Maddy Osman
For many people, the idea of social media management inspires images of quickly churning out haphazard posts and hoping for the best. Perhaps they already hold stigmas about traditional forms of marketing and view social media as another pointless piece to the word-spreading puzzle. Or maybe they get nervous every time they have to think in terms of hashtags. For social media marketers however, creating well-developed social strategy is very much a process of combining art with science and the steps from start to finish are many. Let’s pull back the curtain slightly and take a look at exactly what it takes the Social Media Beast team to develop and maintain content for both ourselves and clients:
Expertise
Being that we work with clients in a variety of industries, we’ve had the chance to experiment with and produce content for many different types of campaigns. The most important takeaways from these experiences are the learnings we’ve been able to gather. Not every platform makes sense for every business. Not every campaign will yield the same results for every product. Marketing is just theory until you apply it to real life, so all the clients we work with benefit from all the knowledge we’ve gained from our successes and failures.
Monitoring
Another benefit all of our clients receive at no extra charge is a monitoring service on each network we write for. Our team members track activity across all platforms every two hours on weekdays (evenings included) and five times per day on Saturday and Sunday. Customer service has become a secondary purpose for using different social networks, and it’s important to address people, angry or ecstatic, as they message or write on the wall of a business page. If a business ignores this aspect of their social channels, they are ignoring their customers and, in turn, affecting brand image/loyalty.
Editing
We have a rigorous editing process that begins with the content writer producing posts for a particular client. Once they’ve completed a calendar, material is cycled through the eyes of other designated members of the team for additional edits. They review for spelling, grammar, accuracy, and creativity.
Creative
Group brainstorming sessions don’t always end with the writers. Oftentimes, our marketing, sales and account management departments get involved. Every voice is valid and viewing strategy from an assortment of perspectives can surface new ideas that would’ve otherwise flown under the radar. Having a diversity of opinions makes for some successful campaigns all around.
Graphic Design
Outstanding visuals are key. And even more importantly, visuals used without violating copyright laws are extremely key. Too many fall into the trap of copying and pasting images straight from a Google search into their content, without a second thought of how the owner of that particular image may react. Assume that everything on the Internet is owned unless stated otherwise. Depending on the post, our team gathers images from creative commons, re-purposes from a businesses’ own stock supply, or will design custom materials in-house.
Marketing Copy
At the end of the day, clients we work with are hoping to achieve some type of goal. Whether that goal be selling a product, increasing brand awareness, signing people up for an email newsletter, etc., we write effective copy to achieve those ends. Each post contains some type of call to action, though not all directly encourage a sale.
Targeting
Paid ads are an important part of social media marketing. On the post level, you can pay to boost a Facebook post or Tweet. In addition to reaching a similar audience to the one you already have, you can target by specifics (demographics, location, interests, etc.) to ensure your message reaches more of the right people for your business.
Analytics And Analysis
Not every post may perform well, but learning from the ones that do versus the ones that don’t makes unsuccessful posts appear less and less as time goes on. Our team keeps track of what’s performing well and what could use improvement when crafting monthly content calendars to send to a client. Nothing learned, nothing gained. It’s a fully transparent process and we make it a point to go over the nitty-gritty numbers with each client on a monthly basis.
At first glance, social media marketing may look like a piece of cake but there are a number of layers a business needs to chomp through before getting it right. Luckily, our methods have been perfected over time and from our point of view, the more challenging the piece of cake, the better.
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