The Many Hats of a Social Media Manager: 7 Steps to Improve Your Engagement.

It’s not about how many hats you wear but how you wear them.

As a Social Media Manager for MGR Consulting Group, I’m constantly reading a variety of social media articles in search of inspiration, enlightenment and new experiences.  I always seem to find something useful to apply to the campaigns that I manage: a tip, a tool, a secret (and yes, I will share here with you some of my own social media secrets…).  But social media management experiences differ greatly from person to person and brand to brand. We all leave a part of ourselves in every piece of content that we create and share: our thoughts, our point of views, a pinch of our personalities, and that’s what makes managing social profiles for brands so exciting and challenging at once.

The following steps are a collection of my personal experiences in my own day-to-day experiences as MGR’s Social Media Manager.

Step 1: Assessment

First thing I do in the mornings? Check. Check everything that happened on the channels I manage while I was sleeping.  Check the likes, the comments, the shares, the reach, the performance in general.  Social media moves very fast so you can expect insights, and usually helpful information that you will want to keep for the future.

To learn about all this performance I use all the insights / analytics / stats tools that every social channel provides because there is where you’ll find the basics, and they’re usually very informative in terms of general or more specific ideas of how the channels  are doing.

Step 2: Opinions

Comments usually appear during the assessment or “checking” process.  I read through them and decide whether they can be answered immediately (if it’s an easy question), “like” the comment and give thanks to the commenter (if it’s a nice comment) or forward the comment to someone more appropriate to address certain issues.  In spite of what you read, comments don’t necessarily have to be answered within 24 hours, that would be ideal, but experience has taught me that it’s best to be a little late than sorry.  People will always appreciate a helpful answer rather than a careless response,  the get-you-out-of-the-way kind.

Step 3: Hands on!

I usually put my hands on Twitter first, being the fastest paced and most active social platform of them all.  Engagement is always there, waiting for you to do something about it.

I run a daily TweetReach check to see how many accounts were reached and identify our influencers and supporters in order to keep the conversation ongoing, especially with those who improve broadcasting.

Then comes the new followers check, “discover” interesting accounts to follow, review the performance of any hashtags we’ve created and update the lists.  And every other week it’s a wise idea to make a clean-up with ManageFlitter.  This tool detects non-followers, fakers and inactive accounts to easily unfollow.

Step 4: Create!

Get some space on your agenda, and your desk, pump up the volume to those amazing inspiring songs that you like and think. Create. Develop. Schedule.

I like Mondays and Tuesdays, but I always leave space for any other day later in the week.

Look for inspiration all over.  Internet is full of ideas and great thinkers. Search Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter… everywhere. Learn about what similar brands are doing.  Learn about what competitors are doing.  Every source is a source of inspiration , so tell that story  with your own voice and make it interesting!

A combination of scheduled and spontaneous posting is ideal.  There are several free tools such as Facebook’s own scheduler, Hootsuite, Klout or Buffer – to name a few.  But keep in mind that you need to have time for authentic live engagement. Let’s not forget that social media is a communication channel and people rely on your availability.  After all we’re telling the world where to “find us”: “find us on Facebook”, “find us on Twitter”, “find us on Pinterest”, “find us on Google+”.  If they can “find you” they will expect to have a conversation with you at some point.  So it’s important to be there.

Step 5: Curate

I like that word. It’s artsy but it simply means find interesting stuff to share.  Support other’s accounts.  Reshare their content.  You can always focus on topics that are directly or indirectly related to you.  Share your supplier’s, influencer’s, supporter’s content.  Even your competitor’s at some point. They will appreciate it.  Don’t forget that social media is all about communication and word-of-mouth.  Do a good deed and you will get the same in return.

Step 6: Listen up!

For this task I will always rely on a tool.  You can “manually” monitor whatever you want through Google searches any given day but it will probably take a LOT of time.  That’s why there are some free-to-low-cost tools, but powerful enough, such as Mention.  Mention works with Google Search (just as any other tool) but you can also integrate your Feedly profile.  You will receive notifications of “mentions” all through the day based on groups of keywords. Results come from websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, forums, videos and images.

Step 7: Wrap up!

End your productive day with a nice cup of coffee, or tea, and new insights and ideas from what you learned all through the day.  And don’t forget to read about latest trends, new platforms and all the latest news to keep yourself on top of everything’s that going on.  Everything you read means more information, more knowledge and more ideas for the future.

Keep a notepad close, such as Evernote, Google Docs, Microsoft OneNote or any app that you like where you can easily write down your ideas.

Are you ready to engage and open new channels of communication for your clients?  Talk to us!  Our MGR Social Media Team is ready for you!  We will help you connect and be active across all social media platforms 24/7.