Being present on social networks is no longer a differential for any company.
Currently, those who stand out on the 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 to the competition. However, many end up starting without any defined strategy and without knowing very well how to manage social networks.
We know that it is not easy for a company that is starting out in social networks to define what type of content will be published, if it will have a lighter or more serious approach, how often it should post on social networks, which metrics to analyze, etc.
For this reason, I am going to show you throughout this text some processes that I learned as a social network analyst here in the DR, including practical advice that may be useful for you to apply directly to the management of these networks.
What is social media management
Managing social networks is much more than just posting. Social network management involves various stages that include from the definition of the strategy and positioning, the planning of publications and execution, to the monitoring and survey of the results.
For all this to be done well, it is necessary to have a person exclusively responsible for that channel, since this will be seen as an important and necessary process for the company and not just as an obligation that does not bring real benefits.
Here at RD Station, that work is done by an analyst, who is dedicated full-time to bringing more results to the marketing area through social networks.
In which social networks should I be present?
If you already bought into the idea of effectively investing in social networks, you must be wondering what exactly you should start doing.
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, due to their audience reach, require that a large part of the companies (regardless of the type of business) be present. And others, like Instagram, may bring much more results for a clothing e-commerce than for a corporate services company.
In the end, what counts is finding out where your audience is. And, many times, the only way to find out is by testing. You will not lose if you create a profile on a social network and discover that your person is not there. In addition to what has been learned, the chances that you will find your client there and manage to bring good results for your company are much higher.
Here at RD Station we are always looking for new channels to test and expand our strategy. But, in the end, we discover that the social networks in which we have invested for a long time are the ones that bring us the most results and are worth our investment (like Facebook, in this case).
How to set up my strategy on social networks?
Here's what makes all the difference: without a well-defined strategy, your company will have a profile on social media but won't know what to do with it. It is here that many companies fail, they end up not seeing the real benefit of that investment and become discouraged.
It is very important to define what is the objective of being present on social networks. Here at RD Station, for example, social networks are among the most important channels for Lead generation , which is what guides our strategy, but we also see it as a great differential for the RD Station brand.
This is where our followers and customers feel comfortable sharing some of our content, commenting and giving 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 coupled to your strategy. For example:
- brand promotion
- be a channel of communication with customers
- create a fan community of your company
- education through content promotion
- sales
The essential thing is that only one objective is the guide of your strategy (to have focus) and that it is in accordance with the moment of your company.
And, most importantly: that strategy can (and should) vary over time. If you know that your company has reached its goal and that brand promotion is no longer as important, the next step may be to start focusing on sales.
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 commented, for example, that the main objective of the social media strategy here at RD Station is Lead generation, since we depend on that to equip our sales team.
With that in mind, most of our posts are some form of content, be they blog posts or rich materials like 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.
However, we cannot forget that getting in touch with our followers/customers and prospecting for 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 the ones at the end of the year , the new RD Station and when we reached the 5,000 customer mark );
- posts related to commemorative dates ( Black Friday )
- funny images and GIFs to interact with our followers;
- and events, such as the RD Summit and RD on the Road .
How often should I post on social media?
I stress that it is very important to keep a calendar of publications so that they are not lost over time. I know that at the beginning it can be difficult when there is not yet an arsenal of content available to publish. However, as your Content Marketing strategy evolves, you will have many more inputs for your social networks.
Digging deeper into how the posting routine works here at RD Station, we publish at least one new blog post on social media per day and one rich lead generation material per week.
In addition, each blog post is published on average more than three times on each social network and each rich material more than four times, at different times and days of the week.
For example, a post published on the blog is promoted on social networks on the same day at 8:00 p.m. and three more times: from then to a week at 9:00 a.m., from then to two weeks at 1:00 p.m., and from there to a month. at 3:00 p.m. Thus, audiences that enter social networks at different times will have the same chances of seeing the publication.
The same happens with rich materials that, after being released and published for the first time, for example, on a Tuesday, are published again 29 days later, on a Wednesday, and after 29 more days on a Thursday, and so on.
It is clear that it becomes much easier to keep that schedule consistent by producing new content every day. However, the message I want to get across here is that you don't need to have that much content up front – the important thing is to stay present and make posts that are relevant to your audience.
And, for this, it does not matter if you are going to publish an article from an external blog that you found interesting (curating content) or a short video that you have produced yourself with some advice related to your business.
What is the best time to post on social media?
That's the million dollar question. Do 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 provide analysis of which hours are best for your page. Facebook Insights, for example, shows the days of the week and times when your followers were most connected on the social network.
Thus, all those times that I commented that we republished the contents, were not chosen randomly. It is clear that we mention the best times to publish our best content.
For example, if the time when our public is most present is at 6:00 p.m., we prefer to publish rich content, which has greater potential to generate Leads, rather than a blog post.
In the event that the tool does not make this data available directly to you, it is necessary to carry out tests and experiments to see at what time your publication has the best performance.
Do I need to use a posting tool?
This is the topic that would qualify as a luxury in your social media management. Because? Because a tool to schedule publications is not totally essential, that is, you are not going to stop publishing because you do not have a tool to automate that but, at the same time, it will make this work much easier, especially when you increase the frequency of publications.
The tool will do the hard work for you: you will define at what times you want the content to be published and, automatically, they will be scheduled, without you needing to enter your social network on Sunday night to make any manual publication.
In addition, the tool is totally connected to that issue that I mentioned about maintaining a publication calendar.
In the RD Station publishing tool, for example, you can already see a calendar with suggested times to post and also with commemorative dates.
Finally, there is one more benefit that I will explain later, but I will make a preview: publishing through a tool will make it much easier to analyze your results!
How should I interact with my audience?
Imagine with me: you own a pizzeria and you have followed all the steps to be present on social networks until now. You created a Facebook page, defined your strategy, and have even made frequent posts. However, one day, a customer had a bad experience with a pizza that he bought from your company.
Find your page on Facebook right away and leave negative recommendations about your pizzeria, as well as various unfavorable comments on your posts. What are you doing?
I hope you don't choose to leave the customer unanswered or, worse yet, exclude the comments they left on your page. You know why? If you exclude them, the customer will sense that and snowball, causing them to come back and leave even more comments.
If you simply don't respond, everyone looking for your business will be met with bad recommendations and will automatically remove your pizzeria from the possibilities for pleasure and food.
Thus, from the experience we have in managing social networks here at RD Station with this type of situation, I recommend that you evaluate each case as unique, investigate thoroughly to discover what happened and do not give standard answers when that happens.
It is very important, yes, to respond, but it is even more important to give an adequate response than a solution to the customer's problem, and not just a justification that, many times, almost ends up placing the blame on the customer.
So, put this away: social media has the power to make a company famous quickly and bring great results, but it also has the power to destroy it even faster. So be careful when assuming the responsibility that is to be present in that type of channel.
What kind of interactions should I respond to?
Here in RD we try to interact in every possible way with our followers. For example, many people seek us out to talk about various topics in Facebook messages, from general questions about Digital Marketing , commercial contact requests, company proposals, feedback and suggestions, etc.
We see this as an incredible communication channel: we have the possibility to chat quickly and informally with our clients, potential clients and fans of the brand. Yes, that means we reply to all messages we receive on our Facebook page.
Of course, this investment is large: we need an available person who dedicates a good part of his time to give attention to these people. But believe it, the return that this brings can be much more valuable to your company.
Beyond the messages, we interact directly with our posts, liking all the comments and responding to a large part of them, as well as the posts made by visitors directly on our page and recommendations, whether positive or negative.
In the end, what matters is that our followers feel welcomed and cared for and, for this, we do our best to attend to everyone and try to help them with any problem or question they may have.
What is social media tracking?
Another topic within the interaction with your audience is the monitoring of social networks. It consists of searching for keywords that speak to your business, for example, the name of your company or the sector in which you operate, to find publications in which you were directly tagged and that deserve special attention.
For example, let's imagine that a vehicle promoted our main event on its website, the RD Summit , and did not tag our company, referencing it 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 page.
This functionality can also be found in RD Station and it is important to always be aware of what is being said about our company.
How should 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 is incredible 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 attracts a positive result for the company and that more and more people are fans of the brand, right?
However, 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 customers, using that informal and fun communication on social networks can give the impression that you are not being yourself, do you agree?
For this reason, when defining how to communicate and what words/expressions you are going to use, it is very important to go back and remember who your target audience is , that is, who you will be talking to.
Surely the communication that you are going to use with the director of a company will be different from the one that you will use with a university student. TRUE?
How do I analyze my results?
After doing all this, the only way to measure whether your company's social media management is being done well or not is by analyzing the results. For this you need to define which metrics are important within 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 via social networks in a period, which can be divided by social network and by publication.
To access that number here at RD Station, we use Google Analytics and RD Station. However, here is the tip to get it registered: you need to enter parameters in your custom URLs, the famous UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module or, in Spanish, Urchin Tracking Module).
And here I explain why I mentioned above that a tool would facilitate your analysis: RD Station manages to automatically add those parameters to your URLs when you make a publication, making it possible for you to discover exactly which channel the traffic and your Leads are coming from.
Beyond that, there are other metrics that we analyze in RD Station's social media management and that are related to the performance of our posts.
Metrics such as the Engagement or the Reach of the publications, provided by Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, are very important to obtain insights about the type of content we are publishing, the images we are using, our communication, schedules, etc.
Do you remember that I commented on the second aspect of our social media strategy, related to the creation of a brand and an engaged community? Metrics such as the monthly increase in the number of fans and sentiment analysis of the interactions left by followers can help to measure whether the strategy is being carried out well or not.
By analyzing these metrics, which can be taken directly from each social network, it is possible to discover insights for the constant improvement of your 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 that comes from social networks is decreasing compared to the impressions of the posts, that only increase, it's possible that something in your publication is not working, such as the type of description or the image.
In another case, if the traffic on your website is increasing, but the number of conversions within it is not having the same behavior, it may be due to the type of content or your Landing Page has a problem.
Are we going to put our hands in the dough?
My intention was to share with you a bit of the learning we had with the management of social networks here at RD Station. I hope the content manages to help companies that are having a hard time executing their social media strategy!
Do 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 see our social networks:
- Twitter;
- LinkedIn;
Frequent questions
What is social media management?
Social network management involves various stages that include from the definition of the strategy and positioning, the planning of publications and execution, to the monitoring and survey of the results.
How often do you post on social media?
The posting routine here at RD Station, we publish at least one new blog post on social media per day and one rich lead generation material per week.
