Being present on social networks is no longer a differential for any company. Currently, those who stand out on social networks are companies that see the value of this tool and use it as a communication channel with their customers and as a promotional channel, both for the brand and for the products/services and content.
Consequently, more and more companies are creating their profiles on social networks to get closer to their customers and not lose space with the competition.
We have already gone through this challenge in the DR and, even today, we repeatedly question ourselves if our strategy in social networks is being the most effective , if our communication with our clients is the most appropriate or if we should try another approach.
We know that it is not easy for a company that is starting its work with social networks to define what type of content will be published, if there will be a lighter or more serious approach, how often they will publish, what metrics to analyze, etc.
Therefore, in this article I will show you some processes that I learned in my work as a social media analyst here in the DR, including practical tips that may be useful for you to apply daily in managing social media.
What is social media management
Social media management is more than just posting. Social network management involves various stages, which include from the definition of the strategy and positioning, the planning of publications and the execution to the monitoring and survey of results.
In order for all of this to be well executed, a person or team responsible exclusively for your company's social channels is necessary, because this way the process will be seen as important and necessary for the company and not just an obligation that does not bring real benefits.
Here in the DR, this work is done by a team of specialists in social networks , who dedicate themselves full time to bring more results for the marketing area through this channel.
In which social networks should I be present ?
If you already bought the idea of investing effectively and working with the management of your social networks, you must be wondering what exactly you have to do.
The first step is to define in which social networks it makes sense for your business to be present. Some social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, due to their public coverage, require that almost all companies, regardless of the type of business, be present. In others, like Pinterest, they may bring much more results for a clothing ecommerce than for a corporate services company.
In the end, what matters is finding out where your audience is . Many times the only way to find out is to try. You will not lose anything if you create a profile on a social network and discover that your person is not there. In addition to learning, the chance that you will find your client there and manage to bring good results to your company are greater.
Here in the DR, we are always looking for new channels to test and expand our strategy. However, in the end, we discover that the social networks that we have invested in for a long time are the ones that bring us the most results and are worth our investment – like Facebook, for example.
How to set up my strategy on social networks ?
Here is the key: without a well-defined strategy, your company will have a profile on social networks but will not know what to do with it. It is here that many companies make mistakes; they end up not seeing the real benefit of investing in social media management and give up.
It is very important to define what is the objective of being present on social networks . Here in the DR, for example, social networks are among the most important channels for generating Leads , which is what guides our strategy, but we also see them as tools to increase brand reach in the DR.
This is where our followers and customers feel comfortable sharing our content, commenting and giving us feedback on the content and services we offer, or simply having an open communication channel with us.
However, there are various objectives that can be attached to your social media management strategy. For example:
- Brand Disclosure.
- Being a channel of communication with customers.
- Create a community that admires your company.
- Education through content dissemination.
- Sales.
The essential thing is that only one objective is the flagship of your strategy – to have focus – and that the objective is related to the moment of your company.
Most importantly, that strategy can – and should – vary over time. If you realize that your company has reached its goal and that brand awareness is not the most important thing now, the next step may be to start focusing on sales.
Check out an interview we did with Cristiano Santos, strategy specialist for LinkedIn, during the RD Summit Live Show .
What should I post on social media?
This topic essentially depends on the previous one. To define what will be published, it is very important to know what your goal is . I already mentioned, for example, that the main objective of the social network management strategy here in the DR is the generation of Leads, since we depend on that to provide our sales team.
Taking that into account, most of our publications focus on the dissemination of some type of content, be they blog posts or rich materials such as eBooks, webinars, videos, etc. This type of publication is our rudder and we invest a lot in content production to increasingly nurture our social networks.
But, we cannot forget that getting in touch with our followers/clients and prospecting our brand is also very important in our strategy. For this reason, we must also make other types of publications that are not directly related to our content. For example:
- Institutional videos (Like when we celebrate market leadership and publicize internal initiatives such as Pride and Preto no Preto ).
- Posts related to ephemeris (Like Dev Day , Women's Day and Beer Day ).
- Funny images and GIFs to interact with our followers (Like when we announce our internship program and when we use the “da casa de vidro” meme );
- Events (As memories of the RD Summit).
How often should I post on social media?
It is worth remembering that it is very important to keep a calendar of publications so that they are not lost over time . I know that it can be difficult at first when there is not yet an arsenal of content available to publish. But, as your Content Marketing strategy is evolving, you will have much more contributions to your social networks.
Going deeper into how a post routine works, we're going to introduce one we already use here at RD Station. In a period when we were focused on growth and lead generation, we published a minimum of one new blog post on social networks per day and one rich material per week.
On top of that, each new blog post was published on average three more times on each social network and each rich material four more times, at different times and days of the week.
For example, a post published on the blog was published on social networks on the same day at 8:00 p.m. and then three more times: a week later at 9:00 a.m., two weeks later at 1:00 p.m., and a month later at 3:00 p.m. Thus, audiences that access social networks at different times will have the same chances of seeing the publication.
The same happened with rich materials, which, after being released and published for the first time, for example, on a Tuesday, were published again 29 days later, on a Wednesday, and after another 29 days on a Thursday, and so on. forward.
Clearly it's easier to keep that schedule consistent by producing new content every day. But, the message I want to get across here is that you don't need to have this huge amount of content right from the start – the important thing is to stay present and make posts that are relevant to your audience.
And, for that, it doesn't matter if you are going to publish an article from an external blog that you thought is interesting (curating content) or a short video that you made with some tips related to your business.
What is the best time to post on social media?
That's the million dollar question. And you want to know what the answer is? There is no one-size-fits-all schedule. Each public behaves in its own way and you need to find out what time your person is used to being online to view your publication.
To facilitate management, some social networks bring analysis of what are the best hours for your page. Facebook Insights, for example, shows the days of the week and the times when your followers were most connected to the social network.
Thus, all those hours that I commented that we republished the contents were not chosen at random. It is clear that we use our best hours to publish our best content.
For example, if the time our public is most present is at 6:00 p.m., we prefer to publish rich content, which has greater potential to generate Leads than a blog post.
In the event that the tool does not show you this data, it is necessary to carry out tests and experiments to see at what time your publications have the best results.
In order to have a good social media management strategy, it is important to set aside time in your day to do these analyzes of the reports that the tools have available. There are several insights about your audience that can be done to make your content even more accurate.
Do I need to use a posting tool?
That is the theme that I would list as the luxury of your social media management. Because? Because a publication scheduling tool is not totally essential , that is, you are not going to stop making publications because you do not have a tool to automate that, but, at the same time, it will make that job easier, especially when you increase the frequency of publications.
On top of that, this tool is totally connected to the issue I mentioned about keeping a posting calendar.
In the RD Station Marketing post tool , for example, you can view a calendar with suggested times to post and ephemeris.
Screen of the social media management tool in RD Station Marketing
There is one benefit that is quite important: publishing through a tool will make it much easier to analyze your results!
How should I interact with my audience?
Let's do the following exercise: you own a pizzeria and you followed all the steps to be present on social networks up to here. You created a Facebook page, defined your strategy and even made frequent posts. But, one day, a customer had a bad experience with a pizza that he bought from your restaurant.
Next, find your page on Facebook and evaluate your pizzeria negatively, as well as add various negative comments on their posts. What are you doing?
I hope you don't choose to leave the customer unanswered or worse, exclude the comments they made on your page. You know why? If you exclude, he's going to notice and that will snowball , causing him to come back and add even more comments.
If you simply do not answer, all the people who look for your company will find the bad evaluations and automatically eliminate your pizzeria from the possibilities for entertainment and food.
Thus, from the experience we have in managing social networks here in the DR with this type of situation, I recommend that you evaluate each case as unique, investigate thoroughly to discover what happened and do not use ready or automatic responses when that happens.
It is very important, yes, to answer, but it is even more important to give an adequate response , which provides a solution to the client's problem, and not just a justification that often ends up almost blaming the client. In other words, it is essential to have empathy for the person with whom you are interacting.
So, save this: social media has the power to quickly make a company better known and bring great results, but it also has the power to destroy it even faster. So you have to be careful about taking the responsibility of being present on that type of channel.
What type of interactions should I answer?
Here in DR, we try to interact in every possible way with our supporter. For example, many people seek us out to discuss various issues in Facebook messages, from general questions about Digital Marketing , commercial contact requests, alliance proposals, feedback and suggestions, etc.
We see this as an incredible channel of communication: we have the possibility to chat, quickly and informally, with our clients, leads and fans of the brand. Yes, that means we reply to or interact with every message we receive on our Facebook page.
It is clear that this investment is large: we need an available person who dedicates a large part of his time to provide care to these people. But the return that this brings can be very valuable to your company.
In addition to messages, we interact directly with our posts, liking comments and replying to a large part of them, as well as posts made directly by visitors on our page and reviews, whether positive or negative.
In the end, what matters is that our followers feel welcome and answered , and for this we do our best to answer everyone and try to help them with any problem or question they may have.
What is social media monitoring?
Another issue in relation to interaction with your audience is the monitoring of social networks. This consists of doing searches for keywords that are connected to your business , for example, the name of your company or the sector in which you operate, to find publications in which you were not directly mentioned and that deserve special attention.
For example, let's imagine that someone advertised our main event on their website, the RD Summit , and did not mention our company with a link to our website.
Searching for the keyword “rd summit” we could find that news and contact the website to insert a link to our site. This search also helps in cases of crisis management and in the identification of possible failures in the service offered and in how the company has been communicating.
In addition, it is by monitoring that we can take advantage of trends, understanding what the public wants to consume , and generate more relevant content (and more Leads!). Remember: social media management also consists of analyzing content outside of your social channels.
How should my communication with my audience be?
In some cases, it can be difficult to define what the type of communication with your audience will be. For example, it's amazing to see how Nubank communicates in an informal and fun way with its followers, using GIFs and funny images. And I think I can say that everyone agrees that this brings positive results for the company and that more and more people are fans of the brand, right?
But, for some businesses, that style of social media management may not make as much sense. For example, if your company has a more formal profile internally and a more formal communication with its customers, using that informal and humorous communication on social networks can give the impression that you are not being yourself, right?
Therefore, when defining how to communicate and what words / expressions you will use, it is very important to go back and remember who your target audience is , that is, who you are talking to. Certainly, the communication you will use with the director of a company will be different from the one you will use with a university student. Do not you believe it?
How to analyze the results?
After doing all this, the only way to measure if your company's social media management is being done well or not, is by analyzing its results . For that, you need to define which metrics are important to your strategy.
For example, as I mentioned, our main objective is the generation of Leads. Consequently, our main metric is the number of Leads generated through social networks in a period, which can be divided by social network or by publication.
In order for us to have access to that number here in RD, we use RD Station Marketing. The platform automatically inserts parameters into your custom URLs, the famous UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module or, in Spanish, Urchin Traffic Monitoring). Thus, when you make a publication, you can discover exactly which channel your traffic and leads are coming from.
In addition to that, there are other metrics that we analyze in RD's social media management and that are related to the performance of our publications. See what it looks like in the software:
Metrics such as the Engagement and the Reach of the publications , provided by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks, are very important to get insights about the type of content we are publishing, the images we are using, our communication, hours, etc.
Remember I commented on the second part of our social media strategy, related to branding and community engagement? Metrics such as the monthly increase in the number of fans and sentiment analysis of the interactions of the followers, can help to measure if the strategy is being done well or not.
By analyzing these metrics, which can be taken directly from each social network, it is possible to have insights for the constant improvement of your social network management strategy .
For example, if you notice that the number of fans of your page and the reach of your posts continue to increase, but that the traffic to your website from social networks is decreasing compared to the impressions of the posts that are growing , it is possible that something in your publication is not working – for example, the type of description or the image.
In another case, if the traffic on your website is increasing, but the number of conversions on your website is not behaving in the same way, it may be the type of content or your Landing Page that is having a problem.
Shall we go to work ?
My intention was to share with you some of the learning we had with the management of social networks here in the DR. I hope that the content can help companies that are having difficulties in executing their social media strategy.
Did you have any questions or would you like to share how you are managing social networks in your company? Tell us below in the comments!
oh! And do not forget to check our social networks:
- Tik Tok
Also download the eBook Introduction to Social Network Management , which will help you structure a strategy for your company. You only need to fill in the information below to access for free.
