Social media management is first and foremost social. It’s a way to communicate directly with your customers (and potential users). This skill incorporates other communication and soft skills, including storytelling and empathy, as well as the ability to utilize data to drive your decision making.
A good social media manager knows that social media is much better used as a way to connect with customers, not as a billboard or megaphone to blast out messages.
Starting at Vogue before launching her own startup Glossier, Weiss learned well the importance of community in building her beauty brand. Starting as the blog Into the Gloss, she made Instagram a priority, not an afterthought, growing 13,000 followers before the company had even launched a single product. Today, Glossier boasts 2.3 million followers on Instagram. Explaining her success, she wrote, “Now [with social media] we can connect you with even more members of our community, and suddenly the social element is activated in a way that it’s never been before when you are buying something on the internet.”
As the cofounder and Chief Brand Officer of Away, a luggage company, Rubio chose not to focus her marketing on spinner wheels and TSA-approved designs. Instead, she fills Away’s Instagram with photos of the places and activities that customers can experience while using their products. In three years, she grew Away’s social following to 339k people. Today, social media is second only to referrals in brand discovery. As she said “A lot of people on Instagram see travel, and all the things you do when you travel as a status symbol; and it’s not just about the places you’re going.”
Starting out on Youtube making five cents a day, Phan has grown her make-up channel into a powerhouse with more than a billion-lifetime views and nearly nine million subscribers. She was able to translate that into Ipsy, an $800 million beauty products business that continues to utilize social media to dominate. Ipsy’s 10,000 collaborating bloggers use Instagram and Snapchat to grow the brand. Knowing where her success came from, Phan shared that, “No amount of filter, or editing program, can ever recreate authenticity. [But with it] you can really touch someone’s life.”
Social media helps customers where they’re at and on their time schedule. You’re able to talk directly to your fans and followers and show you care about them.
Effective social media marketing is about moving customers down the funnel. Whether that means grabbing their attention with a meme or a quip, or whether it is a deep dive into a product demonstration, you’re pulling customers from interest to purchase to satisfaction.
Authentic, timely and culturally relevant content has the ability to blow up on social media, hitting a nerve in the zeitgeist that compels users to post and repost.
Social media isn’t a place to flood your customers with ads and sales pitches. It’s about communicating, creating an impression of a one-on-one relationship.
There’s a balance between too much and not enough, and it’s important to find that line. More doesn’t always mean better. Quality, authenticity, and fun help.
Staying with the “tried and true” won’t ever lead to anything new. When your content gets repetitive, people stop paying attention.
When you discover a new trend, it’s important to quickly adapt to it so you can keep ahead of the curve. The most engaging type of social media content has shifted from texts to images to videos to live streaming videos. A great social media manager is aware of the latest trends and quickly learns the necessary skills to be successful.
Being creative and taking chances is important. The key to being successful is continuously trying new things and using analytics to accurately measure what is and isn’t working.
Social media experts need to reach out to their audience and influencers to creating lasting relationships with people who will help share their content.
Social media managers do a lot of writing. Every social network requires a slightly different style of writing. LinkedIn requires a professional tone, while Instagram is more light and inspirational. You need to be able to craft messages that are quickly understood by your audience.
Social media is the top channel people go to for customer care, many businesses ignore this channel making it your opportunity to provide remarkable customer service experiences that will help you rise above the noise.
Sweating the small stuff is important for social media managers because these tiny details come together to build your overall presence and determine your contact’s impact. Your aim should be to get it right the first time, especially since many platforms do not allow for editing posts.
