If you are on any social media platform, and really serious about growing your audience / reach – and see your efforts turn into tangible results that grow your business (sales), you already know how much work goes in just managing one account.
There are comments to reply to, reviews to respond to and there are of course the regular updates expected from you by your audience. If you do paid ads, that is one more thing you have to manage.
If you have two or more social media accounts you use to funnel traffic back to your website / blog / sales pages / email list, you will quickly realize that just keeping your accounts updated takes a lot of time.
But now you can regain that time back by outsourcing your social media management to a freelancer here on Niabusiness.
What can a social media manager you hire do for your brand?
Update your accounts. This is the one thing social media managers are known to do. Generally, when hiring a person for a task such as social media management, you will often have a sheet with details about the nature of content you would like them to add to your social media accounts. These things could be:
- How to content related to one of your products or services. So, even a video tutorial or a teaser about an existing or upcoming product.
- Quotes that make sense. Not motivational porn. Not content just meant to stir controversy. But something that someone can nod to and retweet / share with their followers, friends or family.
- Your blog posts. Generally just the title with a link pointing back to a post.
- News from within your organization (offers, new products, opinions from the CEO / founder etc.)
- News from your niche or industry. You know the kinds that resonate with people following you. For example, posts about how you are responding to a problem being experienced by players in your segment of the market (showing customers what you are doing to cushion them from said problems spilling into their lives).
- Links to your products with incentives to help drive clicks to your site.
- GIFs. Because we all need a good laugh sometime.
You can give the social media manager free reign – and let them post whatever they want. All they have to do is just come up with the ideas and see the ones you approve of. Then slowly over time, they will learn about what you like and don’t like.
So, they will be able to come up with huge lists for updates – and schedule them on your Twitter handle, Facebook fan page, Facebook group, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram among other platforms.
Do cross promotion. So, just sharing the same piece of content to your various handles, in a way that resonates with the audiences you have on each platform.
Track links and CTAs (call to action) to help you gather valuable insight. They can, for example, append UTM codes to your links (so, you can gather some data on your Google Analytics account). They can use Bit.ly links for tracking (or use any other URL shortener service like TinyURL).
Take quote-able sections off your blog posts and turn them into tweets or graphics for your Facebook page. So, the manager should have basic design skills at least, and be able to use tools like Canva, PicMonkey, Gimp even if they can’t use Adobe Photoshop to create appealing designs and graphics for your social media accounts.
Create short videos inviting people to come check a product or service you are offering. The videos of this nature usually have no faces / no people in them. So, it could be like some really well-designed PowerPoint presentation turned into a video with software like Snagit, Camtasia or Filmora.
If you are interested in posting videos like these to your social media profiles, you can get the freelance social media manager you hire a license to software such as Snagit, which is actually well-priced and is worth having if you are going to hire someone to manage your social media accounts.
Coordinate with other team members helping you come up with content for your blog or YouTube channel. So, the manager you hire should be able to work side by side with freelance writers writing your blog posts, SEO specialists doing your link building or contractors you have hired to create and edit videos for your website / YouTube channel.
Work with your website / blog editor or sales team to create a content schedule that educates (your audience) and also gives your followers a chance to buy valuable products from you or people you have join venture partnerships with.
Moderate comments on your page or group. So, the manager can regularly:
- read the comments left by followers / customers and reply to them. Usually people sometimes just leave their messages in the comments sections, instead of getting in touch with you via email or phone. Your social media manager can help such followers with the information / assistance they need.
- go to your Facebook page and reply to messages promptly. Or reply to mentions and DMs (direct messages).
- weed out offensive, spammy and insensitive comments and replies from your accounts and groups (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups).
Bump evergreen content up your timeline / news feed from time to time. So, just taking updates that did well, that are still relevant today, and posting them as fresh content pieces.
Gather content ideas that can be used for future blog posts and email campaigns.
Engage your audience with polls and quizzes especially in Facebook and Twitter.
Find or make graphics to go along with your text updates using some of the graphic design tools I have mentioned above.
Be able to do some form of customer support – for customers that reach out to you for help via your social media handles.
Be able to upload content to social media marketing tools like HootSuite, Coschedule Social Organizer, SocialPilot or Buffer.
Be able to spot trends (and relevant hashtags) and help you ride them for more reach and sales.
What is the process of hiring a social media manager on Niabusiness like?
Once you know what you are looking for, take a look at the ad listings in the Social Media Marketing category.
Reply to some of the ads placed by freelancers in that category.
Tell them what you are looking. And gauge if they can help you achieve the results you are looking for.
Once you find the right person, tell them what their responsibilities will be.
If they are okay working with you, talk about pay.
And take things from there.