Managing your company’s social media platforms can be a timely task but is a key marketing tool that should be used effectively. These days, social media management is often a part of an assistant’s job role, which is why our Marketing Manager, Daisy, has pulled together some tips on how to do this well.

(Read to the bottom for some helpful advice on building a great personal brand online)

1. Conduct a social media audit

This should be your very first task. It’s so important to understand what platforms your organisation is using, how they are using them, what’s working and what’s not working. You should also be checking out the organisation’s competitors – what are they doing that you’re not? A great way to monitor the activity going on within each platform is to look at the below points and compare them between each account.

- Engagement

- Click-through rates

- Growth/following

- Frequency of top performing posts

Once you have pulled through the data for each of the platforms, you can see which social media campaigns are working. Now is the time to see whether you have unnecessary accounts that are not doing anything for the business. Are they just taking up time and not producing any conversions? If so, time to get rid of them! It’s far more important to have just one or two accounts that are effective, than spreading yourself over lots of different accounts but not seeing any real growth. Along with your analytics, you should also look at your business objectives – who are your clients and what social media platforms do they use? Who are your competitors, and what social media platforms are they using?

2. Social media tools and how they can help

There are so many social media tools that can help you with analytics, planning content and scheduling for certain times. Below are a few that we use that are fab!

1. Planoly - ever struggled making sure your images sit nicely together on your Instagram grid? Planoly is built just like Instagram. You can drop images, move them around, scheduling them using a monthly calendar and plan professionally styled stories.

2. Hootsuite – manage, schedule and analyse all your social media platforms in one place.

3. TweetDec – focussed purely on Twitter. Follow competitor accounts with out them knowing, schedule posts, watch trending hashtags and analyse your posts.

4. Buffer – similar to Hootsuite - craft the perfect post for each of your social network, all in one place.

3. Planning your content and scheduling in advance

Creating content that is engaging and interesting to your audience can be one of the hardest parts of managing social media. It is super important to be following and engaging with influencers that relate to your company, industry professionals and thought leaders. By following people that are important to your industry and sharing their news, this shows to your followers that you are experts in your sector and interested in what is going on. You also need to tap into what is going on in your organisation. Meet with members of staff, get updates from them on what’s happening within the business and what news is worth sharing on social. It’s also great to share news about members of your team i.e. birthday, awards, achievements etc. People like to see what is going on behind the scenes and connect on a more personal basis with an organisation.

4. Listen to trends and conversations

Listening and reacting to what other people say in your industry is a huge part of managing your social accounts. We suggest spending 20 minutes each day engaging, commenting and sharing other people’s content or conversation starters. Take not of hashtags and keywords that are popular in your industry and use them in your account.

5. Customer Care

Often customers/clients/fans will contact you via social media. You should have a standard customised response that has been thought out so that you are always consistent and speaking in the correct company tone.

Social media is a fantastic free marketing tool not only for a business but for an individual. Having a well polished and active social media account is a brilliant way to show off your personality and passions to potential employees. Interested in nailing your personal brand online? Daisy, has also shared some tips on how to do this here