Looking to build your presence on social media? You may be familiar with the process of social media management. Social media management companies help to establish, grow and maintain specific business-focused social media accounts. Your social media profiles are core sources of interest and engagement for your audience and customers. In order to successfully build a company or ignite a creative idea in today’s online-focused market, proper social media behaviors and practices are of the utmost importance.

Some people are more versed in social media jargon. Others may find the process of growing their professional identity online to be daunting and confusing. Enter social media management companies.

The concept of social media management companies first began at the start our the social media landscape. Understanding online social behaviors and trends allows one to help businesses develop their online presence and profile.

Almost every individual, brand and business are active on at least one social media platform. A demand for the management of social media profiles and behaviors remains steady. To obtain a better idea of what social media management entails, let’s take a look:

What Does a Social Media Management Company Do?

A social media management company is focused on helping brands and businesses grow online through the means of social exposure and engagement. Marketing services for businesses may be conducted on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus, Snapchat and YouTube. Utilizing various techniques and tactics helps your professional brand grow on whichever platforms desired.

Social media experts and managers that are well-qualified and knowledgeable about the social space comprise most social media management companies. These businesses focus on building a brand’s reach through online efforts. As a social media manager, you focus on developing marketing strategies for your clients, setting up various social media profiles, creating content for your client and helping them to increase followers and engagement. Let’s discuss each of these moving parts of the larger social media management plan below:

Developing Your Brand Strategy

A brand seeking social media management services can either be relatively new to the social space or an established entity looking for a refresh of content and strategy. Either way, social media management companies focus on crafting and implementing a specific strategy. And, these strategies effectively grow your identity and business.

A social media management company accesses your current efforts to develop a brand strategy. Next, they dissect the content and strategy that is and isn’t working for your brand. These steps revolve around looking at the type of content, the time which you post, how you interact with your community and the way you authentically add value. Next, they use this data to build a new strategy for online success.

A brand strategy consists of concrete ways to translate online interactions into tangible purchases and full brand engagement. The strategy may consist of deciding which kind of content works effectively with your audience. What works well may rely on visuals on Instagram, written words on Twitter or captivating videos on YouTube.

To drive the content on your social platform, the social media management company will then determine which time to generate the most audience engagement. Are they active more at night or in the morning? Is the conversion rate for engagement highly effective on a Friday night or Saturday morning?

Lastly, a strategy will break down how the management company will integrate and employ these tactics for their clients. These game plans could include crafting an editorial, content calendar or creating a profile on a scheduled posting platform. Once the strategy is in place, a social media management company can begin the process of creating engaging content.

Creating Engaging Content

Helping your client by craft content that is creative and engaging provides real value for their followers. Content can often be regarded as difficult by companies who are unaware of what entices their audience.

A social media management company either crafts work or outsources to trusted creatives and influencers who work with the agency. For example, if decided your brand would grow by posting graphics and text pieces to your accounts, then the company would easily do so. But, if the content requires a bit more leg work and production, a larger, specialized team may be involved. For example, a photographer would create stunning visuals, or a videographer captures snapshots of your brand’s product or service.

Additionally, content can also be created with the aid of an influencer. As more companies are gearing their social media efforts toward the realm of influential recommendation, a manager may suggest cultivating relationships with influencers within your industry niche. This can be a two part strategy of obtaining quality content all while gaining a new level of interest and engagement for your brand from the large audience of the social influencers.

Whichever way your content will be produced, it is important to remember that content is the forefront of your social media presence. Although there are various components of strategy, planning and producing, the final product that your audience will see is the content you share. This is your chance to grab the attention of your followers and give them a reason to show interest in your company.

Managing All Aspects of Your Various Accounts

From creating profiles on social media accounts, to posting your content and managing replies, a social media management company will be in charge on maintaining all aspects of your various social accounts. When hiring a management consultant, you will want to give them full access to your accounts in order to them to instill the most efficient strategies that render the best results.

The process of social media management is not strictly focused on how to create a strong online presence but also on how to maintain and continuously grow your influence. The company will guide their clients through the process of setting up a profile on each network, choosing a username, crafting an informative bio, linking the accounts together and sharing these profiles on their professional website or portfolio.

Building Relationships with Your Community of Followers

While creating captivating and engaging content may be one of the most important aspects of any successful social media presence, it is equally necessary to remember that content control doesn’t stop once you push post. The after effects of sharing your content are just as crucial to your individual or brand success.

Built on the idea of interactions and relationship building, social media, in simple terms, revolves around being social.

You may have started your social media accounts with the dream and goal of accumulating thousands of followers and having a profile that is viewed as popular. Yet, although this is a great goal to have for the success of your business, followers mean little to nothing if you do not make the effort to engage with them. Followers on social media sites are people who have an interest in the content you produce, the lifestyle you share and the value that you add to their feed.

Followers are real people. They are customers, advocates, critics and supporters of your brand or company and have the power to define your place within the industry. Therefore, curating a following beneficial to your business requires dedication to the process of engaging and interacting with your audience.

One role of a social media management company will be to build relationships with your community of followers. Responding to comments left on posts, replying back to personal messages and even offering insights to questions all build an online relationship. When you take the time to go through and either leave some simple feedback or craft a thorough, thought out response – you will build a bridge between the business and its customers. Engagement and community gives a human component to the realm of social media and makes your followers view your brand as more than just a profile or consumer driven marketplace.

The concept of relationship building through social media is highly important for those who are building personal brands. As your social media is an extension of yourself – you will want your followers to feel connected to you rather than engaging in lackluster social etiquette that feels impersonal. For example, a great way that many personal creatives build community with their followers is to craft meet and greets or events in which you can connect in person. Let’s say you run a small fashion brand and you are having a pop up shop to showcase your new products. Engaging with your followers and letting them know you will personally be there to meet them at the store, allows them to feel a true connection to you as a business person and human, rather than just a figure behind a screen.

An experienced social media management company will be aware of these engagement techniques and can either personally interact with your audience or suggest specific ways for you to strengthen your responses. A simple thank you, liking of a comment or even an Emoji can go a long way to showing your followers that you read and reply to every comment you receive.

Measuring the Success of Your Brand

The final aspect of a social media management company lies within the parameter of analytics. Success on social media translates to concepts such as reach, engagement, turnover and conversions. Essentially, understanding how content has performed with our audience and whether or not we have grown as a result of our practices lies at the forefront of focus.

A social media management company should be measuring the analytics of your social accounts during every stage of the process. Even before you begin to craft a new strategy, they will have taken an in-depth look at your current statistics such as followers, number of posts, comments per posts, likes per post, percentage of engagement, number of shares and overall reach.

By understanding your company’s current social analytics, the social media manager’s job is to determine how to increase these numbers in an effective and organic way that retains a loyal follower base. Considering that engagement and reach are some of the most important aspects to running a successful social profile, the social media management company will draw up benchmarks and values they will aim to achieve over time.

A social media management company is often regarded as successful or not based on the numbers it generates for its clients. For example, let’s say a social media manager has a client with 2,000 Instagram followers and a 20% engagement rate. The plan for social media growth and expansion is to grow the client’s engagement by 15% over the next year and gain 1,000 new followers each month. By the end of the year, the client has 14,000 Instagram followers and an engagement of 35%. The social media management company was able to produce results of a 600% increase in followers.

If your brand or business starts developing a one year social strategy plan, the social media managers continuously measures the results, growth and analytics during this time period. At the end, the statistics of your social media accounts prior to the help of management, during the implementation of new content and afterwards remain available and accessible for future practices.

How Much Does Social Media Management Cost?

A general consensus for the cost of outsourcing social media management services is that the price points vary.

According to a recent study conducted by the Content Factory, “Depending on the experience level of the social media management agency you hire, the size of your business, the suite of services you require, and…professional social media marketing can cost you anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 per month.”

This large gap in wages can create difficulties for brands or businesses looking to hire a social media manager, as they are unaware of the investment they can personally afford. It is often a larger question of which social media agency is best, what services you need and overall what is the budget you could realistically set for social media initiatives.

To reference a specific example of what it costs for social media management and marketing on the platform of Twitter, the Content Factory gives us tangible numbers of what to expect when outsourcing:

“Launching a new Twitter account, complete with setup and outsourcing content creation/consumer interaction (all 280 characters at a time), costs and average of $2,000-$4000 per month. With that said, the total price range was $1,000-$7,500 per month. What if you already have an existing Twitter account, but need some help to take it to the next level? Restructuring an existing Twitter account with limited coaching to achieve client goals is still going to cost you between $1,000-$2,500 per month, with some charging as much as $4,000 per month.”

Additionally, they also gave a breakdown of what it would cost for you to have social media management and marketing within the Facebook platform:

“To set up a new Facebook account and provide limited ongoing training to business partners, agencies can charge an average of $2,500-$5,000 per month with some as high as $9,000.”

Despite these substantial financial investments, there are social media marketing companies who have pricing scales that correlate to the size of the client they are working for instead of creating a catch-all price sheet. Larger businesses will most likely be the companies shelling out thousands of dollars for social media management, as they have intricate parts of their brand that call for more detail and attention.  However, if you’re a smaller brand starting out, you can often find social media management companies with packages such as Content Factory’s $4,000-per-month fee to manage 3 social media channels including custom graphics, hosting Twitter chats, live tweeting and more.

If you are seeking social media services, you should expect to pay between 10%-20% of the total advertising budget to have an agency manage and build personal content or campaigns. Additionally, the agency often charges a minimum management fee before producing any content. This amount usually hovers around $250.

As you can see, social media management services are not a cheap expenditure. In fact, individuals or companies should assess your budget and financial flexibility before hiring a company to manage and maintain your social accounts. If you can afford to invest, these services can provide valuable insight, production and analytical feedback to strengthening your brand and growing the success of your company.

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As you can see, a social media management company can help you develop, grow and maintain a successful presence within the online social network space.

From engaging in a multi-faceted process of developing strategy, creating engaging content, managing all aspects of your social accounts, building relationships and a community with your followers and measuring the success of your brand, a social media management company can take your professional engagement and reach to the next level.

When deciding to outsource for social media management, it is crucial to understand what you hope to achieve by working a social media manager. Whether you are building your brand from scratch, giving your company a new and fresh look or even attempting to break into a new social network that you have yet to discover, a social media manager should be a valuable resource for growth and expansion.