Social media management and why experience counts for everything!
Social media management is what we do and we’ve been managing other businesses social media accounts for around five years. It all started when we setup my Darlington Area Jobs Facebook page in 2010 and ever since then, we’ve been hooked. We’ve got no social media qualifications but we believe that when it comes to social media management, experience counts for everything.
There is a huge difference between managing your personal accounts and managing business accounts and just because you have a personal Facebook or Twitter page, that doesn’t mean you can instantly market a business online. Here’s how I can tell the difference between an amateur and an experienced social media marketer:
- GRAMMAR – You can generally tell if an inexperienced person is running a company’s social media account as there are often too many spelling mistakes. I also get annoyed when a person posts an update and refers to the company as an ‘are’ instead of an ‘it’. This is your online reputation and you can’t afford to get this wrong.
- INTERACTION – I can generally look at a social media account and tell if an inexperienced person is managing it. Take Twitter for example, if a timeline is full of re-tweets rather than posts and engagements, that tells me that the person managing it just wants the account to look busy. An experienced person makes the timeline look engaging, they reply to people, include accounts in tweets, after all, engagement is key. There’s also a reason behind every post that’s put onto social media and managed accounts shouldn’t look managed.
- TARGET MARKET – There’s too many people focussing on chasing numbers. Often when a person starts out managing social media accounts, they just want to chase Likes and followers and will follow and follow back anyone. Social media marketing is not about numbers. Experienced people will have a focus, they are careful with who they follow, they set up secret Twitter list to keep tabs on competitors, they setup ‘other pages to watch’ lists on Facebook, they are not focussed on numbers, they focus on engagement and results.
- COSTS – Social media management companies are popping up all over. Inexperienced companies will offer to manage social media accounts for next to nothing because they think it’s easy to do, they will also tend to automate everything. There are also some companies who charge the earth and do very little but as the business owner doesn’t fully understand social media, they get away with it. An experienced person will put a detailed proposal together, tell the company what they need, compare those needs with the accounts they manage and charge a comparative amount. For example, if I’m managing a Facebook and Twitter account for a company, why would I charge a hugely different amount for managing a LinkedIn and Twitter account for another client? Remember, you get what you pay for and if the cost sounds too good to be true, it usually is!
We manage a range of social media accounts, from estate agents to recruitment companies and from restaurants to engineering companies so if you need advice, get in touch.