Social Media Management

Social media management (SMM) is the process of managing your company’s presence online. These days almost everyone has at least one social profile, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat or any one of the hundreds of other sites. A 2016 report from “We Are Social” says that there are over 3.4 billion active Internet users on the Web and over 2.3 billion active users on social media. With a world population of 7.4 billion that represents nearly 30%! Clearly, it is important to be visible to this vast audience if you are to increase your brand and penetration in the market. But before we look at how to manage your social media connections, we should define what we mean by the term. social media management

In simple terms, a social media website is a group of people with a common interest or desire to communicate: in effect, an online community. So the task of social media management comes down to creating and controlling the profiles and content on each site. But first, what is a community? In Internet terms, a community is a group of people who meet online because they have the same interests, passions or hobbies.

They join together through social media to exchange information, ideas, photographs, etc. and to join in discussions on the topics in which they are interested. So how can a company it fit into these communities or create one? By having a social media management program that will be the voice of the company online. The work involved in doing this will typically include:

  1. Establishing which communities are of interest.
  2. Joining communities and setting up comprehensive profiles.
  3. Linking profiles to the company website.
  4. Creating and managing relevant content.
  5. Engaging in online discussions.
  6. Managing online customer relations/customer service.
  7. Establishing and monitoring performance measures.

Social media involvement is a great way to keep up with trends in your industry and to interact with your customers and prospects. It can also be useful in building anticipation before the launch of a new product or resolving problems that may arise from time-to-time. You will find out everything that is being said about your brand and you will know what your current and potential customers think of you and your products or services. This is vital information in establishing and maintaining a good reputation.

Social media is one of the easiest places to collect feedback, questions, comments, complaints and opinions on your products because that’s where consumers gather to talk about their recent purchase experiences. So social media interaction is a good way to manage customer satisfaction and to nip problems in the bud before they escalate.

As well as participating in the online communities, it is important to establish performance measures to make sure that you can track the effectiveness of your campaigns to review how effective they are and to adjust them as necessary. This will enable you to track your return on investment and to see where your budget can be spent most effectively.

Overall, social media management can be summed up as an effective way to engage and interact with your customers and potential customers, and it will also inevitably lead to more traffic to your website and potentially increase your business.