Essentials of Social Media Management: Social media management can be broken down into following most critical processes — Social Media Audit, Choosing the Right Social Media Networks, Social Media Calendar and Tracking Performance.  Social Media Audit is the first crucial process of social media management. It includes creating and reviewing specific social media goals. Ensuring that your presence on social media is in line with your website branding and uniform across all social media platforms; compiling social media metrics like followers, engagement etc. for your interactions with your audience; analyzing social media metrics to understand trends and content preferences for your audience; and reviewing your competitor’s social media presence and strategies are all a part of social media audit. Social media audit lays down the foundation for building targeted campaigns for your business so you can achieve the results your business wants to see from social media. While it is essential for your business to have presence on all important social media networks, it is equally essential to focus on social media networks that house your target audience, as it will help maximize your investment by targeting your audience on their preferred platform and earn you a bigger return on investment (ROI). Choosing the right social media network is thus of prime importance. Research on your target audience and prioritize specific social media network platforms to save your time, efforts and valuable resources. Building a social media calendar serves as a reference point for your business and gives you room to analyze the content before it goes live. Typically prepared for a month, this calendar can include posts of company announcements, holidays, blog posts, client testimonials etc. When planned strategically, social media calendar will help you engage into a valuable conversation with your audience which will in turn help boost your brand image. Organizing contests and giveaways, conducting polls, asking for products reviews, providing guidelines or tips etc. as effective ways to keep your audience engaged. Managing such tasks are a part of social media management essentials that will help your brand grow stronger. As with any type of marketing, you’ll want to make sure you track and measure your social media campaign results from time to time. Tracking your performance helps you identify areas of improvement and can be used to take actionable steps to improve your social media strategy.

Benefits of Social Media Management: Visitors to social media networks are considered more receptive towards the message businesses convey as compared to their advertising messages. With such a large number of prospective customers active on social media, you can leverage this inclination to boost your business. Secondly, traditional marketing practices like billboards, TV or print ads are extremely costlier compared to social media management costs. The results of social media management are much more transparent compared to traditional advertising. Social media management will help you build brand awareness, generate leads by creating meaningful conversations with your target audience, as well as build trust and credibility by addressing issues faced by your customers. It will help you nurture your relationship with your customers by enabling you to get candid feedbacks about your products or services, empowering you to improve on the weaker areas of your business while reinforcing aspects that already resonate with your customers.