20 Essential social media management tips for successful local marketing
As of 2023, there are just under 5 billion social media users spread across the globe (Statista). Those users head to platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest to check and stay up to date on current trends, communicate with friends and family, research restaurants, and review purchases. All those actions add up to a lot of opportunities for brands eager to be noticed, but making your mark on social media isn’t as easy as creating a page and sharing a meme from time to time.
Social media is an important communication channel. Ensure you create content that connects with your audience by downloading our free “White-label social media checklist” now.
Social Marketing is part art, part science. Whether you’re looking to expand your service offerings or fine-tune the methodologies you already have in place. These 20 social media management tips will help with content creation, hands-free publishing, KPI analysis, and almost everything in between.
Table of Contents
- Scheduling and publishing tips for workplace productivity
- Content creation tips for social media managers
- Focus on quality over quantity when it comes to content
- Use templates and style guides for consistent branding across all social media channels
- Repurpose and reuse content across different social media apps and platforms
- Collaborate with other departments or teams to share resources and ideas
- Experiment with new content formats or platforms to keep content fresh and engaging
- Community management tips for different social media platforms
- Create and follow a social media policy to ensure compliance and consistency
- Regularly monitor and respond to social media comments and messages
- Implement a crisis management plan in case of negative feedback or backlash on social media
- Use data and insights to personalize social media content and messaging for target audiences
- Analytics and reporting tips
- Analyze and measure social media metrics to improve strategy and results
- Utilize social media listening tools to stay on top of industry trends and conversations
- Set realistic goals and track progress over time
- Conduct regular audits of social media accounts to ensure they are up-to-date and optimized
- Other social media management tips
- Frequently asked questions
Scheduling and publishing tips for workplace productivity
Social media and productivity don’t always go hand in hand, but they certainly can. Building and adhering to a content calendar helps create consistency in your workflow. It also saves time and effort by reducing the likelihood of duplicate posting. Add in automation, and you may even discover new ways to maximize bandwidth.
1. Develop a social media strategy and plan ahead
The average person jumps around seven different social platforms each month, which offers plenty of potential touchpoints for social media managers eager to make connections (DataReportal). A comprehensive strategy takes all these social accounts and opportunities into account, outlining:
- What assets will be created
- Where and when those assets will be posted
- Who will post them
- How you’ll follow up with reposts, comment replies, etc.
2. Use a content calendar to plan and schedule posts in advance
Content calendars are your primary scheduling tools for blocking out future social media posts, laying out not only the date for each post but the exact time each asset will be published.
Calendars should also include:
- The actual copy/media to be posted
- Links necessary for data tracking
- References to the campaign the content is part of (e.g., a specific product launch or a general brand awareness campaign)
- The networks/channels the content will be published on
- Collaboration notes and task assignments to ensure transparency and accountability
3. Utilize social media management tools to save time and automate tasks
Automation is one of the most cost-effective strategies available to marketers. You can’t create more hours in the day, for example, but you can make use of the hours you have by delegating certain items off your to-do list to highly rated tools and social media management platforms. Being able to schedule posts, create reports, and track trends using AI and machine learning can help increase productivity and efficiency.
4. Delegate tasks to team members or outsource to freelancers when needed
While you’re busy delegating tasks to automation tools, hand off a few items to fellow team members as well. Consider outsourcing specialized tasks like SEO research, copywriting, and graphic creation to freelancers to help free up internal bandwidth and ensure the best possible results.
Content creation tips for social media managers
A reported 80 percent of marketers say content creation is their number one priority (HubSpot). That’s likely because quality content is an integral part of brand messaging, driving engagement, increasing authority, and improving conversion rates. But it takes dedication and practice to get your content to a place where it makes a substantial impact.
5. Focus on quality over quantity when it comes to content
Marketers spend a lot of time debating post frequency. While it’s true you need to post regularly to gain traction with online communities, it’s better to create and share one in-depth article that’s authoritative and engaging. This will often deliver better results than whipping up a handful of poorly researched creative briefs on pieces that could undermine the brand’s reputation.
6. Use templates and style guides for consistent branding across all social media channels
Crafting content from scratch is time-consuming. Templates and style guides help streamline the process by offering plug-and-play opportunities to build graphics and posts in just minutes while also adhering to important brand guidelines regarding image size, fonts, and color schemes.
7. Repurpose and reuse content across different social media apps and platforms
Taking posts from one platform and reusing them elsewhere helps you get more bang for your content marketing buck by increasing consistency, post frequency, and reach with minimal extra investment. It’s also a great way to fill up your content calendar — like waving a magic wand that turns one post into six.
Repurposing content might look like this:
- Turning a blog into a Twitter thread
- Sharing screenshots of a Twitter thread on Instagram
- Using responses to your Instagram Stories to create new Stories
- Cutting down YouTube or Facebook videos to create TikToks
- Retweeting customer testimonials
8. Collaborate with other departments or teams to share resources and ideas
There is an endless well of social media ideas for businesses floating around in the entrepreneurial ether, but sometimes it takes a cross-departmental collab to shake those ideas loose. Schedule regular brainstorming sessions with your colleagues from graphics, SEO, customer service, IT, and other specialties. Then see what they think would resonate with consumers and how they envision improving the processes for crafting and delivering those messages.
9. Experiment with new content formats or platforms to keep content fresh and engaging
Written posts, ebook shares, static images, infographics, videos, livestreaming, memes, screenshots or user-generated content — there are so many ways to create content to fill a social media feed, and yet many brands fall into a rut. Try playing around with humorous hashtags or hosting a live video version of an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.
Pro-tip: You could then use excerpts from the AMA to generate tons of new content to share on social feeds for months to come.
Community management tips for different social media platforms
No list of tips or hacks for social media managers would be complete without talking about the importance of building a full audience-engaged community that includes consumers. Demonstrating shared values, participating in social media conversations, and acting on follower feedback will help build a strong brand image and encourage loyalty.
10. Create and follow a social media policy to ensure compliance and consistency
In the same way you construct a branding guide (think logos, brand colors, a content style guide, etc.), you should have a social media policy that governs your online presence. This policy should cover:
- The names/handles of your official brand channels
- How employees can use social media (personally and professionally)
- Issues/best practices surrounding diversity and inclusion
- Response guidelines in the face of PR concerns
11. Regularly monitor and respond to social media comments and messages
One of the simplest social media boosting strategies is to encourage interaction on other platforms by becoming part of the conversation. Review comments (both positive and negative) on social posts and respond, either on the post itself or via direct message.
Catalog recurring themes and bring them up at meetings to help address issues that could affect customer morale and loyalty.
12. Implement a crisis management plan in case of negative feedback or backlash on social media
The role of social media in reputation management is two-fold. It can be both the source of backlash and a channel for managing poor feedback. Having a crisis management plan in place in case of a social media misstep makes it easier to tackle molehills before they turn into mountains that can get your client’s brand canceled.
13. Use data and insights to personalize social media content and messaging for target audiences
Social media channels like Facebook and TikTok come with built-in data collection and reporting that can help you understand things like:
- The demographic profile of your existing followers
- When (time/day) your posts get the most traction
- Which hashtags are most popular
- The types of content consumers are currently clicking on most
- Which posts are performing best
Leverage that data to steer your organic and paid social strategies. You’re not only chasing better ROI, but you’re also meeting customers where they are by answering their questions or otherwise solving their pain points.
Analytics and reporting tips
Social media productivity should be measured quantitatively, which is why we track social media performance using key performance indicators (KPI) instead of just guessing whether a social media management strategy is working.
Include data reporting and analysis in your social media marketing packages to help your team understand which of their approaches is generating results and to prove to clients that your chosen direction is on point.
14. Analyze and measure social media metrics to improve strategy and results
Social media metrics like impressions, audience growth rate, reach, engagement rate, virality rate, share of voice (SOV), and video completion rate help paint a picture of what’s grabbing your followers’ attention, and which posts they’re scrolling past.
Interpret those data points and use the information as a tool to shape your social media strategy. If you see that viewership tends to drop off after the first 15 seconds of a video, you need to be sure that your hook is within those first 15 seconds. If a lot of non-followers are viewing your content, your posts are either ticking boxes for the platform’s algorithm or your followers are pressing the “share” button with impressive frequency.
15. Utilize social media listening tools to stay on top of industry trends and conversations
Listening in on consumer conversations on various social media sites can help you understand how a brand is viewed by the average person. How is the brand name used? Which keywords are attached to those brand mentions? How do those conversations differ when consumers are talking about competitors?
Integrating social listening tools just automate that process, tracking mentions and offering insight into what happens throughout a given period.
16. Set realistic goals and track progress over time
Experts recommend creating SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Every social media strategy should start with a clear, achievable goal, such as doubling followers across multiple accounts within a year or increasing engagement by 20 percent, rather than something unmeasurable, like “improve social media productivity.”
The next step is to choose metrics and checkpoints that will help you monitor progress. Instead of waiting until the one-year mark to see whether you’ve grown from 100,000 to 200,000 followers, try to grow by 10,000 every 4 weeks and run the numbers at those intervals to see whether your campaign is healthy or hurting.
17. Conduct regular audits of social media accounts to ensure they are up-to-date and optimized
“Audit” can be a scary word, but in this context, it’s just about evaluating channel content and performance to see what needs to be updated or removed altogether. Is your branding current? Are there posts offering services that don’t exist anymore?
Review social channels, regularly to ensure you’re capitalizing on opportunities to improve your or your client’s social presence.
Other social media management tips
Before we wrap up this comprehensive social media management guide, here are a few other tips to keep in mind.
18. Attend industry events or webinars for continued education and networking opportunities
It’s easier to sell social media packages that feel fresh and progressive. Investing in continuing education and pursuing partnerships with industry leaders can give you a leg up on the competition and contribute to a social media portfolio that attracts forward-thinking clientele.
19. Create a system for organizing and storing social media assets (photos, videos, graphics)
A centralized database of social media assets, accessible by everyone on your team, helps prevent redundant posts and saves time. Without a searchable drive, it’s easy to accidentally post about a subject you covered just a few months ago. You might even find yourself spending an hour on a new version of a graphic that already exists.
Take the time to organize assets using nested folders, tags, and other identifiers, and use it as a track record and source of inspiration as needed.
20. Continuously seek feedback from clients and make necessary adjustments to improve their social media presence
Companies investing in white-label social media management are looking for results, and they’re trusting the agency or software they’re using to deliver on promises of audience engagement, boosted authority, and conversions. To ensure you’re on target, touch base with your company point of contact regularly. Ask questions about what’s working for them and what isn’t and bring data to help illustrate your successes.
Frequently asked questions
What is social media management?
Social media management is the process of creating, scheduling, publishing, and analyzing data from social media content. Social media managers juggle a variety of tasks ranging from crafting long-term strategies to interacting with users to tracking content performance. The overarching goal of a social media manager is to forge relationships with the target audience to help boost each brand’s reach, engagement, and conversions.
How often should I post on social media?
Post frequency changes depending on the platform and overall strategy. For instance, experts recommend posting to Instagram between three and five times per week, but three to five times per day on Twitter. Consistency is paramount, so it’s best to focus on posting at regular intervals rather than ghosting your account for a couple of weeks and then sharing a slew of content in just a few hours.
