Social Media Management: An Asset for Your Image!

While everyone and every organization has or can create a Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or other social media account, the organization and management of your online presence is a different story. Indeed, the larger your audience, the more controlled and high-quality your communication with your community needs to be. This is where social media management comes in. But what exactly does this term mean? We'll tell you more in the following paragraphs.

From Community Management to Social Media Management: A Little History...

Without going into the history of social networks and their use here, let's take a look back at the evolution of the skills involved in managing them. Initially known as Community Management, the action consisted of implementing a communication strategy and adapting its presence on social networks for a community (or several). But this has evolved considerably, as the skills required and the expectations of your subscribers and target audiences are now multifaceted... Indeed, when managing your social networks was still based on the number of organic reach figures, content creation was often the main (or even the only) lever available to a brand or company wishing to grow its audience on these platforms.

But in 2020, Facebook (now Meta), as the main player, brought about a major revolution that significantly impacted all brand strategies. Thus, while the reach of organic content was already declining (due to the considerable increase in content created and promoted on the platforms), the algorithm became even stricter, favoring sponsored (ads) and targeted (the most relevant) content for active users.
So, is the famous saying "Content is King" still valid?
Yes, but its relevance needs to be considered from different perspectives. This is where the expertise of Social Media Management becomes crucial, given its cross-functional role in communication strategies. Consisting of "taking into account and using the potential influence of social media to promote a company's marketing activity and business development" (definition from the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Marketing), Social Media Management has become essential for ensuring impactful results on social networks.
In fact, talking about social media presence today is just as much about talking about:

• content creation (yes, but in what format, how much...),
• buying targeted advertising space (Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Sponsored Content on LinkedIn...),
• using specific management tools (Hootsuite, Agora Pulse, etc.),
• statistical tracking (Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics...),
• influencer marketing,
• brand advocacy,
• social selling,
• ...
  And therefore, Social Media Management!
  

  Social Media Management: Essential Criteria

  
  Maintaining a consistent presence on social media platforms can be a real challenge!
  However, several key criteria must be met to optimize your social media strategy.
  
  1. Regular Organic Content: While the organic reach of a post through its appearance in your followers' news feeds is relative (currently on Facebook, it averages between 2% and 5%, depending on the source), recent content is more likely to be considered by algorithms and therefore seen by your followers.
  2. A Content Format Adapted to the Social Network: Each social network has its own content format (size, type of content, tone, communication style, etc.). Ideally, each post should be unique to perfectly meet the expectations of each platform, but this is time-consuming, so optimize as much as possible by observing the results on each of your accounts. If you are unable to produce sufficiently different content from one platform to another, then prioritize the one(s) that give you the best results. Nevertheless, remember that video remains the format with the strongest results in terms of audience reach.
  3. Creating Engagement Around Your Content: The more engagement a piece of content/page generates—in other words, the more interaction it leads to (comments, shares, subscriptions, polls, etc.)—the more visible the algorithms will make your post/page.
  4. Generating specific interaction with your community is essential: depending on your status (business/brand vs. individual), algorithms don't prioritize organic messages that could be associated with commercial communication to the same degree. This is where the strength of your community comes into play to take over the distribution of your content...
  5. Produce formats to partially or completely bypass organic reach: your ad budgets aren't unlimited, and you don't want to sponsor every single post—solutions exist! Live formats and stories are excellent ways to establish a direct relationship while ensuring better results for the content you offer your members.
     

     Social Media Management: How to Implement a High-Impact Strategy?

     
     Step 1: Assess Your Situation
     To establish a coherent strategy, take a clear-eyed look at your current situation. Don't overestimate it! Don't underestimate it either, especially if you already have a social media presence. Analyze your situation network by network (statistics, followers, profiles, performance by content type, posting timing, direct competition, ROI if you're investing in ads, etc.). This initial snapshot will allow you, in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc., to look back and make an objective comparison.
     
     Step 2: Define your objectives
     Now that we've seen where you're starting from, let's see where you're going. Establish your objectives by linking your overall communication strategy with your more specific strategies (brand - product - service). Depending on your needs, the objectives you set will vary. Are you aiming for online sales conversions? Are you aiming for increased brand and product awareness? Are you aiming to develop a community of brand ambassadors? Do you want to reach a new target audience (younger, more female, more male, etc.)? These examples of questions can significantly influence your content, budgets, and resources. Therefore, spending time on your objectives will save you time later on.
     
     Step 3: Identify your target audience
     The advantage of social media is that it provides powerful statistical tools for tracking and identifying your users. Use them; they are rich in important information for marketing and targeting. Based on the persona method, which generally focuses on creating fictional representations of your product/service users in terms of expectations and needs, this exercise can also be applied to your social media. So, who are your social media users? Do they align with your marketing personas? Yes or no? Depending on the answer, you will adopt different content and acquisition strategies.
     
     Step 4: Define your content strategy
     Clearly defining your content strategy beforehand is essential. Which social networks to invest in, what editorial line, what tone, what rules for interacting with your community, what posting frequency, what graphic style to use, what creative guidelines... You need to configure as many elements as possible so that your social media reflects your image and communication strategy.
     
     Step 5: Plan your posts
     No significant results are possible without planning. Even considering that multi-platform connectivity allows for a constant and continuous relationship with social networks, your users have preferences. Just as you have your own in terms of communication timing (product/service launches, brand information, sales promotions, company news, etc.). Therefore, an editorial calendar is the number one tool for scheduled visibility and tracking of your posts. Remember that speaking on multiple platforms quickly becomes time-consuming if you want to do things well (appropriate format, specific content, etc.).
     
     Step 6: Measure Your Performance
     Your social media manager plays a crucial role in developing your audience and qualifying your visitors. To successfully carry out these various social media operations, it's essential to identify your key performance indicators (KPIs) (number of visitors per month, per campaign... / number of posts per month... / follower growth / sentiment analysis with the rise of emojis / retention rate / new contributors / mentions on other pages / changes in interactions / number of shares...). "Those who don't measure, hardly last." So, get to your dashboards!
     
     Step 7: Adjust your strategy
     Your situation evolves because your actions are meaningful. Your target audience and customers also evolve because your competitors are moving too. So, don't hesitate to adjust your strategy as you go to always respond precisely to your users and stay on trend. Regularly review your actions to measure their impact, both on social media and on directly related topics.
     
     

     Social Media Management: Do It Yourself or Outsource It?

     
     Should you outsource the expertise, do everything in-house, or partially delegate the task? These questions are important, even essential, depending on your available internal resources and the size of your communications team. Answering these questions will undoubtedly guide your decisions.
     
     
• Do social media play a central role in your marketing and sales strategy?
• Do you have one or more in-house experts to manage your social media presence?
• Do you have one or more experts in your market and industry?
• Are you willing to dedicate one or more full-time equivalent (FTE) positions to this function?
• Do you have the creative resources to produce high-quality content?
• How many platforms do you want to populate with content, given your human and financial resources?
• Will you be able to maintain this pace over the long term?
• ...
  
  This list is by no means exhaustive, but it lays the groundwork for a qualitative approach to social media use. We reiterate: if social media is strategic for your organization, quality is essential (in the absence of quantity), and creativity is expected to be persuasive.
  
  

  In Conclusion

  
  Often perceived as an accessible and manageable skill for everyone, social media management is becoming increasingly complex. Beyond the skills directly related to mastering the platforms, your industry, your market, your brand identity, your products, your community, etc., you will need to add creative and artistic skills, writing abilities, a curiosity for competitive intelligence, and also an aptitude for project management, budget control for monitoring your sponsored campaigns, etc.
  
  So, if partial or complete social media support is part of your plans, Agence I.S (an event and marketing communication agency located in the Île-de-France region, near Paris), through its IS Brand division, specializes in this type of project, from strategy to operational management. Whether your project is local, national, or international in scope, if you have an idea, we can answer your questions and support you in its optimal realization.