Does the time you spend on social media take away from the time you would spend on your business? If the answer is yes, then you would most likely benefit from help with your social media. After all, you are not the social media expert, you are the expert at your business.
It’s not like social media is an optional extra any more. It’s a fabulous, cost-effective way for small businesses to market themselves but it has also now become expected. More than that, your competitors will be using it for sure.
The Covid-19 crisis in 2020 moved all that up a notch making social media the only way for many businesses to communicate with customers or trade their product or service. It has led to a lot of awe-inspiring inventiveness from small business owners in a sink or swim situation, where they had to become instant social media managers to stay afloat. But going forward that is a lot of extra commitment.
Telltale signs you need a social media manager
Do you like writing? Some business owners like copywriting and it fits in with the skills they are using for their business. As a business owner you have an amazing insight and passion for your business which can come across in your posts. But if you really don’t enjoy writing then chances are you are not doing your business justice on your platforms.
Perhaps you keep forgetting to post? Try plotting content for your posts in advance and setting a reminder on your phone or calendar. Consistent posting is really important not just to meet the expectations of your followers but to satisfy the algorithms that rule the way social media platforms operate.
Maybe you remember to post but you cannot afford the time spent away from your business for social media.
Or you could be really organised, have made time, enjoy writing but struggle to constantly think of new content and ideas?
You could be doing all you can but are still really frustrated by engagement rates. You may end up feeling your efforts are a waste of time.
What can a social media manager do that you can’t?
You can’t be expected to be good at everything. Running your business is the thing you need to excel at. The good news is that you don’t need a whole marketing department to run your social media and the gig economy means you can buy a few hours a week on an ad hoc basis from a social media manager.
5 things a social media manager should do
- Be an excellent copywriter
- Be able to mimic the tone and personality of your business
- Create strategic content to attract a specific audience and work towards conversions while spotting PR opportunities
- Recognise and market your brand and provide quality graphics
- Collect data and provide analysis
See, there’s a bit more too it than you thought and just maybe, this is why whacking a few posts onto your timeline every now and then isn’t quite having the impact you had hoped for.
What to look for in a great social media manager
I would say ensure your social media manager has experience. Not necessarily experience of being on social media every waking hour (although that can have its benefits). Look for someone who has a strong understanding of or background in marketing and a flair for writing. This person also needs to have their finger on the pulse of the digital world so they can predict how changes by the big players like Facebook can affect the way your platform performs.
You want someone who has a good understanding of audience and can plot you a social media strategy that weaves into other types of marketing for your business. Your social media manager should keep an eye on what is trending, looking for opportunities for newsjacking or jumping onto a trending hashtag.
It sounds like a lot of different skills for one person and it is. That’s essentially why Lime Communications is a partnership. What works for us is that we have similar skills but come from different backgrounds. While both of us are certainly capable of doing the entire job each has specialism to bring to every project. While I am strong on writing, strategy, PR and content creation the other half of Lime, Natalie, brings the big guns to business development, marketing, digital engagement, branding and design.
How much should you expect to pay for a social media manager?
The million dollar question. I saw a post the other day, a small business owner asking for recommendations for help with social media. One of the comments sticks in my mind, it said, “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”, a bit of cliche and I don’t think it’s necessarily true. If your social media manager has experience and skill they can get your job done quickly and don’t need to charge you the earth. I’ll let you into a secret, that is Lime’s strategy for small businesses, we charge less but have quite a large project turnover. Check the experience, not just the price.
There is a huge variation in costs for social media management and it’s not just down to the hourly rate of the person you employ but how complex your business is and how many platforms you are running. But as a ball park budget a couple of hundred pounds a month as a starting price.
Lime 