5 Signs You Need a Social Media Strategist.
As a small business owner networking with other small business owners, I often see or hear confusion around social media marketing. It seems almost everyone needs some social media help! Social media is an area that I’ve been working on for years, and yet is endlessly changing. It’s easy to get frustrated and feel like you should be getting a better response.
The work we do managing social media does well for our clients – helping them to get the traffic they need. When you put time, energy, and love, (and let’s face it, money) into building an effective social media strategy, you want it to be effective. A well-crafted tool is of no use if it’s just going to gather dust on a shelf.
Should you pay for social media help?
One thing I’ve noticed (and I am as guilty as heck of this myself!) is that small business owners have a hard time investing in work that they feel they can do themselves.
Social media posts should be leading to sales. Advertising should pay for itself when done right. If you’ve tried social media advertising and felt like your money was going into a black hole (I sure have), you’ll be interested – read on!
Often small business owners are skeptical that hiring someone to post for them on social media will pay off. After all, they’re out there posting every day, and they’re not seeing exciting results.
The thing to know is that a professional social media strategist isn’t just posting for you. Anyone can do that. They’re posting in a way that increases engagement and sales, and lowers advertising engagement prices. Strategically!
We’ve put together a list of five signs that you could use a social media team. Let’s go through them together!
5 signs that you could use some help with social media
1) Your engagement rate is less than 10%
Engagement Rate is a calculation for measuring a brand’s effectiveness on social media. It is the number of people who engaged (like, comment, share, pin, favorite, etc.) divided by the number of people reached. As teams post on social, the goal is to have high engagement. High engagement allows the algorithms to rank a piece of content as more relevant than others which then reaches a larger audience.
You can figure out your engagement rate on Instagram if you have Insights via a business account. Iconosquare is another good way to see your engagement rate on Instagram. My Instagram engagement over the last 30 days has been 93%.
2) Your average cost per click on ads is greater than 10 cents
Social media advertising is one of the most popular tools for growing an audience, building brand awareness and increasing sales, but too often business owners are paying too much and budget is being spent too quickly. On Facebook, your cost per content engagement should average less than 10 cents per engagement, less than 4 cents per video view and 50 cents for new fans.
Have you tried paid social media advertising? Can you tell that you’ve targeted your correct audience and are getting a good value for the price? If you haven’t tried ads yet, wouldn’t it be great to have experts set it all up, instead of blundering around and hoping for the best?
3) You have customers but are not using that information for retention and acquisition
As social platforms moved from purely social networking to a marketing platform there has been a significant focus on creating powerful tools for small business owners. Custom lists allow you to target people who already know and love your brand. Lookalike audiences allow you to reach a targeted population that is extremely similar to your current customer based off of lifestyle choices and brand interests.
Taking this valuable data and using it allows you to send out extremely targeted advertising in a multitude of mediums like email marketing or highly targeted social media advertising.
4) You are a company leader
Company leaders can most certainly have a presence in their social media strategy, but generally speaking there are other roles and duties that the leader could focus on to move the business forward without decreasing social media success.
You guys. I mean. This one hits close to home, doesn’t it? On the one hand as a small service-based business, I know that tapping around on Instagram all day and cheering people on Facebook is super distracting from the real work I need to be doing. And I know that spending time here means time not spent on other business-building pursuits.
But! I also love being out there “in the field” and getting to know people. I also know the value of sharing my work, thoughts, and viewpoint brings to my business and those who follow me.
Maybe you just plain hate social media, and would jump at the chance to give the task to someone else. If that is the case, let’s remember that hiring help with social media doesn’t mean you’re going to be cut off from using it. It means that instead of feeling forced to engage each day, we can focus on our business, and engage when it’s a good time to.
5) You are not tracking how activity impacts overarching business goals (ie: sales)
If you’ve invested in social media activity and left feeling like it didn’t work, it may be less about the platform and more about tracking and alignment. Successful social media campaigns begin with a plan that aligns with business goals, continue with tracking progress on those goals and go through a refining process and the campaign progresses. Simply put, companies who track goal progress have most success on social.
This is one task that most people just can’t keep up with. Just showing up on social media takes up a huge chunk of time, but then setting aside time to also analyze how it’s doing, tweak, and try again… Most people are exhausted just thinking about it.
Want some more information?
If you feel that social media marketing could be huge for your business, but you either don’t have the time or the know-how to get the results you are looking for, let’s talk! We are a full-service digital marketing agency because we know one size does not fit all! You can explore all of our services here.
Interested in just Social Media Management? Learn more here.
Email us today to let us know where you are, and where you could use some help. Let’s make some real changes for your business online. This marketing help is especially good for businesses that have seen success offline, but are having a hard time making an online shop work out.