ACCELERATE BUSINESS GROWTH WITH
Effective Social Media Marketing and Management
Use this COMPLETE GUIDE to do it yourself, or leverage our experienced team of professional social media marketing and management strategists to do it for you.
Today, the world of social media is changing rapidly. As a result, digital marketers prioritize social media as part of their online marketing strategy. As digital marketing becomes more complex and sophisticated, the need to understand how each social media platform performs is essential to get the most benefit for your business. This is where social media marketing and management comes into focus.
What Is Social Media Management?
Social media management is the ongoing posting, responding and monitoring of a business's social media channels. Usually, to gain more followers, increase engagement and promote brand visibility.
Depending on several factors such as the size of the company, the number of channels and the social media strategy, social media management can be performed by an in-house team or an agency specializing in social media management.
How Can Social Media Management Benefit Your Business?
The allure of seeing a follower count climb to the thousands and even millions is incredibly enticing. Any social media manager will tell you that significantly increasing the number of followers on a channel or creating viral content is euphoric. It can even be like an itch that never seems to get satisfied, no matter how often it happens.
And not only happen once but repeatedly, keeping the best social media managers on their toes. With a highly qualified and experienced social media manager, you will maximize the performance of your channels for short and long-term wins for your business.
Here are the top three reasons why social media management is essential for your business:
No Cost To Get Started
Whether you are working on shoe string budget as a solo practitioner or have millions to spend on marketing, you can think of social media as a relatively low risk when it comes to marketing initiatives.
In 2022, it will be free to join any social media platform.
Create Valuable Customer Personas With Real-Time Data
Did you know that studies show that 74% of people now use social media when making purchase decisions, and 80% of people get advice about purchases through social media? The depth of analytics available through native social media reporting and third-party tools will give you insight into your business's ideal client and what interests them. Building these "customer personas" can take time, but the investment will pay off across all marketing initiatives - not just social media!
Build Your Brand & Gain New Business
Social media channels are evergreen and connect your business to potential customers.
Simply posting content consistently and engaging in conversations in the comments can help you build a strong brand presence online.
With social media, companies can build their brand, generate leads and increase sales.
Don't believe us? Take a look at these recent social media marketing statistics!
Instagram Marketing Stats for Brands
- 2 out of 3 users say that Instagram helps them to connect with brands online
- 90% of users on Instagram follow at least one business
- 50% of Instagram users are more interested in a brand AFTER viewing a business's Instagram ad
Facebook Marketing Stats for Brands
- 66% of Facebook users visit at least one local business page weekly
- One-third of Facebook's users have made a purchase directly on the platform
Twitter Marketing Stats for Brands
- 211 million of Twitter's daily active users are responding to Twitter ads
- Ad revenue on Twitter has increased 22% year-over-year
YouTube Marketing Stats for Brands
- 70% of viewers purchased a brand after seeing it on a YouTube video
- Ads targeted to users by search intent (rather than just simple demographics) earn a 100% higher lift in interest to purchase from a brand
- YouTube ads could reach up to 2.56 billion users
LinkedIn Marketing Stats for Brands
- LinkedIn sites that there are over 57 million companies pages on their platform
- LinkedIn ads have the potential to reach over 10% of the world's population
- Ads on LinkedIn now reach 42.8% of women and 57.2% of men
Pinterest Marketing Stats for Brands
- Nearly 11% of online users between 16-64 use Pinterest pinboards to research brands
- 80% of weekly users will discover a new brand on Pinterest
Tiktok Marketing Stats for Brands
- The most-followed account on TikTok is TikTok's channel
- 63% of TikTok ads that have the highest click-through-rate put their message upfront
- Vertical videos on TikTok have a 25% higher watch rate
How to Market on Social Media?
Social Media provides unlimited opportunities to reach more clients and build a powerful brand. Yet, for that reason, getting started with social media management can seem overwhelming at first. One way to get started is to learn what works and what doesn't from the top social media experts.
The five social media management steps that top social media management companies use
- Complete a comprehensive social media audit.
- Build personas of your target audiences.
- Decide on a social media strategy.
- Develop a well-thought-out content calendar. Plan and create content for social media.
- Measure and monitor social media performance.
From conducting a social media audit to following a content calendar, each step is vitally important when investing in social media ande developing marketing campaigns for your business. But, most importantly, with an understanding of your business goals and objectives for social media, you will be able to prioritize social media platforms, ad spending and resources much more effectively.
STEP 1: Complete a Comprehensive Social Media Audit
To set up your business for success on social media, begin by getting a solid picture of your current social media presence and content marketing plan with a social media audit. The information you gather during this step will help you determine the best strategy to meet your business goals.
What is a social media audit?
A social media audit is marketing tool where you collect data on your current social media accounts. You will research several data points such as:
- followers
- engagement rate
- profile accuracy
- posting frequency (original and reposts)
- top-performing posts
- hashtag usage
- growth rate
Your audit will identify where your successes have been, such as organic and paid social posts (reposts, scheduled posts, etc.) that have gone viral. And it will illuminate where you can improve.
You don't want to stop there. Nearly every business has some form of competition online. Analyzing your top competitors will give you the edge you need to differentiate your brand online.
There are dozens of free templates online that can help you confidently complete a social media audit.
If you're using an analytics tool as we do for our clients at Rule Your Kingdom, then honing in on tons of valuable social media data can be done with a few clicks.
Make a List of All Current Social Media Accounts
Go all-in and start your audit by making a list of all of your company's social media profiles. You will likely only have one account per platform if you are a single brand. Companies with multiple brands will include all the accounts belonging to the different sub-brands owned by the company.
Gather Performance Data
Use the social media platform's analytics reporting tools to gather your most important performance social media metrics.
At a minimum, you'll want to capture the following for each platform on your list:
Organize Your Data
Place all the information you've gathered into a spreadsheet and build a dashboard with easy-to-understand visuals.
Here are a few free templates we love at Rule Your Kingdom:
Analyze Your Data
Raw data has no meaning until you build the story behind what that numbers represent.
For instance, if you see a considerable spike in your engagement rate, it might result from hitting the sweet spot on the following:
STEP 2: Build Buyer Personas of Your Target Audiences
Understanding your target audience is a cornerstone of any social media strategy. When you know your best (and worst) clients, you can create content and campaigns that will drive engagement and revenue.
Use the Audience Data From Your Social Media Audit
Start by using the data you gathered during your social media audit. In the early stages of gathering audience data, you may end up going down rabbit holes and pulling data that doesn't end up being meaningful for your business goals. That's ok. For now, error on the side of collecting as much relevant audience data as possible. The more information you have, the easier it will be to build your first buyer personas.
Keep in mind: Some information won't be available in every platform's native analytics tool. Consider doing customer surveys or online research if you need specific metrics like customer product/service feedback.
Create a Buyer Persona Profile for Each Target Audience Found in Your Data
Now that you have reached the point where you are ready to define your ideal buyer personas, it is time to group your audiences by similar characteristics. For example, you may have one group that is stay-at-home moms and another that is stay-at-home dads.
If you are a product-based company, you will likely have different audiences for each product. If you're a service-based business, you may have one B2C audience and another B2B.
Once your target audiences are defined, ask yourself what a typical day looks like for each audience group.
Taking the time to visualize the day-to-day activities of your target audiences will help you understand how to position your product or service in a way that solves a specific pain point for them.
Create a One-Page Bio with Visuals for Each Buyer's Persona
Now that you have a rich understanding of your ideal target audiences, it is beneficial to name each target audience and select a profile photo or avatar that is representative of the audience makeup.
Use stock photos for the profile picture, and then add additional lifestyle photos to build a complete understanding of your audience. Then, bring all profile descriptions and images together on a one-page document. Repeat this process for each target audience you identified.
Voilà! With buyer personas, you now have a powerful tool for your social media management and for generating a consistent ROI with social media.
Bonus tip: Be sure to revisit your buyer personas regularly and revise your descriptions as you learn more about your target audience's buying behaviors.
STEP 3: Decide on a Social Media Strategy
It is time to put all your hard work into a straightforward social media strategy for your business. Your social media strategy will clearly state your business goals and the social media tactics that you will use to achieve them. Your social media strategy should also define the roles and responsibilities of the social media management team, the content approval process, and reporting schedule.
Articulate Your Business Goals
Your business's goals are the targets your company wants to achieve, whether short-term or long-term. Business goals are qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative goals can be aspirational or motivational, such as driving an organization toward a particular objective, like improved customer feedback or review. Quantitative goals are numerical, such as reaching a revenue target, bottom-line profitability, or upselling or cross-selling new products to existing customers.
Select Which Social Media Platforms You Will and Won't Post On… For Now
Now we have reached the critical step of determining which social media platforms are strategically the best-suited to reach your target audiences and achieve your business goals.
If you're just starting with social media for your business, selecting one or two platforms to focus on will help you get a foothold on social media without being spread too thin.
Successful social media marketing connects you with your target audience, so you'll want to focus on social media platforms with users that match your target audiences.
If you are already managing social media for your business, you may need to evaluate if the platforms you use are optimal or if it is time to change.
For example, during your social media audit and persona research, your audience is mainly on Tiktok. Yet, you've been focusing on Facebook instead and haven't started posting on Tiktok. With that information, it would be time to shift gears to add Tiktok to your social media strategy.
Here are some things to consider when answering the question: "What are the best social media platforms for businesses?"
- What are my marketing objectives? Improve brand awareness, generate more client leads, drive traffic to specific webpages, convert e-commerce sales, etc.
- How much will I have to spend on ad buys to meet my marketing objectives?
- What are the platform's demographics, and do they align with my buyer personas?
- Are my target personas actively engaging in other companies' content similar to mine?
- How much will I have to invest in creating enough social media content to be noticed?
- What are the social media platforms my competitors are using?
Use these 2022 social media trends by channel when selecting your platforms:
Instagram Statistics
- Users aged 25-34 make up the most significant percentage of Instagram users
- Gen-Z names Instagram as their favorite social media
- Instagram users are close to being evenly mixed, with 51.6% being men and women making up the other 48.4%
- 3.76 billion people visit Instagram every day
- Every day 500 million people view Instagram Stories
- Instagram is a go-to research tool, with 81% of online users turning to the platform to find products and services
- In America, 63% of online users check Instagram at least once a day
Facebook Statistics
- 43.5% of Facebook users worldwide are female, and 56.5% are male
- Men aged 25-34 make up almost 20% of Facebook's users
- Female teenagers aged 13-17 are Facebook's lowest demographic of users worldwide
- Women aged 25-34 in America are Facebook's most active users
- Facebook is one of the top five most-visited sites in the world, coming third
- In America, more than half of Facebook users visit the platform several times per day
TikTok Statistics
- The majority of TikTok users are below 30 years old
- In the US, 37 million Gen-Zers use TikTok
- Over half of TikTok's users are female
- In 2022, TikTok is now the top social media platform for generating sales. Consumer spending on TikTok rose 77% from 2021
- 61% of American users are female
- Over one billion monthly users are active worldwide
- Partnering with Tiktok Creators through the TikTok Creator Marketplace can boost views (impressions) by 193%
- Bonus! For both B2B and B2C companies, 67% of users say TikTok inspires them to purchase because they feel closer to a brand
Twitter Statistics
- Over a third of Twitter's users are 25-34 years old
- Twitter's users are predominantly male; 70.4% of the platform's users are males, and 29.6% are female
- 25% of American users are on Twitter several times a day, with 42% checking it at least once a day
YouTube Statistics
- YouTube users lean toward a male audience, with 54% being male and 46% being female
- 22% of YouTube users are watching videos via mobile, and 78% are watching videos via desktop computers
- One-third of all internet users watch at least one tutorial or how-to video a week
- YouTube advertising reach exceeds 2.56 billion users
- Males aged 25-34 are the biggest audience for advertising on YouTube at 11.6%
Pinterest Statistics
- 76.7% of the Pinterest audience is female, and 15.3% of the audience is male
- 45% of Pinterest's US audience earns six figures and more in annual household income
- 85% of Pinterest users say they use Pinterest to plan new projects and come to Pinterest when they are in the early stages of deciding on purchases
- 8 out of 10 Pinterest users say the social media platform leaves them feeling good, with many calling it an "online oasis"
- 75% of Pinterest users that visit the site weekly say they are always shopping when on the platform
LinkedIn Statistics
- America has the highest user rate in the world, with over 185 million Americans on the platform
- Men 25-34 years old are the largest user base on the platform
- 40 million people use LinkedIn to search for jobs each week
- Companies that post weekly on LinkedIn see a 2x higher engagement rate
- 12% of American users check LinkedIn several times a day
STEP 4: Plan and Create Content For Social Media
After all the hard work of building a solid social media strategy, you're ready to start planning and creating social media content for your business.
To make the job of social media content planning content a snap, start here:
- Start by downloading a social media calendar template.
- Open up the calendar and ensure all major holidays are populated.
- Fill in other essential business dates, like product launches, events, and seasonal activities.
Refer to your business's social media strategy to determine how much content you need to create based on selected platforms. It may take some testing to land on the exact posting frequency.
The goal is to appear on your audience's newsfeed but not publish so much that you become white noise and your audience continues scrolling. Knowing how many posts you need to create daily or weekly can help you manage your resources and be more efficient.
Not sure how much social media content you should be creating? Take a look at our social media posting guide to getting you started.
Social Media Posting Guide by Platform
The right posting frequency can help you build an engaging community of followers on social media. Of course, each platform has its standard best practices, which are a great place to start if you are just beginning on a social media platform. Over time, testing (and retesting and retesting) different posting schedules will help you hone in on precisely the right frequency, time of day, tone and style that will deliver the most social media benefits to your business.
Recommended Social Media Posting Frequency
Instagram
1 IGTV per week
2 Reels per week
2 Static Posts per week
5 Stories a Day
LinkedIn
1 Article per week
5 Posts per week (with emphasis on early week posting M-W)
Twitter
2 Posts per day
3 Tweets per day
Facebook
2 Facebook lives per month
5 static posts per week
5 stories a day
Pinterest
1 fresh Pin per day
YouTube
2 videos per week
2 shorts per day
Tiktok
2 videos per day
How to Manage Social Media Content Creation?
You may have wondered if the role of a social media manager is different from a social media content creator, and the answer is yes!
If you haven't already, now is an excellent time to look at the roles and responsibilities surrounding your business's social media activities.
To produce high-quality social media content, you'll want to ensure that someone on your in-house or agency team is responsible for each of the following roles.
Social Media Manager
Someone in charge of building the social media content strategy, creating the editorial calendar, allocating an ad budget, and continuously measuring performance
Social Media Content Creator
Someone in charge of creating content ideas, writing engaging posts, designing graphics, producing short video clips and repurposing content for other uses
Social Media Content Approver
Someone in charge of collaborating with the social media team and is readily available to review and approve posts for publishing
One further note is that you want a defined social media content approval process for your business.
With the large volume of content produced, creating a straightforward approval process for posting, commenting and escalating issues will make it far easier to stay on track with your social media posting calendar.
A social media publishing scheduler (native to most platforms, but a third-party scheduler like Sprout Social, Hubspot etc., can save time) is a must for social media managers. A scheduler loads your posts at the beginning of the month (or week) and gives you the control to publish at precisely the most ideal time for each platform.
Create Stunning Social Media Content Like a Pro
Being a pro at social media content creation means having several different skill sets, including photography, copywriting, video production, video editing and graphic design. There are many various tools available for creating social media content at scale. Even if you aren't a professional graphic designer or photographer, the right tools will help you get the job done!
STEP 5: Measure & Monitor Social Media Performance
Like all things digital these days, you can track nearly every detail through social media metrics. Yet, effectively measuring social media is an art and a science.
The metrics you decide to measure will depend on your business and social media marketing objectives.
However, with a consistent and unified snapshot of your company's performance, you'll have everything at your fingertips to make data-driven decisions on your social media channels.
Not sure what is meaningful when it comes to measuring social media performance?
Here are the top 10 social media metrics you'll want to be measuring.
Collect these monthly metrics and measure your business's social media progress over time.
Followers
Impressions
Audience growth rate
Engagement Rate
Video views
Video completion rate
Click-through rate (CTR)
Conversion rate
Social share of voice (SSoV)
Social sentiment
Social Listening
The last topic we'll discuss is staying on top of conversations around your brand on social media.
Social media monitoring is crucial and goes beyond just keeping an eye on likes, comments and reviews on your business's social media channels.
Social listening tools like Google Alters can monitor social media and uncover conversations about your brand online.
Just Get Started!
Following the social media management steps in this guide will give you a head start toward creating social media like a pro. The good news is that you can build on strategy over time. Managing social media may seem overwhelming, but don't let that stop you from getting started.
Rule Your Kingdom is a boutique social media agency that can assist you with every step of your social media management needs. Our social media team has decades of combined experience conducting social media audits, creating buyer personas, building powerful social media strategies and creating viral content that drives measurable results.
If you're ready to jump in, click the link below to request a preliminary social media competitive audit report from our expert social media strategy team.
Rule Your Kingdom Has Specialized Medical and Legal Industry Experience
Social Media for Law Firms
Why is specialized social media content for lawyers important?
The best law firms on social media build their brand online by establishing trust and promoting their legal track record of success.
Legal clients are savvy and turn to social media to consider a law office fit for their legal needs.
The best social media for lawyers occurs when there is an understanding of the unique approach to writing social media posts for law firms.
Knowing how to use social media for your law firm will ensure your social media strategy wins big.
Social Media for Medical Practices
Do doctors need social media?
Every day medical practices are looking for ways to bring in more patients and fill their calendars. Popular doctors on social media have become experts at creating content that stands out from other doctors.
With a technical understanding of social media medical marketing, you'll establish trust in your practice and bring peace of mind to your patients.
Rule Your Kingdom has been successfully serving the medical community with digital marketing solutions for over a decade.
Social Media Marketing for Dentists
How do I market my dental practice on social media?
Social media plays an essential role in the success of healthcare businesses – including dental offices.
With modern consumers’ reliance on the internet and social media, it’s only wise to implement professional social media marketing strategies for dentists.
Simply having social media profiles for your dental practice is not enough. To attract new patients and get the most out of social media marketing for dentists, you need to work with experienced social media marketing strategists.
We offer industry-leading social media marketing for dentistry, allowing you to reach new prospects and build an online community through strong social networking.
Rule Your Kingdom is a premium results-based digital marketing agency, world-renowned for solving the most complex and difficult search engine optimization (SEO) challenges for law firms and medical practices. We specialize in using SEO (along with a full complement of other digital marketing strategies) to deliver specific and measurable increases in internet-driven revenue for growth-oriented medical practices and law firms worldwide.
Founded in 2011, we help you dominate your competition online by bringing you exactly the right audience using a variety of measurable inbound marketing strategies including:
- Wide-Area Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Local Search Engine Optimization
- Performance-Based Web Design
- Google Ads Paid Search (PPC) Advertising Management Facebook/Instagram Advertising Management
- Social Media Marketing and Management (SMM)
What sets us apart? In addition to our deep technical SEO expertise for attorneys, physicians, surgeons and dentists, our services are exclusive to only one client per specialty (legal or medical) in a given geographic area.
Testimonial Videos From Our Valued Clients
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President and Founder
Night Flight Concepts
John Restivo
Vice President & General Sales Manager
A-1 Fire and Security Equipment
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Owner
Universal Windows Direct of Central Texas
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Owner
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Owner
Down to Earth Technology