Social Media agency

What to Look for in a Social Media Agency

Nicole Harrison · November 13, 2019 ·

So you have determined that hiring a social media agency is the right step for your business. But how do you go about choosing the right agency? Where do you begin? As an experienced social media agency ourselves, we have been around the block a time or two. We have spent years honing our skills to be the best agency we can be for our clients, so we know what your company deserves and should keep an eye out for in a social media agency.

We have put together a list of the top characteristics to keep in mind when considering the future of your social media marketing. From the technical skills necessary to execute great social media strategy, to the proven results of past work, to the importance of having common values with your business, look to our must-haves as you go about selecting the best social media agency for your business.

Social Media Agency Must-Haves: Technical Skills

There are a few technical skills that you should absolutely look for when choosing a social media agency to work with your business. These skills range from creative writing and business writing, to strong editing, to precise number-crunching and data analysis–which are all crucial to running a successful social media presence.

Writing and Content Creation

What most people think of when they think of social media is the content: what appears on their screens; in other words, the face of the business online. The majority of this content is going to be written content, so whether it’s a 280-character tweet, a lengthy blog post, or the “About” page on your website, you want this content to be good.

That’s why we recommend looking for a social media agency with skills in writing and editing. Depending on the nature of your business, and what your needs are in hiring an agency, you may require creative writing skills or more technical business writing skills. Our advice is to look for a social media agency that can do both well because most businesses need a bit of each. Additionally, make sure the agency has ruthless editing skills. You don’t want your online presence to be riddled with avoidable grammar errors that can make your business look unprofessional.

Dive deep into the agency you are looking to hire–look at their own web presence, blog, and any other materials you can get your hands on. Since content is so outward-facing, you should easily be able to find examples of the agency’s work that can tell you whether or not the agency has the necessary skills.

Actuarial Skills and Attention to Detail

Content may be the face of the business online, but what is behind the scenes is equally important to the success of your business’s social media presence. By that we mean the numbers, the hard-data, and the details. Look for a social media agency that is every bit as skilled and proficient in their actuarial skills as they are in their content creation.

The truth is, behind every successful social media campaign, there are detailed plans, spreadsheets tracking the results, and someone crunching the numbers to make sure they all add up, as well as analyzing them to learn from them. In your search for a social media agency, look for one that has skills in these areas, as well as data to back them up. While it may take a bit more digging to access than their blog posts or writing samples, it will be well worth it if you can find an agency that has this very important part of the job down to a T.

Social Media Agency Must-Haves: Creativity and Flexibility

While it is important to look for an agency with technical skills, you will also want to look for an agency with right-brained creativity and big-picture thinking. This is the aspect of the social media agency that will keep your business growing, progressing, and moving forward through its social media.

Big-Picture Thinking and Creativity

A good social media agency will have the capacity and the systems in place to brainstorm for the future of your company and to plan for growth. Rather than just doing the day-to-day management and overseeing of your business’s social media channels or campaigns, this social media agency will be looking for ways to change, improve, and progress your business through its social media. This will help keep your business’s social media from getting stuck in a rut, and to stay fresh and relevant through all the changes that may come your way.

Jacks-of-All-Trades

Similarly, we advise you to look for a social media agency that can be described as a jack-of-all-trades–an agency that is full-service, that can take care of all of your website and online social needs. Look for an agency that has trained experts for each specialty: a social media manager, a web developer, a content creator, etc., so you have all your bases covered. In addition to this, look for a small agency that is nimble and well-connected so they can bring in other experts as needed. This will help your business get all its online and social media needs met in one place, which is both simple and cost-effective.

Social Media Agency Must-Haves: Proven Results

A social media agency worth being hired by your business will have the results to back up what we’ve listed above in regards to their skills and the way they operate. It is invaluable to find a social media agency that has proven results of their leadership skills and team approach, the references and reviews from other or past clients, and a portfolio of work that you can view. You should see the evidence of their good work showing on their clients’ social media in the form of more engagement and higher follower counts over time.

Leadership

Look for a social media agency that has good leadership in place and one that uses a team-approach to its work. Within the agency, there may be a hierarchy of roles from the social media director, to the social media lead, to the social media managers, preferably with a dedicated manager who is in charge of your business’s account within the agency. This team should be made up of actual agency employees–hired, trained, and managed by the agency– not third-party subcontractors who will not be as well-trained, focused, and dedicated to your brand.

Additionally, even the president or CEO of the agency should be directly involved in both your account management and employee management. This is the personal touch and commitment that small agencies boast, which is often lost in a large agency. When you hire a small agency, your business will be a priority to that agency, even if you are the smallest business they work with.

References

One of the best ways to determine whether a social media agency is worth hiring is to look at the references and reviews of current or past clients. It typically isn’t hard to find online reviews for an experienced agency, and if possible, speak to others who have worked with the agency to find out what kind of experience they had. Look especially for long-standing client relationships and clients who have hired the agency repeatedly because they liked working with them so much.

The world of social media management and marketing is small, so do some digging and you will probably be able to find someone who has worked with the agency you are considering. Just as you would when hiring an employee, seek out references and talk to others who have been in your shoes.

Portfolio

Another way to determine whether you should hire a social media agency is by looking at a portfolio of their work. This can be tricky, as some agencies (like SocialNicole) do not publish portfolios due to client privacy. When you contact the agency you are considering, ask if they have any sort of portfolio of their work that you can view.

Another way to look at their work before you decide to contact them is to check out the agency’s own online presence. Look at their blog. Do they blog often? Are they experts who know what they are talking about? Is the writing consistently good and error-free? Look at their website. Is it professional, well-written, and easy to navigate? Look at their social media presence. Are their pages up-to-date and relevant? Are their posts creative and informative? Basically, is what you see from this social media agency online the kind of content you would be happy to have on your own business’s website, blog, or social media channels? Make sure the answer is an emphatic “yes!” before you decide to hire.

Social Media Agency Must-Haves: Common Values

When you hire a social media agency, you are signing on to work with this company and these people pretty closely. You should look at it similarly to how you would look at hiring an employee. You will want to make sure that the agency shares common values with your business.

Ethics, Morals, and Passions

If you find a social media agency that shares your ethics, morals, and passions, then the agency will really be able to care about your business, get excited about your work, and stand behind the mission of your brand 100%–which is what your business deserves and needs in order to thrive.

Avoid awkward conflict of interests by looking for an agency that matches your business in values. This doesn’t mean you have to line up exactly on every world-issue, but on issues that may come up or are relevant to your business, you will want to make sure you hire an agency that you can trust to represent your business just like you would. Both you and the agency you are working with will be happier, more comfortable, and more excited to work together if this is the case.

Customer Service

Another place where your values should line up with those of the agency you hire is your approach to customer service. Although it may require minimal face-to-face interaction with customers, social media is just that: social. It actually involves a lot of customer service, and these are your loyal and important customers that you are entrusting to this agency when you hire them to engage with your online community. Make sure the agency treats your customers the way you would.

As you begin your search for the right social media agency for your business, remember to look for an agency that has the necessary technical skills, the big-picture mindset, the positive reviews, recommendations, and portfolio to back it up, and is on the same page as your business in terms of values and customer-service practices. These are important characteristics that will hopefully lead to a happy and long-standing relationship between your business and the social media agency you hire.

As an experienced, full-scale social media agency, we at SocialNicole have spent years becoming the best social agency we can for our clients. We have the technical skills and proven results, and we would love to work with you to see whether we have common values and could be the right choice for your business. Contact us today!

What Does a Social Media Manager Do?

Abby Sorensen · September 24, 2019 ·

Anyone can create a couple Facebook posts, right? So what exactly is the role of a social media manager? What does social media management entail? As a social media manager myself, I am often met with confusion when I tell people what I do, and the title can be a bit vague.

As it turns out, there is a lot more that goes into successfully managing a business’s social media presence than most people realize. A qualified social media manager is essential for a business serious about using social media to grow. A social media manager is in charge of representing the business in the online sphere, creating plans and strategies to meet the goals of the business, and executing those plans on a day-to-day basis. A social media manager stays on top of social media trends, is always learning and growing, and constantly works to help develop the business they represent as a consistent and trusted source for consumers. If you’re wondering what exactly a social media manager does and how a social media manager can benefit your business, read on…

A Social Media Manager Represents Your Business Online

Simply and broadly put, a social media manager’s main job is to oversee the representation of the business in the online world. The social media manager knows the ins and outs of the business, along with the business’s voice, goals, and values, and ensures that the business is being represented accurately in the online sphere. The social media manager does this through creating the business’s social media plan, executing that plan daily, and always learning from the business’s data as well as from others in the industry in order to improve.

Social Media Manager: Creating A Strategy

Social media can be a huge asset to business growth, and is pretty much a must for successful businesses in this day and age, but it must be done well. Before stepping out into the online world to represent a business, a social media manager puts in place an organized and strategic social media plan, and then continues to hone, adjust, and follow this plan as they manage their social media channels. This plan will include clear objectives and goals for the business, a targeted audience that will help reach those goals, and strategies for developing and growing the business through social media.

A Social Media Manager Establishes Clear Objectives

When creating the social media plan for their business, the social media manager first works with the business to establish clear objectives and goals, and then strategizes on how to reach those goals through social media. Those goals may include a larger following on Facebook or Instagram, more traffic to an online site or store, more interaction with customers through email or direct messages, and more. The business’s goals are likely to change as time goes on, so this social media plan will be revisited and adjusted regularly.

A Social Media Manager Determines a Target Audience

A part of a successful social media plan – and a way to help the business reach the goals we mentioned above – is a carefully targeted audience. The social media manager works with the business to determine what the target audience is for the business, and then strategizes how to best reel in this audience with social media content. The business will most likely already know its target demographic, and what kind of audience it is already working with and trying to reach. The social media manager’s job is to figure out how best to target the desired audience with social media content that will draw them in, keep them coming back, and ultimately help the business reach its goals through this target audience.

A Social Media Manager Aids in Business Development

The social media manager also strategizes how to grow and further develop the business through social media. Social media is an important tool in this day and age for business growth and brand recognition, and it builds trust with consumers (the target audience we talked about above). Through social media, a business’s social media manager fosters an online community of customers, which drives traffic and sales. A smart business will see the importance of a great social media manager for development and taking the business to the next level.

Social Media Manager: Executing the Strategy

Once the social media manager has their strategic plan in place, their next task is to start implementing that plan. The social media manager is in charge of overseeing execution of (or executing themselves if they do not have a social media management team) the business’s social media plan. This happens in the day-to-day management of social media channels, as well as on a bigger, bird’s eye view scale.

A Social Media Manager Oversees the Execution of Plans

The social media manager oversees the big picture execution of the social media management plan. This means taking the strategic plan and putting it on paper (or, more accurately, on screen). From creating folders and documents to house the social media content, to staying up to date on what is going on in the business and adjusting the social media plan accordingly, to making sure no part of the plan is falling through the cracks, the social media manager keeps one eye on the big picture – the business’s social media management plan as a whole – at all times.

At SocialNicole, we like to plan our social media content no less than a month at a time, and in some cases even more, in order to maintain a cohesive social media presence and a clear view of what we are trying to accomplish at any given time. We use editorial calendars to map out the types of content we want to share each month, organized folders to keep all the content for the month in one place, and scheduling tools to schedule the month’s content all at once. We also have a careful quality control system in place, so all content being shared and scheduled is seen by a second pair of eyes before it is published, to ensure minimal mistakes.

A Social Media Manager Performs Day-to-Day Management

Within this big picture lives the nitty gritty of the day-today social media management – and the social media manager takes care of or oversees this as well. This means interacting with consumers or followers online, monitoring comments and online reviews, making sure the business is active on its own social media channels each day, and addressing any issues or crises that may arise.

A good social media manager knows the best ways to manage social channels daily, from staying active and present online, to keeping a consistent voice and level of activity, to ensuring all content shared (yes, even the replies to customer’s comments or direct messages) has a high level of quality, and more. When a social media manager is consistent with the day-to-day management of their business’s social media channels, they build a relationship with their online community, which is essential for business growth.

Social Media Manager: Honing Expertise

As the social media manager plans and executes the business’s social media management, they must always be learning and growing, so they can in turn grow the business through social media. Social media is anything but stagnant, and it is crucial that the social media manager not let their own management and the business’s social media channels and strategy grow stagnant either. Social media managers should learn from their own data as well as experiment to keep improving. They can experiment with different types of content, or perhaps run a sweepstakes or contest, noting the feedback and observing the results through analytics. A social media manager also stays up to date on the news of the industry, as social media is ever-changing. As these changes roll in, and the social media manager learns and grows, they use data and research to aid and adjust their strategies.

A Social Media Manager Assesses Data and Reworks Plans

One way for the social media manager to learn is by assessing the data from their own social media, seeing what worked and what didn’t, and reworking the plan accordingly. A social media manager can easily find hard data on how their content and strategies are doing by using Facebook analytics, metrics and insights, and analytics from Twitter, Linkedin, and Instagram as well. They can also feel out how the business’s online community responds to content (since the social media manager is active and present on their business’s social channels, they should be able to see the difference between content that gets people talking, and content that flops).

The social media manager will test and assess, and then, with this data in mind, rework the business’s social media plan to improve the process. As we said above, social media plans should be regularly revisited and revised as the company learns and course-corrects. Even small changes to the social media plan can make a big difference in business success, and the social media manager should be watching the plan and the data like a hawk to constantly be moving forward and improving.

A Social Media Manager Stays Up To Date on Industry News

Another crucial role of the social media manager is to stay on top of industry news and trends. The social media manager needs to be aware of what is coming in order to plan accordingly, as social media platforms are always rolling out changes. For instance, in 2017 Facebook launched its “Stories” feature, and in 2018 there was a Facebook algorithm change. Most social media platforms will announce big changes that are coming in advance, so if the social media manager is doing their job, they should have plenty of time to prepare for the change and put plans in place to transition so that their business is ready to take it in stride.

The social media manager should find expert social media sources that they trust and then follow them to stay on top of industry news. They should keep an ear to the ground and know what others in the industry are talking about, what the hot topics are, and what is becoming obsolete, so they can keep their social media at the top of the game and in turn be a trusted source for their customers and community.

There is a lot more to managing social media than just shooting out a tweet every couple of hours. A social media manager has a lot on their shoulders with the responsibility of representing the business online. This includes strategic planning and executing that plan on a broad scale as well as day-to-day. It also includes testing and learning what works for their business’s social media, and always learning from their own experience and from what is going on in the industry around them.

A social media manager helps to take the business they are working for to the next level, and managing social media well, especially for a larger company, can be a full-time job – one that you may not have the capacity to do yourself. Hiring a specific social media manager or social media management agency can be just the answer to catapulting your business to success.

If you decide that hiring an agency is the right move for your business, we would love to help! We are a full-scale social media management agency that provides all the services discussed above and much more. Contact us to start the conversation and learn what we can do for you.

Top Tips for Social Media Management

Emma Kaiser · July 31, 2019 ·

Social media wears many faces, and there’s a lot to keep track of, especially when you are using social media to market your business. Managing social media channels can be time consuming, complex, and downright confusing, which is why the SocialNicole team are sharing our tried and true tips for managing social media. With tips ranging from staying present, to producing quality content and mastering engagement, down to the nitty gritty details of analytics, read on for our top tips to help you master social media management.

1. Social Media Management: Be Present

This may be the simplest (but not necessarily the easiest) tip we can offer. In order to get the most out of your business’s social media channels, you need to be active and present on them. To get the responses and engagement you want on your platforms means putting in time and effort on your end. Luckily, we have some methods and tricks to make it a little easier for you.

a. Social Media Management: Stay Relevant

First you need to ensure that your pages stay relevant. Pay attention to what’s trending or time-sensitive, but also to the types of evergreen content that can be shared again and again. Post content that your audience will find relevant to themselves and their lives. When you do this you become more relatable, which means your audience is more likely to engage. Remember that your followers don’t want to feel like they’re interacting with a robot, so don’t be afraid to show the humanness of your brand, whether that means cracking jokes, taking advantage of emojis, or just talking like you would to your actual friends.

b. Social Media Management: Remain Consistent

You may have heard it before, but consistency is key. You shouldn’t blast twelve tweets one day then going radio silent the next. Ideally you should be posting every day, and you should spread out your posts so that you have content being shared regularly throughout the day, not all at once. You also want to achieve a balance with your content. Make sure you aren’t posting too much of one kind of content and not enough of another. We like to use content calendars to map out our monthly content so that we can see exactly what’s being shared on each day and stagger out our messages appropriately. An especially helpful tip for doing so is to schedule messages in advance, using a scheduling tool.

c. Social Media Management: Use Scheduling Tools

Scheduling tools are great for letting you appear present all the time, even when you’re not. Use these tools to schedule posts throughout the day or even the whole month, timing your posts so that they get the maximum amount of engagement. You can even schedule retweets or comments to go out when you’d like them to. This way, you can put more thought and strategy into your posts and publish them when they can be most effective. There are tons of scheduling tools out there for social media, but we love platforms like Buffer and Sprout Social, especially for social media on a budget. You can also draft and schedule posts directly in Facebook for no extra cost. You can do this under the “Publishing Tools” tab on your Facebook page. But before you get scheduling, let’s talk a little more about content.

*NOTE: It’s essential you check in on your social media channels EVERY SINGLE day. Do not schedule and forget. It’s important to be present and answering questions.

2. Social Media Management: Produce Quality Content

You can’t run your company’s social media without content, and the kind of content you share may be what makes or breaks your social media presence. You should be posting the kind of content that your followers want to like and comment on, share with their friends, and see more of in the future. Those are the reactions that will increase your brand recognition, drive more traffic to your website, and create a more loyal community of customers. How does one generate such content? We’re glad you asked…

a. Social Media Management: Quality over Quantity

Though it’s important to be present like we talked about above, hurling a constant stream of content at your followers won’t help anything if it’s not quality content. People are hit with content all day long, whether it’s through news outlets, text and emails, or their multiple social media feeds, and the only reason anyone will care enough to engage with your content is if you know how to make it valuable and meaningful to them.

You can do this by pin-pointing which specific audience you’re trying to reach. If you’re so vague that you’re aiming for everybody, you might not hit anybody. Know your target audience well enough to know what is valuable and worthwhile for them. Tailor your content to their interests and needs, their language and aesthetic. Pay attention to what they respond to and what they don’t, and let your social media pages be an extension of what you can provide to your customers as a business.

b. Social Media Management: Curated Content and Created Content

To publish the best content on your channels, you should understand the different types of content and know how to take advantage of both. Created content is your business’s original content. It’s your photos, your messages, your blog posts and web pages. These are great for really individually crafting your content for your followers and letting them see who you are as a business. The majority of the content you share will probably be your own, but it would be ignorant to think that your own content is the only kind worth sharing. That’s where curated content comes in.

Curated content is content you share from others, whether it’s in the form of blog posts and articles, or posts and retweets. Sharing content can make your account more diverse and interesting, allow you to share relevant topics you may not be an expert on, and can create beneficial relationships with other content creators. Plus, sharing is a great way to get people to engage with and share your content in return. You can find shareable content by following relevant accounts and pages. At SocialNicole, we have tools for finding shareable content that we like to use as well.

c. Social Media Management: Helpful Tools

Tools like Feedly are a great way to find and organize feeds of blogs, articles, and podcasts from reputable sources, all of which make prime curated content. See the latest posts and articles from a huge range of bloggers, websites, and news sources and schedule them right to your social media feed. Feedly allows you to create your own custom feeds of the publications you are interested in and want to follow, and Feedly will even suggest publications, which may help you discover a valuable new source. This is a great way to increase your presence and provide valuable content to your followers, but remember to review the content you are sharing and the sources you are sharing from, to remain a trusted source for your own followers.

3. Social Media Management: Mastering Engagement

Engagement is a leading goal when it comes to social media, and the amount and quality of engagement your business receives has a lot to do with how you manage. What goes around comes around, so the more you’re engaging with others, the more likely they are to engage with you. If you’re curious what your exact role is on this two-way street, read on.

a. Social Media Management: Responding to Comments

One of the easiest, but often overlooked, steps of engagement is to interact with others who are already engaging with you. This means liking and responding to comments, favorite-ing and replying to tweets, and simply letting your followers know that someone is there and listening. Be active by responding to mentions and thanking people for sharing. Interact by “liking” other people’s pages and inviting them to like yours. When it comes to social media, you get out of it what you put into it. Whether it means answering questions or just replying with a smiley face, practice the kind of engagement you want to receive.

However, you do get to be a little choosy about what kinds of comments you want to respond to and how you choose to respond. It’s ok to hide, or even block, users who you feel are misrepresenting the values of your brand on your channels, or anyone who makes you or your other followers uncomfortable. You may want to remove any profane, discriminatory, or otherwise offensive material that could damage your brand and give people a bad impression of your channels.

b. Social Media Management: Experimenting

Another great way to foster engagement is to experiment. Play around with your content and see what leads to the most responses. Whether it’s photo or video, inspirational or humorous, see what makes your audience react or gets their attention. There are endless possibilities for content out there, so play around to find out what gets people talking and what gets crickets. Another important note: social media is perpetually evolving, so never stop doing this. You will need to continually test strategies and make adjustments. Don’t let yourself become stagnant, because if you do your audience engagement will certainly follow your lead.

c. Social Media Management: Ask Your Followers to Engage

Perhaps the most obvious, but sometimes not so obvious, way to get your followers to engage is to simply ask them. That’s right–post content that garners a response. Ask questions and encourage your followers to answer in the comments, create polls for them to participate in, or offer giveaways which ask them to post or share in order to win. By creating scenarios that get your followers active and involved, you foster loyalty to your brand and generate additional exposure for your business. Get creative and see how many different ways you can ask your community to respond, and then don’t forget to reply and engage with the answers you receive. Keeping the conversation going just gives you more opportunities to connect and invest in your followers.

4. Social Media Management: Analytics

In order to really know what’s working and what’s not, you need to be looking at the numbers. This is where social media analytics come in. This is data tracked by most social media platforms to indicate your engagement levels. Yes, we know that it can be intimidating and confusing, but you don’t have to be an expert to learn from what the analytics are telling you, and the confidence will come the more you work with analytics. Being informed means that you can manage your social media channels based on hard data rather than hunches, which can in turn lead to serious growth for your company!

a. Social Media Management: How Analytics Can Help You

With social media analytics, you can measure the growth as well as the effectiveness of your social media channels. With this information in hand, you can move forward to improve brand awareness, drive profits, and receive a higher ROI (return on investment). Not only do analytics let you know what’s working and what’s not, but they also help you track your progress and know how to better allocate your time.

The basics you should familiarize yourself with and start using are Twitter analytics, Facebook Analytics, and some basic data offered by LinkedIn, and we at SocialNicole also use Google Analytics to gather our metrics, but there are many other options for providing analytics and even helping you interpret the data you’re looking at.

b. Social Media Management: Analyzing Your Numbers

With these tools you can discover information like number of page views, page likes, post engagements, page followers, and reach. You can also learn more about your followers by tracking them over time, seeing when they’re most active, and seeing when they’re not engaging. You can assess what content was effective and what was ignored. Analyzing the numbers ensures that you’re not just taking a shot in the dark, but looking at and learning from actual results. By taking the time to analyze how your content performs, you can take steps to guarantee your content is successful in the future.

From analyzing the data, to producing quality content, to actively and consistently engaging with your followers, we know that managing social media is a lot to juggle. That’s why it’s important that you remember to take a breath and try to have fun with it when you can. The more authentic and human you can be to those on the other side of the screen, the better. You’re trying to connect with people, after all. So trust your gut, listen to what your followers are saying, and we’re confident that you’ll see results.

For those who still have concerns or lack the time to really care for your business’s social media, did you know that SocialNicole is a full-scale social media marketing agency? And that we manage social media channels with many of the same strategies we’ve been sharing above? We have years of expertise and experience behind us, and we would love to hear from you about partnering with your business to take your social media presence to the next level. Don’t hesitate to contact us today!

Why Hire a Social Media Management Agency?

Abby Sorensen · July 11, 2019 ·

Is your business questioning which is the best, most effective way to engage in social media marketing? We can all recognize the pervasiveness of social media in today’s marketing, but you may still be wondering in what specific ways social media can truly help your business, and, even more so, how to best take advantage of it. For many businesses, navigating management on their own may be more trouble than it’s worth, but getting the right help from a professional social media management agency can truly make all the difference. That’s why we’ve laid out the reasons social media marketing is vital to your business’s success and why hiring a social media management agency can offer the most effective, advantageous solutions to your marketing needs.

Why Social Media Marketing Is Important for Every Business

Before you ask yourself whether hiring a specialized social media management agency is the right route for your company, it helps to understand why social media marketing is so important for all businesses.

1. Social Media For Business: Your Customers Are Social

Today, social media encompasses more than channels like Facebook and Twitter, and it’s not contained to an app like Instagram. It is integrated into every aspect of communication. The internet is social and so are your customers. It’s how communities interact and where your customers spend their time. It plays a major role in what we’re exposed to and helps shape our opinions and preferences. It’s how we share ideas and get our messages across to others. There’s no doubt that we are living in a digital age, which means that for your business to be successful, it has to have a digital presence as well.

2. Social Media For Business: Brand Recognition

Social media is key for brand recognition. It allows you to meet customers where they are. When your business is consistently present on social media instead of just your website, your brand will reach the screens of more individuals. A huge part of brand recognition is remaining in front of your audience in a consistent and relevant manner. Leveraging social media for brand recognition makes sense and will affect your bottom line as more people remember your brand and choose you over your competitors.

3. Social Media For Business: Website Traffic And SEO

Leveraging social media marketing is essential for driving traffic to your website or online shop and can help in boosting your overall traffic and sales. The Google algorithm factors in overall traffic as well as “social signals” in determining your expertise and value as a business. These factors all play a role in whether your website shows up as relevant in Google searches. That means leveraging social media marketing is essential to building your organic search rankings and increasing your chance to be found by potential customers.

4. Social Media For Business: The Power Of Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is a huge reason why people choose the products they buy and the services they select. People trust the brands their friends and family use, and customers seek out businesses that the people around them speak well of. In many cases, a personal recommendation is more effective for bringing in new business than any ad or promotion. Positive word of mouth is vital for business growth, and social media is one of the best ways to spread it. When your followers share your content, tag your account, or retweet your post, you’re reaching a far greater and more receptive pool of customers than you could ever do through traditional networking.

5. Social Media For Business: Community Growth

When using social media, your business is looking for growth in terms of loyal followers and repeat customers. Think of your customers as a community – social media is a superb way to grow this online (and even in-person) community. It presents many opportunities for your followers to interact with your business in ways that go beyond visiting a brick-and-mortar store. You can have your followers answer questions, share feedback or photos, enter contests, and even use social media to invite them to events. These kinds of daily interactions are what help build brand loyalty and a solid customer base.

Why You Should Hire A Social Media Agency

Now that you know the reasons that social media can be incredibly beneficial for your business, it’s time to look at the facts: having an effective, robust social media presence for your business is a lot of work. It can be difficult, confusing, time-consuming, and it takes a while to see consistent hard work pay off in terms of business and sales. Read on, and you’ll see that a social media marketing agency can be a solution to all of those very real concerns.

1. Professional Social Media Management: Saving Time And Money

While it takes a lot of time and effort to be effective as a business on social media, the pay-offs can be massive. ‪By hiring a social media management agency, you bring in a team of professionals who already know exactly what they’re doing. A qualified social media marketing agency is likely to already have the necessary software and systems in place to operate your social media marketing effectively, which saves you time and resources in purchasing and learning new software yourself. That way, you can allow experts to manage your social media so that you can focus all your energy on what you do best: building your business.

2. Professional Social Media Management: Hiring An Agency Versus An Employee

Even if you know you don’t have the time to really pour into your business’s social media platforms, it can still be tough to make the decision to pay someone else to do it for you. So let’s quickly consider the alternatives.

Maybe you’ve thought about assigning an employee to be your business’s social media manager. After all, they already know your business’s brand and voice. The problem is that employee will still require a significant amount of training and experience before he or she can operate your social media successfully on their own. Social media marketing also requires certain systems and software that your business would have to purchase and learn to operate. Operating social media can also be a time consuming role that your already-existing employees just may not have the time or energy to take on. You will also have to oversee the work your employee does for your social media and that means you have to be tuned in and have a full understanding of how it all works. This takes your valuable time and energy.

You may have also considered hiring your own in-house social media manager. While it’s an option worth thinking about, and an individual social media manager may have the expertise, it takes a lot of time and resources to hire and train a brand-new employee. And even after that hire takes place, your company needs to think about how that employee will be managed and whether there is anyone in your business who has a high enough level of knowledge of social media marketing needed to oversee the work of that employee. You should also consider that social media is not always consistent, and, depending on your business’s needs, you may have enough social media needs to justify a full-time position, or your needs may require just a couple hours of management per day. The most effective social media management happens with a team approach, which means multiple levels of oversight and different expertise coming together to create your content, place your ads, manage your metrics and complete the other work required for an effective social media program. Most businesses cannot afford a team of 2-4 people dedicated to their social media marketing, but with a professional social media agency, a team approach is common and should be what you look for when hiring an agency.

When considering the pros and cons of assigning the task to an existing employee or hiring a social media manager, most companies find it can be far more cost-effective to hire a social media marketing agency to manage your channels. As we’ve said, social media management agencies are made up of professionals who already know the ins and outs of the industry and likely already have the necessary experience to represent the voice, message, and personality of your brand online. Finally, when hiring a agency like SocialNicole Digital, you are getting a full team of experts so that every client has a dedicated social media manager, social media director, and ads manager.

3. Professional Social Media Management: Professional Expertise Is Everything

Social media is an ever-changing creature, and it can be a headache to stay on top of it–so why not leave it up to the professionals? An agency dedicated solely to social media management makes it their business to stay on top of new channels (or changes to the old channels), what’s out-of-date, and what’s trending. Hiring a agency that stays up-to-date will help to ensure that your company stays at the top of the social media game. Plus, they probably have proven results and examples of work they’ve done for other businesses in the past! An agency worth its salt will be willing to listen to your needs and come alongside your brand’s vision to work with you and deliver results. If you want to take your business’s social media presence to the next level, hiring a specialized social media management agency may be the perfect next step for you.

Did you know that we are a full-scale social media management agency–like we’ve been talking about above? We would love to hear from you about partnering with your business to take your social media presence to the next level! Contact us today!

3 Social Media Management Tools You Should Be Using Right Now

Nicole Harrison · May 21, 2013 ·

When you’re managing several clients, all at different times of the day and using different messaging and promotions for each of those clients, keeping everything straight can become a bit challenging. Social media management tools save you time, energy and stress. Not to mention they allow you to better understand and connect with your online communities. But there are loads of social media management tools out there – which ones are the best? To get you started, check out our three top favorites at SocialNicole. Hootsuite Hootsuite is a very popular tool, and with good reason. It’s a management tool that makes managing multiple businesses, people, or clients simple. From this dashboard, you can easily track interactions, send messages from multiple social sites like Facebook and Twitter, and see direct results of your management. Hootsuite makes scheduling messages incredibly simple and intuitive – you can even request to have an email sent to you when your scheduled message goes out. You can also customize the columns of your dashboard to include what’s most important to you – perhaps you want all of your clients Twitter timelines laid out next to each other on one dashboard – you can customize this on Hootsuite. Hootsuite offers free, pro, and enterprise levels of management which could potentially include social profiles, enhanced analytics, advanced message scheduling, Google Analytics and Facebook insights integration. Buffer The beauty of Buffer is in its simplicity. Buffer is a virtual queue that you can easily fill with content that will be automatically posted in a staggered manner throughout the day. Add the Bufferapp to your browser and, when you’ve found something worth sharing, simply click the icon for that post to be added to your queue. This is a worry-free tool – simply fill up your Buffer with enough content for an entire week and it will be sent out for you. Forget carefully scheduling delivery times or strategically choosing which post should go out when. Buffer allows for an easy was to have a consistent social presence all day and week long, but without the pain of manual labor. Buffer also offers a mobile app The and provides analytics about the engagement and reach of your posts. SocialBro SocialBro is a relatively new discovery – but I’m so glad I’ve finally found it. This tool is highly analytic, giving great insights to fuel your management. SocialBro allows you to browse your communities to identify key influencers, track specific user engagement, and analyze your competitors’ activity. This tool will analyze the timelines of your followers to show you when the optimal time for you to tweet is, allowing you to reach the maximum number of followers for each tweet. SocialBro makes it easy to make goals, track progress, and identify improvement. They also offer a visual dashboard that lays out all the recent activity of your account such as new followers, new replies/DMs, and most influential users from the day. Overall, SocialBro will allow you to better understand, target, and engage your Twitter audience, all the while helping you grow a more substantial online presence. But don’t take my word for it – get out there and test these tools! Give each of these tools a trial run to see what works best for your business. Need extra help managing your social outlets? Get help from SocialNicole today! Photo Credit