The Value of Social Media Management
August 31, 2015
Before we get on to the value of social media management, answer these questions:
Which social media platform is the best for job seeking?
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Facebook
- PartnerUp
(LinkedIn is a professional website that often advertises positions that a company has vacant and is the biggest social network used for job seeking. PartnerUP also offers the same service and is also a professional networking platform, but does not have the following that LinkedIN has achieved.)
Social news and entertainment website Buzzfeed receives 130 million unique site visits a month, but what percentage of these come from social shares alone?
(75% of Buzzfeeds 130,000,000 unique visitors come from Facebook, Twitter and Google shares alone.)
Mobile instant messaging service WhatsApp has gained more active users than which social network?
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google+
- Instagram
(WhatsApp has gained 450 million active users since 2009, overtaking Twitter’s user base of 251 million users. By the end of 2013, the service was handling 16 billion messages per day.)
Yahoo spent a staggering $1.1 billion buying which blogging site?
- Tumblr
- Blogspot
- Flickr
- StumbleUpon
(Yahoo bought Tumblr from 26 year old founder David Karp for a reported $1.1 billion.)
What major change did Instagram introduce in the summer of 2013?
- Their privacy settings now mean that they have the right to sell your photos
- Instagram video was launched
- 4 new filters were added
- Restricted access to preteens was introduced
(Instagram video launched. Instagram video was announced in June which saw links to videos on rival app Vine fall by 500,000 the next day. The privacy changes that allow Instagram to sell users’ photos came into effect at the end of 2012.)
What social service has Facebook not acquired?
- WhatsApp
- Instagram
- Snapchat
- FourSquare
(Snapchat. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, but their reported $3bn takeover bid was rejected by Snapchat in 2013.)
What social media activity did the Pope unexpectedly engage in last year?
- He hosted a Google hangout
- He neknominated
- He took a selfie
- He gave a papal blessing via Facebook
(It was a Papal selfie. The Pope posed for a selfie with several teenagers during an appearance at Vatican City. Since being elected the Pope has made a conscious effort to connect with younger people to move Catholicism into a new informal generation. And if you’re interested, Neknominate, also known as neck and nominate, neknomination or neck nomination, is an online drinking game. The original parameters of the game require the participant to film themselves drinking a pint of an alcoholic beverage, usually beer, in one gulp and upload the footage to the web. Don’t try this at home, in fact, don’t try it anywhere; just don’t try it at all …)
How old did Twitter turn in 2014?
(Twitter turned 8 years old in 2014 after being founded in 2006.)
What social media-spawned phrase was named as 2013’s word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries?
- Selfie
- Hashtag
- Frape
- Amazeballs
(“Selfie” word of the year. Selfie was named as the word of the year for 2013 following a 17,000% increase in usage. The word was first documented on an Australian forum in 2002 and the hashtag #selfie was used on Flickr as early as 2004.)
What image posted on Twitter broke the record for the number of retweets it gained?
- President Obama’s picture hugging Michelle Obama following his re-election in 2012
- Justin Bieber offering fans a glimpse of his underwear modelling campaign
- Ellen DeGeneres’ “selfie” with Hollywood stars at the 2013 Oscars
- The first birth picture of Channing Tatum and his daughter
(Ellen’s Oscar selfie. Ellen DeGeneres posed for a selfie with Hollywood stars including Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence while hosting the 2013 Oscars. The picture was retweeted more than a staggering 2 million times in the 2 hours after it was posted.)
What is the most watched YouTube video ever?
- PSY ‘Gangnam Style’ music video
- Justin Bieber ‘Baby’ music video
- Miley Cyrus ‘Wrecking Ball’ music video
- Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ music video
(Gangnam Style. Korean popstar PSY’s music video for Gangnam Style overtook Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ as the most watched video on YouTube in 2012, and still holds the top spot with over 1.9 billion views to date.)
Twitter own an app that allows users to create and share short, looping videos. What is it called?
- FiveVid
- MindLess
- Vine
- Fine
(Vine is the app launched by Twitter that allows users to create looping videos that are up to 6 seconds long. On average 5 Vine videos are shared on Twitter every second.)
These questions may seem unrelated to any kind of professional business practise and just a mindless way to pass a few minutes, but that’s the point.
If you scored
less than 25% you are a social media numpty. Do you even own a mobile device? There is no hope for you in the social media management arena. You’ll get eaten alive and not even notice it.
Between 25% and 50%, you are a social media spectator who knows what’s going on, mainly, and can successfully navigate your way around to the bits of social media that matter.
Between 50% and 75% you are Social media cool kid, strutting around confidently and shaking a few trees with your engaging content. You know how to manipulate some aspects of each platform and do so, without becoming a slave to it.
Over 75% and you are a Social media management guru. You know what’s happening, where it’s happening, why it’s happening and are probably the reason it
is happening – on any platform! You are someone who can find out where all the cool kids are and leverage it like a Boss. You have a bright future in social media management.
The question you may be asking is: Why does someone who knows the Pope just took a selfie have any value to my company brand? Let’s put this into perspective here: What does a person who knows how to close a sale have to add to my sale department? How does someone who knows intrinsically what is en vogue in brochure development create me a successful company branded brochure? … Do I need to carry on? To master a beast you need to know everything about it. And knowing everything about social media management is no mean feat.
Unlike sales techniques or the latest trends, social media management changes on the flip of a coin and it takes skill to know where it will go and how it will travel. Each social media platform in its own right is a huge concern, shaping cultures and influencing purchases, but to know how you harness that power is not just learned, it is talent. A good social media manager can progress your business by knowing where to be for the target audience you want, they know where they hang out, how to reach them and what they are looking for. Somehow they know instinctively what to do to make an online campaign work.
Social media management and social media managers are
real jobs and can have a
real impact on your bottom line.
Employing a social media manager in house may seem like a huge expense with an uncharted return, but that’s not the only option. There is another way that you can leverage the power of a good social media manger, and that is to hire an online marketing agency.
When you work with an online marketing agency you get all the benefits of a successful digital marketing strategy, with none of the pitfalls – or what else are you paying for? Between the increase in revenue they provide, the savings on your time and the lack of mistakes made, the needle of profitability swings well in your favour.
Here are five reasons that you need to consider a online marketing agency to take care of your social media management:
Expertise
Social media is a rapidly changing world, and information about management tools, optimization strategies, outreach programming, and platform changes comes out daily. Staying on top of best practices and upcoming changes is critical to making sure your company is taking advantage of opportunities for your brand as well as maintaining a professional appearance. Simply lumping social media into your current marketing departments other responsibilities will make all of their efforts suffer; it takes dedication and discipline to stay up-to-date on the social sphere and manage growing communities. Most large businesses hire social management out as part of their ad agencies duties or by bringing on a dedicated community manager. Bringing on a social media management company is a solution that keeps your outward-facing presences updated and professional, without your marketing department taking a hit to productivity or adding an extra employee.
Dedication
That brings us to our next advantage, dedication. A social media management company can provide you with multiple touches on your brand, increasing brand monitoring and response efforts as well as providing a 24/7 hand at the till. Since the main focus of the company will be to manage your social presence, brand opportunities won’t get lost in the sauce. A real-time and scalable crisis-management team on guard can quiet the cries of an upset customer before they raise an angry mob.
Outside-the-box perspective
An outside social media management company can bring insights to your business that you wouldn’t discover when managing things in-house. This includes drawing on experience with other clients (more on this later) as well as the fresh minds they apply to the problem. By having an unorthodox viewpoint, they can also point out opportunities that your brand might have otherwise missed. Divergent thinking means more potential solutions, increasing your businesses chance of making the best decisions. If you only looked within for advice you’d end up making a lot of the same mistakes.
It Saves Money
This one seems backwards, but hiring a social media management company is going to save your business money. Rolling social into the duties of a marketing branch will end up only costing your marketing and your social media management. The fact is that monitoring, responding to, and updating social presences as well as researching and surfacing opportunities to grow your community is a full-time position. Thankfully, many businesses already recognize the burden of work up-front, and look to hire a full-time staff member for that purpose. The problem with this approach is that it will inevitably cost you far more and give you much less. Beyond the on-paper costs of a salary and benefits for your new worker, you’ll have to absorb the hidden costs like training and company perks that fall elsewhere in the budgeting mix. You’ll end up with is a single, albeit capable, team member to direct your efforts. By bringing in a company that specializes in social media management, you can expect a department that is capable of scalable response and you’ll get the benefits of the entire companies efforts, not just a single individual. For the same reason that you bring in an advertising agency to help create your branding and ads, you should bring in a social media management company to select your channels, build your audience, and optimize your content.
Experience
There is currently a dizzying array of tools and software designed for simply managing day-to-day social media activities and monitoring. A social media management company will be well versed in the available tools and be able to custom-tailor a selection that fits your businesses goals. They also can provide you with the benefit of software above your punching weight that they use for multiple clients. These are hidden costs of social media management that are absorbed into the cost of hiring a management company. Additionally, your enterprise will benefit from the experience with other clients that social media management companies have had, as well as their knowledge of research tools and awareness of competitors. These are all hidden benefits only available by outsourcing your social media needs to a company who specializes in the field. This experience also means that what might be an unexpected hurdle for your corporation will be a challenge that has been dealt with by your management company before.
You can have terrific social media management, and an increase in revenue without all the problems – what are you waiting for? By hiring a decent social media manager it’ll also give you one more reason to be grateful – You won’t have to watch ‘Gangham Style’ ever again …
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