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November 1, 2021

How a Social Media Manager Can Help Reduce Your Stress and Make Your Online Presence Soar

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. 

 

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September 21, 2020

How to Create Top Notch Social Media Content

Social media is everywhere and if you aren’t already using it to promote your business, you are likely considering it. But, good quality social media takes more than a few Facebook posts. If you’re thinking about dipping your toe into the water (or if you are already fully swimming), these tips can help you make the most of your social media presence.

Find Your Why

The first rule of social media is that you should treat it like all other content. It should be:

  • Authentic to your brand.
  • Relevant to your mission and goals.
  • Strategically focused on helping you meet your goals.

The best way to make sure your social media meets this criteria is to identify what you want readers to know, feel, and do after engaging with your content. Asking this question at the beginning of your journey can help direct you, as you map out your social media strategy and start posting.

The best way to do this is to think about what you’re trying to achieve. For example, do you want your social media accounts to:

  • Create awareness of your business?
  • Build your brand?
  • Increase sales leads?
  • Lead to more engaged customers?
  • Serve as a supplement to your website? Replace your website?

 

Identify Your Base Level of Engagement

Knowing your social media starting place makes it easier to track success. Here’s a quick and easy way to assess engagement:

  • Take an inventory of all your social media accounts.
  • Identify your number of followers for each platform. Keep a tally by platform. (For example, 80 Facebook followers, 91 Instagram followers.)
  • Review all your posts on each platform in the last 45 days.
  • Look at each post and count reactions from followers. If a post has 47 likes and three comments, count that as 50 reactions.  
  • Calculate an average engagement score over all of your content for each platform.

Based on your number of followers and overall engagement score, you now have a quantifiable social media baseline. 

 

Set Goals

With a good sense of your current engagement level in hand, it’s easier to define what success means to you and identify the time period in which you hope to grow. Here are some sample goals:

  • Attract 50 new Facebook followers by January 15, 2021.
  • Grow engagement by 20 percent by March 1, 2021.

It takes time and commitment to nurture a social media presence. Set a realistic time frame to achieve your goals.

Also, this is a good time to check in with your own gut and consider how engaged you want to be in the process. Hire a social media manager if you desire a level of engagement beyond your time availability. HireMyMom is a great resource for finding someone to help with this.

 

Find Your People

Like all communication, understanding your audience is key. Think about what interests them, what drives them, and what moves them to act/buy. You may find it helpful to create an avatar of your typical customer/follower and use that person to guide your work. Determine if you want to spend some advertising or promotion dollars to help find your followers. A social media consultant can help with this.

 

Find Your Platforms

Next, determine the platforms most relevant to your audience. Check your competitors to see which platforms they are using. Look at influencers in your industry to see what they are posting and where. Observe how your competitors and influencers engage with their audience. Note what hashtags are trending. A few hours with a social media consultant can make this process easier. 

 A few tips:

  • Develop a strategy for each platform. What works for Facebook is different from what works on LinkedIn.
  • Get the right tools for each platform. For example, high quality photos make a big difference on certain platforms. Professional quality videos are key on others.

 

Find Your Voice

It’s time to start posting! Find the best way to enter the conversation and start executing on your strategy. Here are a few final tips:

  • Create a monthly or quarterly editorial plan for each platform to help you stay organized and manage your online presence more easily. Monitor trends so you can add or remove content, as needed.
  • Develop a blog to help you tell your story authentically. This is another area where a freelancer can make life easier for you.
  • Be prepared to engage with your audience. Successful social media is about conversations and your audience expects connection through engagement and comments. Identify a staff member to take point on responses or hire a virtual specialist to help. 

 

Share Your Story With Us

Social media is a great way to grow your presence and your brand online. We’d love to hear about your experiences. Join the HireMyMom Facebook community or send a note sharing what’s worked for you.

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November 20, 2017 0 Comments

4 Tips for a Successful Facebook Business Page

Facebook business pages are almost a necessity if you own any type of business.  If you’re not super social media savvy, you might have a lot of questions.  What should I be posting? How often? Should I just constantly push my products and services?

There are many ways to be successful online, but there are some things you can do to create a valuable presence on your Facebook business page.

Be consistent

If you’re going to have a Facebook business page, you need to be consistent in posting! It doesn’t mean you have to post daily, but it means you have to stay on a normal posting schedule.

If you know you can’t post daily, don’t post daily; this isn’t necessary. If you know you can commit to 2-3 times per week, go for it.  It’s whatever you can do to provide quality content on a consistent basis that matters.

Don’t sell

This might be counterintuitive, but you should refrain from selling most of the time.  Your Facebook business page should be a place where you show your expert status and provide valuable and inspiring information.

While it’s fine to mention your products and services once in awhile, it shouldn’t be the main focus of your posts.

Show your human side

Your business page should be kept professional, but not always business related.  Which means, it’s fun to show some behind the scenes items and share a bit about yourself.

Obviously, this depends on the type of business you’re in, but especially if you’re a small business, people want to know YOU.  People do business with those they know, like and trust, so it’s fine to share some personal details or the behind the scenes parts of your business.

Be valuable

After all of this, what should you be posting?  Anything valuable! What does your audience want to know about? Establish yourself as the expert.  Share fun information, helpful information, tips and advice that can be actionable for your readers.

When you provide value, stay away from selling most of the time, and develop a consistent presence, your page will begin to grow, leading to greater exposure for your business.

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October 16, 2017 0 Comments

5 Tips for Instagram for Business

As Instagram continues to be one of the biggest players in social media, it only makes sense that you’d use it for business.  According to Wordstream.com, 6 in 10 adults have Instagram accounts, while there are 15 million registered businesses using Instagram business profiles.

It’s an important place to be, and there are many things you can do to improve your presence on the platform to reach more people and share your knowledge.

Use Stories

We’ve all heard of Instagram Stories by now, which is Instagram’s answer to Snapchat.  According to Techcrunch, Instagram Stories are now doing better than Snapchat, with Instagram Stories at 250 million daily users compared to Snapchat’s 166 million.

Stories are a way to share behind the scenes content, everyday life, and more of a personal look at yourself and your business.  People do business with those they know, like, and trust, and stories are a fun, unfiltered way to show this off.  Give your followers a day in the life of your business, show them your favorite things, or some of your top tips and tools in doing business.  If you have employees, allow them access to post about their days in the business as well.

Another great thing about Stories is that it keeps you at the top of the page as you post content, so you stay on the minds of your customers and prospects.

Connect with Others

It’s great to utilize Instagram for posting, but it’s also important to interact with others! Take some time everyday to seek out other users and posts, adding thoughtful likes and comments as you see fit.

Go outside of your industry as well, since you’re more likely to find customers this way.  You can simply spend 10 minutes per day liking, following, and building up network on Instagram; this will make a big difference in your follower count and engagement.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are important ways to be found on Instagram.  You can – and should – use hashtags on your own Instagram Stories and Instagram posts, but you can also use them to find others.

In your own posts, it’s best to post your normal post and caption, then include hashtags in a separate comment.  You can use up to 30 hashtags, and they should be a mix of generic tags (i.e. “#success”), more specific tags (“#hiremymom”), and location-based terms.  Location-based tags (i.e. “#palmbeacheventplanner”) are especially important if your business is local or brick and mortar.

Search hashtags daily to find others that are posting similar things to you, or seeking your services.  Offering a simple like or comment can lead them back to your profile, increasing the likelihood of a connection – or a sale.

Be Consistent

As with all social media sites, consistency is king!  Think beyond business posts too – your audience wants to get to know you.  Participate in #FollowFriday, a fun Friday event on Instagram where you introduce yourself to your followers.  You can include little-known facts and other information about how you got your start in business.  These types of posts keep you relevant while providing content.

Do your best to post on a consistent schedule in a way that’s feasible for you and your schedule.

Keep an Eye on Quality

Instagram is still a visual platform, so quality photos are a must on your main Instagram feed.  Instagram Stories can be much more informal, but do your best to edit your regular photos to be as nice as possible.

People like to look at beautiful images, so do your best to keep your feed looking good.  Also, the top 9 images on your Instagram feed are the most viewed, so always ensure that they’re reflecting you, your business, and your brand as well as possible.

To succeed as a business on Instagram, include some items that aren’t simply business, connect with your audience, and be consistent!

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May 15, 2017 0 Comments

4 Types of Content to Post on Social Media

We all know how important it is to have an online presence – especially on social media.  It’s a place where we can share information, tell others about our businesses, and hopefully make some sales.

Unfortunately, a lot of business owners utilize their pages incorrectly, and don’t post content that intrigues the reader to build a relationship.  Today, we’re sharing tips to build your page, keep consistently posting content, and eventually – make that sale!

Value

When readers come to your page, they’re likely somewhat interested in you and/or your product or service.  They want to know that you’re an expert, and that you know what you’re talking about.  Make this easy for them!

Use your page to post thought-provoking, valuable content that answers their most burning questions.  You can post your own blogs, syndicate articles and blogs from outside sources, and do tips, advice, and Q&A posts that will share your knowledge with your readers.  While it may seem counterintuitive to give away your knowledge for free, it gives your readers some trust in you, making it easier to hire you someday.

About You

Whether it’s a behind the scenes post, news about your business, or information on your latest hire, readers like to get an inside glimpse into your business.  Social media can be fairly casual, so it’s the perfect place to go live with tips, share something personal (but relevant), and communicate with customers.

Share some personal things about yourself and your business – it doesn’t always have to be so formal!

Inspirational

We’ve all seen the inspirational quotes and graphics going around social media.  They might seem simplistic, but they’re easily shareable and provide your readers with a “feel good” message.  As we mentioned before, not all content has to be so heavy and information-filled.  It’s fun to mix in positive messages, tips on a graphic, or other fun content that will be easily shared.

When your graphics are shared, it’s more likely that more people will like your page, growing your following.  Be sure to include your website and business name on each graphic, and work to create your own content versus taking from others.  It’s fine to share directly from another page (with proper attribution, of course!), but creating your own graphics is much more powerful.

Sales

Last but not least, we come to sales.  This is because very little about your social media profiles should include sales information!  Once you’ve given lots of good content, it’s fine to ask for the sale.  You can run an interesting promo, offer a discount code to social media followers only, or something else that involves a direct ask to your products or services.

Again, this should be a small, small part of your strategy! Don’t drive away sales by constantly asking for them.  It’s important to strike a balance between value, solid information, fun information about your company, and finally – the sale.

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January 9, 2017 0 Comments

4 Top Tips for Using Facebook for Business

Facebook is an important and useful tool for promoting and sharing as your business.  Whether you’re a business owner, post content for other companies, or simply promote your services via social media, using Facebook effectively is key.

Read along for some top tips to ensure that you’re utilizing Facebook in the most effective ways.

Stay consistent

Consistency is key, and it’s the way to keep your readers engaged with your brand and its content.  If you’re posting very sporadically, no one gets to know you.  Try to avoid posting five times per week, followed by once per month, followed by 3 times per day.  Get into a routine that suits your content and schedule, and make sure that it’s realistic.

To start, figure out how much time you have to create content.  If it’s one hour per week, determine how long it takes to create each post.  You’ll also want to factor in consistency here and determine if this will be feasible as an ongoing schedule. From here, create a content schedule that includes the content that will be posted with the date and time.  If you’re able to do this weeks or months in advance – even better! Do what you need to do to establish a routine that is consistent and doable for your schedule.

Visual appeal

Your posts can’t simply be informative, they must also look nice. Articles can simply use the attached photo or a stock image, but your quotes, tips, and customized posts need to look their best and match your branding.  Facebook is a very visual platform, and posts containing graphics often per

You can utilize programs such as InDesign or Illustrator to create graphic posts, or simply use free online tools like Canva, Pablo, or PicMonkey.  These sites allow you to upload images, add text and/or shapes, and so on.  You’re able to create stunning posts in a matter of minutes, and it’s much better than constantly borrowing graphics from others.

Avoid selling

If you have a business, your first reaction in using Facebook for business is likely for sales.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the best course of action for social media.  It’s tempting, especially with a large, engaged audience, but it’s not ideal.  This doesn’t mean you can never feature your products and services, but they should always include the benefits to your prospects.  Additionally, you’ll still want to keep these posts to a minimum.

Your goal, in using Facebook for business, is establishing a presence, as well as establishing yourself as an expert in your line of work.  Provide a generous amount of valuable information to your readers, and they will realize that you have a lot of knowledge in your area.  You can also provide tips, advice, product usage information, benefits of using your type of services, inspirational quotes and information, and much more.  Keep your information varied and interesting, but ensure that 75-80% is valuable versus salesy.

When you do post something that could lead to a sale, your audience will be more likely to receive this favorably, since you are the expert and they’ve valued your free information so much so far.

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