is the flagship of your strategy  – to have focus – and that the objective is related to the moment of your company.

Most importantly, that strategy can – and should – vary by time. If you realize that your company has reached the target and that brand disclosure is not the most important thing now, the next step may be to start focusing on sales. 

Review an interview we did with Cristiano Santos, a strategy specialist for LinkedIn, during the RD Summit Live Show.

What should I publish on social networks?

This topic essentially depends on the previous one. To define what will be published, it is very important to know what your objective is. I already commented, for example, that the main objective of the social media management strategy here in DR is the generation of Leads, since we depend on that to provide our sales team. 

With that in mind, most of our publications focus on spreading some kind of content, be they blog posts or rich materials like eBooks, webinars, videos etc. That type of publication is our helm and we invest a lot in content production to increasingly nurture our social networks. 

But, we cannot forget that contacting our follower / client and prospecting our brand is also very important in our strategy. Therefore, we must also make other types of publications that are not directly related to our content. For example: 

• Institutional videos (Like when we celebrate the market leadership and we publicize internal initiatives such as the Pride and the Preto no Preto).
• Posts related to ephemeris (Like the Dev day, the Women’s Day and the Beer day).
• Fun images and GIFs to interact with our followers (Like when we announce our internship program and when we use thememe “da vidro house ”);
• Events (As memories of the RD Summit).

How often should I post on social media?

It is worth remembering what it is very important to keep a calendar of publications so that they are not lost over time. I know it can be difficult in the beginning when an arsenal of content is not yet available to post. But, according to your strategy Content Marketing is evolving, you will have much more contributions for your social networks. 

Going deeper into how a publishing routine works, we are going to present one that we already use here at RD Station. In a period when we were focused on Leads growth and generation, we posted the minimum of one new blog post on social media per day and one rich stuff per week. 

In addition to that, each new blog post was posted on average over three times on each social network and each rich material over four times, at different times and days of the week. 

For example, a post published on the blog was disclosed on social networks on the same day at 8pm and then three more times: one week later at 9am, two weeks later at 1pm and one month later at 3pm. So, audiences who access social networks at different times will have the same chances of seeing the publication. 

The same was true of rich materials, which, after being first released and published, for example, on a Tuesday, were published again 29 days later, on a Wednesday, and after more than 29 days on a Thursday, and there ahead. 

Clearly, it’s easier to keep that calendar consistent by producing new content every day. But, the message I want to pass here is that you don’t need to have that lot of content from the start – the important thing is to stay present and make relevant posts for your audience. 

And, for that, it does not matter if you are going to publish an article from an external blog that you thought is interesting (doing content curatorship) or a short video that you made with some advice related to your business. 

What is the best time to publish on social networks?

That’s the million dollar question. And do you want to know what the answer is? There is no single schedule for everyone. Each audience behaves in their own way and you need to discover what time your person is used to being online to view your publication.

To facilitate management, some social networks bring analysis of the best hours for your page. Facebook Insights, for example, shows the days of the week and the hours when its followers were most connected to the social network.

Thus, all those hours that I commented that we republished the contents were not chosen at random. It is clear that we use our best hours to publish our best content.  

For example, if the time when our audience is most present is at 6pm, we prefer to publish rich content, which has greater potential for Leads generation than a blog post. 

In the event that the tool does not show you this information, it is necessary to carry out tests and experiments to see at what time your publications have the best result. 

To have a good social media management strategy, it is It is important to reserve a time of your day to make these analyzes of the reports that the tools have available. There are several insights about your audience that can be made to make your content even more accurate. 

Should I use a tool to make the posts?

That is the theme that I would list as the luxury of your social media management. Why?  Why a publication scheduling tool is not entirely essentialIn other words, you are not going to stop publishing because you do not have a tool to automate that, but at the same time, it will make that job easier, especially when you increase the frequency of publications. 

In addition to that, this tool is fully connected to the question I discussed about maintaining a publication calendar.

In the publishing tool of RD Station MarketingFor example, you can view a calendar with suggestions for hours to publish and ephemeris. 

Screen of the social media management tool in RD Station Marketing

There is a benefit that is quite important: publishing through a tool will greatly facilitate the analysis of your results! 

Automate tasks, take your leads to purchase, and generate scale sales with the leader in Latin America. RD Station Marketing

RD Station Marketing is software for your company to carry out better campaigns, nurture Leads, generate qualified business opportunities and achieve more results. From social networks to email, from Landing Pages to pop-ups, from automation to analysis of your results. Free trial for 10 days.Free trial!

How should I interact with my audience?

Let’s do the following exercise: you own a pizzeria and followed all the steps to be present on social networks up to here. You created a Facebook page, defined your strategy, and even posted frequently. But, one day, a customer had a bad experience with a pizza they bought at your restaurant. 

Next, find your Facebook page and negatively evaluate your pizzeria, in addition to adding various negative comments in their publications. What do you do?

I hope you don’t choose to leave the customer unanswered or, worse, exclude the comments he made on your page. You know why? If you exclude, he will perceive and that will create a snowball, making him come back and add even more comments.

If you just don’t answer, everyone looking for your company will find the bad evaluations and automatically remove your pizzeria from the possibilities for leisure and food. 

So, from the experience we have in managing social networks here in DR with such situations, I recommend that you evaluate each case as unique, investigate thoroughly to find out what happened and don’t use ready or automatic answers when that happens.  

It is very important, yes, to answer, but it is even more important to give an adequate response, that gives a solution to the client’s problem, and not only a justification that many times almost ends up putting the blame on the client. In other words, it is essential to have empathy for the person with whom you are interacting. 

So save this: Social media has the power to make a company better known quickly and bring optimal results, but they also have the power to destroy it even faster. So you must be careful when taking responsibility for being present on that type of channel. 

What kind of interactions should I answer?

Here at RD, we try to interact in every possible way with our follower. For example, many people look for us to chat about various issues in Facebook messages, from general doubts about Digital Marketing, requests for commercial contact, proposals for alliances, feedback and suggestions etc. 

We see this as an incredible channel of communication: we have the possibility to chat in a chat, quickly and informally, with our clients, leads and fans of the brand. Yes, This means that we reply or interact with all the messages we receive on our Facebook page. 

It is clear that this investment is great: we need an available person who dedicates a large part of their time to give attention to these people. But the return that brings can be very valuable for your company. 

In addition to the messages, we interact directly in our publications, giving “I like ” to the comments and answering a large part of them, in addition to the publications made directly by the visitors on our page and evaluations, whether positive or negative.

At the end, what matters is that our follower feels welcome and answered, and for that we try our best to answer everyone and try to help them with any problem or doubt they have.

What is social media monitoring? 

Another topic in relation to interaction with your audience is monitoring social networks. This consists of searching for keywords that are connected to your business, for example, the name of your company or the sector in which you operate, to find publications in which you were not directly mentioned and that deserve special attention. 

For example, let’s imagine that someone announced our main event on their website, the RD Summit, and did not mention our company with a link to our website. 

Searching for the keyword “rd summit ” we could find that news and contact the website to insert a link for our site. This search also helps in crisis management cases and in the identification of possible failures in the service offered and in how the company has been communicating.

Further, it is through monitoring that we can take advantage of trends, understanding what the public wants to consume, and generate more relevant content (and more Leads!). Remember: social network management also consists of analyzing content outside your social channels.

What should my communication with my audience be like?

In some cases, it can be difficult to define what type of communication will be with your audience. For example, it is amazing to see how Nubank he communicates informally and funly with his followers, using GIFs and funny images. And I think I can affirm that everyone agrees that this brings a positive result for the company and that more and more people are fans of the brand, right? 

But for some companies, that style of social media management may not make as much sense. For example, if your company has a more formal profile internally and more formal communication with its clients, using that informal and funny communication on social networks can give the impression that you are not being yourself, right? 

So when defining how to communicate and what words / expressions you will use, it is very important to go back and remember who your target audience isI mean, who are you talking to. Certainly, the communication you will use with the director of a company will be different from what you will use with a university student. Do not you believe it? 

How to analyze the results?

After doing all this, the only way to measure whether your company’s social media management is being done well or not is by analyzing its results. For that, you need to define which metrics are important to your strategy. 

For example, as I commented, our main objective is the generation of Leads. Consequently, our main metric is the number of Leads generated through social networks in a period, which can be divided by social network or by publication. 

In order for us to have access to that number here in RD, we use RD Station Marketing. The platform automatically inserts parameters into its custom URLs, celebrities UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module or, in Spanish, Urchin Traffic Monitoring). So, when you make a publication, you can discover exactly which channel your traffic and your Leads come from. 

In addition to that, there are other metrics that we analyze in the management of social networks of RD and that are related to the performance of our publications. See what it looks like in the software: 

Metrics such as Hooking and Scope of Publications, Provided by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks, they are very important to get insights about the type of content we are publishing, the images we are using, our communication, hours, etc. 

Remember I commented on the second part of our social media strategy, related to brand building and committed community? Metrics like the monthly increase in fan numbers and sentiment analysis of fan interactions can help measure whether the strategy is being well done or not. 

Analyzing those metrics, which can be taken directly from each social network, it is possible to have insights for the constant improvement of your social network management strategy.

For example, if you notice that the number of fans on your page and the scope of your posts continue to increase, but that the traffic on your website from social networks is getting lower compared to the impressions of the publications that are growing , it is possible that something in your publication is not working – for example, the type of description or the image. 

Otherwise, if the traffic on your website is increasing, but the number of conversions on your website is not behaving the same way, it may be the type of content or your Landing Page that is with a problem. 

¿Let’s go to work? 

My intention was to share with you a little of the learning we had with social media management here in DR. I hope that the content will help companies that are struggling to execute their social media strategy. 

Did you have any questions or would you like to share how they are doing social network management in your company? Tell us down here in the comments!  

Ah! And don’t forget to check our social networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Tik Tok

You may also want to read.. “how to do advertising on tiktok“

Also download the eBook Introduction to Social Network Management, which will help you structure a strategy for your company. You only need to fill in the data below to access it for free.