A practical four-step guide to managing your social networks
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 5:46 am
Is social media management a headache for your team? Don’t know where to start?
Due to lack of time in our busy days, we often neglect the management of our social networks, especially since the constant evolution of algorithms and trends makes this task particularly tedious. It's not surprising, in this context, to feel overwhelmed and even want to throw in the towel.
The good news is that there are several solutions that can simplify your life when it comes to managing your social networks. You already have the essentials: knowledge of your brand, its voice and its personality. All you need to do is master four simple steps to bring your business to life on social networks! Follow us, we will guide you step by step.
1. Clearly formulate your strategy
The first step is to establish a social media strategy that is aligned with your business objectives. As with any good communications strategy, your social media strategy should consider the following elements:
Context: Think about your current situation, analyze your strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT analysis), and list your competitors.
Your goals: These are your general business and marketing goals, to which you will add specific goals regarding your social networks.
Your audiences: define your targets and personas. The more you understand your target, the more effective your content will be!
Your editorial line: determine your brand voice and tone, your communication axis, your key messages and your communication pillars. Also specify how your voice will adapt depending on the various platforms used.
Your graphic line: determine the colors, fonts and any other visual elements that will give shape to your brand on social networks.
Your concepts: think of specific concepts related to your communication pillars. For example, you can draw inspiration from trends to integrate yourself on social platforms.
Your advertising strategy: If you invest in advertising, determine the distribution of your budget between targets and objectives and choose the performance indicators that you will measure.
A clear game plan is the basis for what comes next!
2. Prepare your editorial calendar
One of the keys to healthy social media management is to regularly publish content that is coherent, logical and complementary to each other, a task that is greatly facilitated by the use of an editorial calendar.
This type of calendar can be produced using software. Our team is now using Notion (non-sponsored link, but Spritz is open to the idea if Notion wants it, a tool that facilitates collaboration with all the people working on the same project.
In terms of frequency, we recommend that you plan investor database for two to three publications per week, minimum, as well as a good diversity of content according to your communication pillars and your objectives.
Refer to your strategy when creating your calendar. Adopt a human tone, representative of your brand voice, to speak to your personas. Take inspiration from trends to create your content and integrate videos when possible.
Finally, don't hesitate to get ahead of the game. Planning a month's worth of content is good, but planning two or three is better! According to our observations, about 80% of publications can be planned and prepared in advance. The remaining 20% can be devoted to content that varies according to specific needs or current events.
3. Make time to engage and interact with your audience
Community management is an important aspect of effective social media management. You can't just post; you have to monitor reactions to posts every day and respond to comments. A mistake or misunderstanding can happen so quickly! If it does, you need to correct it quickly.
In addition to responding to comments and questions, it’s important to actively participate in conversations and solicit audience participation, including by posting FAQs and polls. By providing personalized responses, you show interest in your community and strengthen the bond between you. A warm, approachable voice makes all the difference.
Also monitor mentions of your brand to seize every opportunity to interact and proactively monitor the accounts of your allies and competitors. Being on the lookout for trends and new features will also allow you to optimize your content since platform algorithms generally favor innovative content.
4. Continuously measure, analyze and improve
Analyzing the performance of your interventions is essential to adjust your strategy based on the results obtained and improve it. To do this, you must first determine the key performance indicators (KPIs), such as engagement rate, return on investment and conversion rate.
Choosing the right indicators, i.e. those that reflect your progress towards achieving your marketing objectives, is super important! The number of subscribers does not necessarily guarantee good results. In fact, Spritz recommends instead measuring engagements and conversions, indicators that send positive signals to social platforms by telling them that your content is relevant and that it appeals to your target audience.
To track your performance, pull your results directly into the platforms you use. If you use multiple platforms, tracking your overall performance results can quickly become a headache. So use specialized software, or better yet, a custom dashboard, to track KPIs like engagement rate, ROI, and conversion rate.
Once you have the results, perform your analysis. What are the most and least effective contents? Have you achieved your objectives? How can you readjust your aim? If you run advertising campaigns, optimize them regularly to maximize their effectiveness. At Spritz, we ensure careful management of campaigns , especially at the beginning of the mandate, then we monitor the results to draw up a monthly report.
Follow the leader!
By following these four simple steps, you can optimize your social media presence through thoughtful and effective management. Using social media for marketing purposes may seem complex, but ensuring a basic presence on a few platforms is as simple as adopting the best practices outlined in this guide.
Not sure where to start? Spritz can help you by auditing your current social media usage and developing a tailored strategy, as it did for the City of Victoriaville. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to entrust the deployment of this strategy to our multidisciplinary team or to your internal team. No matter your decision, we’re here to support you.
Due to lack of time in our busy days, we often neglect the management of our social networks, especially since the constant evolution of algorithms and trends makes this task particularly tedious. It's not surprising, in this context, to feel overwhelmed and even want to throw in the towel.
The good news is that there are several solutions that can simplify your life when it comes to managing your social networks. You already have the essentials: knowledge of your brand, its voice and its personality. All you need to do is master four simple steps to bring your business to life on social networks! Follow us, we will guide you step by step.
1. Clearly formulate your strategy
The first step is to establish a social media strategy that is aligned with your business objectives. As with any good communications strategy, your social media strategy should consider the following elements:
Context: Think about your current situation, analyze your strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT analysis), and list your competitors.
Your goals: These are your general business and marketing goals, to which you will add specific goals regarding your social networks.
Your audiences: define your targets and personas. The more you understand your target, the more effective your content will be!
Your editorial line: determine your brand voice and tone, your communication axis, your key messages and your communication pillars. Also specify how your voice will adapt depending on the various platforms used.
Your graphic line: determine the colors, fonts and any other visual elements that will give shape to your brand on social networks.
Your concepts: think of specific concepts related to your communication pillars. For example, you can draw inspiration from trends to integrate yourself on social platforms.
Your advertising strategy: If you invest in advertising, determine the distribution of your budget between targets and objectives and choose the performance indicators that you will measure.
A clear game plan is the basis for what comes next!
2. Prepare your editorial calendar
One of the keys to healthy social media management is to regularly publish content that is coherent, logical and complementary to each other, a task that is greatly facilitated by the use of an editorial calendar.
This type of calendar can be produced using software. Our team is now using Notion (non-sponsored link, but Spritz is open to the idea if Notion wants it, a tool that facilitates collaboration with all the people working on the same project.
In terms of frequency, we recommend that you plan investor database for two to three publications per week, minimum, as well as a good diversity of content according to your communication pillars and your objectives.
Refer to your strategy when creating your calendar. Adopt a human tone, representative of your brand voice, to speak to your personas. Take inspiration from trends to create your content and integrate videos when possible.
Finally, don't hesitate to get ahead of the game. Planning a month's worth of content is good, but planning two or three is better! According to our observations, about 80% of publications can be planned and prepared in advance. The remaining 20% can be devoted to content that varies according to specific needs or current events.
3. Make time to engage and interact with your audience
Community management is an important aspect of effective social media management. You can't just post; you have to monitor reactions to posts every day and respond to comments. A mistake or misunderstanding can happen so quickly! If it does, you need to correct it quickly.
In addition to responding to comments and questions, it’s important to actively participate in conversations and solicit audience participation, including by posting FAQs and polls. By providing personalized responses, you show interest in your community and strengthen the bond between you. A warm, approachable voice makes all the difference.
Also monitor mentions of your brand to seize every opportunity to interact and proactively monitor the accounts of your allies and competitors. Being on the lookout for trends and new features will also allow you to optimize your content since platform algorithms generally favor innovative content.
4. Continuously measure, analyze and improve
Analyzing the performance of your interventions is essential to adjust your strategy based on the results obtained and improve it. To do this, you must first determine the key performance indicators (KPIs), such as engagement rate, return on investment and conversion rate.
Choosing the right indicators, i.e. those that reflect your progress towards achieving your marketing objectives, is super important! The number of subscribers does not necessarily guarantee good results. In fact, Spritz recommends instead measuring engagements and conversions, indicators that send positive signals to social platforms by telling them that your content is relevant and that it appeals to your target audience.
To track your performance, pull your results directly into the platforms you use. If you use multiple platforms, tracking your overall performance results can quickly become a headache. So use specialized software, or better yet, a custom dashboard, to track KPIs like engagement rate, ROI, and conversion rate.
Once you have the results, perform your analysis. What are the most and least effective contents? Have you achieved your objectives? How can you readjust your aim? If you run advertising campaigns, optimize them regularly to maximize their effectiveness. At Spritz, we ensure careful management of campaigns , especially at the beginning of the mandate, then we monitor the results to draw up a monthly report.
Follow the leader!
By following these four simple steps, you can optimize your social media presence through thoughtful and effective management. Using social media for marketing purposes may seem complex, but ensuring a basic presence on a few platforms is as simple as adopting the best practices outlined in this guide.
Not sure where to start? Spritz can help you by auditing your current social media usage and developing a tailored strategy, as it did for the City of Victoriaville. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to entrust the deployment of this strategy to our multidisciplinary team or to your internal team. No matter your decision, we’re here to support you.