As a business owner, you have a full plate. Chances are some of the things on that plate include managing your social media accounts and conducting promotions. Social media promotions are the lifeblood of many businesses. They also require time and expertise and may not be your strongest suit or even an area of interest.

You can’t quit social media. But, you can hire a social media manager to make your life easier and increase the quality and effectiveness of your social media presence. If you think that sounds expensive or like a lot of work, hear us out about how bringing a social media manager onto your team can reduce your stress and workload while changing your online presence for the better and creating meaningful results for your business.

The Basics

There are four main steps to running a social media promotion. At a high level that includes:

• Setting goals for the promotion.
• Creating an offer and making a plan.
• Communicating the offer.
• Assessing your results.

Let’s look at how a social media manager can enhance each of these areas for better results.

Setting goals

Ideally, your social media promotions will drive more business, reach new customers, and cement loyalty with your base. Because it’s essential to identify what you want to achieve at the outset of any communication activity, goal setting is the first step for online promotions.

As you embark on a promotion, your goals may vary. For example, your goal could be expansive–like attracting 500 new followers. Or, it may be specific, like selling a certain number of products within a particular time frame. Either way, setting clear goals for the promotion is the first step.

When you work with a social media manager, the goal-setting process grows and is more expansive. You’ll work together to take a broader look at your social media presence and think about where you want to go in the short- and long term.

The social media manager can create an overall social media strategy that broadly supports you based on your business and growth goals. Often, the strategy will include promotions with specific goals aimed at particular audiences and in distinct timeframes. 

For example, a social media strategy may span six months and have four promotions across three different platforms. One of the promotions may be aimed at attracting new followers and one may seek to reward your best customers with a special offer. Each requires a different approach, which the social media manager can identify.  

As part of goal setting, the social media manager will set specific desired metrics for each promotion. The metrics serve two purposes. 

• Helping the social media manager develop the right tactics to share the message and refine her approach over time. 
• Providing a view into how different promotions perform. This knowledge can drive decisions on future promotions and provide important insight into what matters to your customers.

Creating an Offer and Making a Plan

The next step in social media promotion is to create an offer. Many business owners have a feel for the types of promotions that move their business forward and often return to the same well when creating new promotions. While this approach can be practical for a while, in the fast-moving environment of social media, these promotions can fall flat and stop delivering.

When you work with a social media manager, she will include your preferences and historical offerings into the planning process. But, she also has the skill set to create new and different types of promotions that can help keep your content fresh.

With insight into the types of social media campaigns that other companies are doing and knowing more about how those efforts are working, a social media manager can identify the promotions that make the most sense based on your objectives. She can also explain the ins and outs of the process based on her experience.

In addition, she will bring you new promotional ideas–some of which may push the envelope beyond your comfort level. But, it’s still helpful to have a sense of the universe of promotional opportunities and see where the market is going.

Once the two of you agree on a strategy and goals, your social media manager will create a calendar of promotions and posts aimed at realizing your goals. 

Part of this process includes selecting the right platform for your message. Social media managers understand the nuances of different social media sites. So, they can conduct detailed audience analysis to determine which social platforms are most attractive to your customers while creating plans to develop new audiences. 

The calendar will include plans for optimizing your posts with keywords and the right hashtags so people can find your company and see your promotions. 

The calendar may also include opportunities for paid posts to boost your exposure at crucial inflection points and with specific audiences. In some cases, your social media manager may recommend a partnership with a key influencer.

Your social media manager will look across the plan to ensure brand consistency across platforms to ensure your promotion consistently reflects the right tone. And, she will make sure that the timing of each promotion makes sense and fits into the broader plan.

Communicating the Offer

When communicating the offer, a good social media manager does the heavy lifting. She will move into creative mode to produce the media used to share your message and the specifics of your offer. This can include:

• Developing social media content, such as writing posts, taking photos, making graphs, creating memes, and developing infographics.
• Creating video scripts, sourcing talent, and producing video work.
• Finding related content that can be cross-promoted through your sites.
• Updating your company’s profile pages to reflect the latest information about your promotions.
• Responding to comments and posts on your behalf. This includes answering questions and sharing regular updates with you in a summary.
• Integrating customer data from other platforms and other social media sites and using email and website traffic to ensure that your promotion and message find the right audience.

Assessing Your Results

At the end of each promotion, your social media manager can analyze engagement across platforms. She will determine how each post performed and tie that work back to the goals established at the beginning of the project. 

If posts or promotions are falling short of goals–or if something is taking off–she can adjust the plan and the calendar to keep you moving in the right direction.

At specific time increments, your social media manager will sit down with you to discuss progress and help set new goals.

Finding a Social Media Manager

Working with a social media manager doesn’t have to be expensive. Many excellent social media managers work as contractors and find clients through niche sites such as HireMyMom. 

If you can offer flexibility and a remote job opportunity, you are well-positioned to find an experienced resource who can help your business grow and make your social media content sing.

When you use HireMyMom, you have access to a dedicated pool of professionals looking for remote work. Because HireMyMom charges job seekers a fee to access job listings, all our job seekers are serious about finding work. And, the volume of resumes that flow in is more manageable than the numbers that arrive when jobs are advertised on free job sites.

Tell us About Your Experience

We’d love to hear about your experience working with a social media manager. Please drop us a line and let us know how the partnership changed your social media presence and helped you realize your goals.