Four years ago, there were just 3 mil­lion active adver­tis­ers on Facebook.

As or 2017, more than 5 mil­lion brands were adver­tis­ing on Facebook.

So far this year, anoth­er 1 mil­lion have entered the fray.

Yes, these num­bers are pret­ty daunting.

But it clear­ly shows how impor­tant Face­book mar­ket­ing has become for busi­ness­es today – not to men­tion all the oth­er pop­u­lar social net­works that each boast mil­lions (or bil­lions) of users.

The job of the social media man­ag­er used to be main­ly gov­erned by interns or spe­cial­ists, only requir­ing them to post organ­ic con­tent to gain any ben­e­fit from the var­i­ous social media platforms.

Today, how­ev­er, you face a new social media landscape.

Here are just a cou­ple major changes we saw this year:

  • Face­book intro­duced an algo­rithm update that Mark Zucker­berg said would sup­press brand’s con­tent in the news feed.
  • Twit­ter announced that it would no longer allow the same con­tent to be post­ed on mul­ti­ple accounts.

Updates and changes with­in social media plat­forms are indeed abun­dant and quick.

Stay­ing up to date on these changes requires a sub­ject mat­ter expert to keep a keen eye, to make sure that the brands they work for have con­tin­ued suc­cess in social media platforms.

It’s great to have an exist­ing employ­ee who per­haps works on oth­er tasks with­in the com­pa­ny, con­tribut­ing to social media efforts.

How­ev­er, you’re far bet­ter off hir­ing a social media man­ag­er to help man­age, main­tain, and exe­cute social media cam­paigns and pro­vide a bet­ter return on your spend and investment.

Here are the top five rea­sons why you need to have a social media manager.

1. The Social Landscape Is Always Changing

A social media man­ag­er can keep track of any algo­rithm changes and new trends with­in the plat­form, but also adapt your strat­e­gy and the con­tent based on the lat­est updates.

A social media man­ag­er can take in what changes are either hap­pen­ing or soon to take place, and be agile, so can go back to the draw­ing board with their clients and change cam­paign objec­tives, and con­tent to pro­vide con­tin­ued suc­cess with regards to their goals.

2. You Need a Social Media Strategy

An employ­ee post­ing at ran­dom on your social media pro­files, hav­ing no plan, will do a dis­ser­vice to your brand.

If that’s your cur­rent state of being, I strong­ly advise that you go back to the draw­ing board to find out how you can either:

  • Have an exist­ing employ­ee who is pas­sion­ate about this space take over the social media efforts full time.
  • Or recon­sid­er if your brand is ready to be in this space.

Social media is not a set-it-and-for­get-it tac­tic. In many ways, this approach can do greater harm than good.

Hav­ing a plan devel­oped for social media requires the social media expert to come togeth­er with all oth­er peo­ple exe­cut­ing oth­er mar­ket­ing cam­paigns (direct mail, email, paid search, TV, radio) on your brand’s behalf.

Doing so will pre­vent your efforts from being siloed and increase the syn­er­gy of all your mar­ket­ing efforts – online and offline.

For exam­ple, if you’re plan­ning on push­ing out a direct mail piece, one that is more cost­ly than per­haps paid search or email, your mar­ket­ing team should think about how your direct mail piece can be part­nered with emails and social media cam­paigns after its in-house date to mag­ni­fy your message.

This will pro­vide bet­ter leads, engage­ment, and results.

Your social media man­ag­er will be able to bake in their cam­paigns to all oth­er cam­paigns you’re work­ing on.

The social media man­ag­er will also be able to gauge what your pri­ma­ry goals are for the year and trans­late them into social media con­tent and campaigns.

Speak­ing of con­tent, a social media man­ag­er will not only put togeth­er the strat­e­gy, being mind­ful of oth­er mar­ket­ing efforts but will also devel­op a social media cal­en­dar which they should share with you month­ly on what cam­paigns paid and organ­ic they plan on exe­cut­ing on your behalf.

3. Protect Your Reputation & Help Your Customers

Social media manager(s) are con­stant­ly on high alert to each mes­sage, review, and com­ment hap­pen­ing with­in social media regard­ing a brand.

Not only do they have the right process in place with regards to triag­ing, but also they’re aware of how to con­duct them­selves with­in the plat­form, rep­re­sent­ing the brand.

Hir­ing an indi­vid­ual who has a great deal of expe­ri­ence in this area is huge, as with­in sec­onds a social media man­ag­er can help mit­i­gate and solve an issue which would have oth­er­wise turned into a dis­as­ter if a less-sea­soned indi­vid­ual would have put in the role.

It’s vital that the social media man­ag­er devel­ops not only the right voice and lan­guage of the brand with­in social media, but also work with oth­er indi­vid­u­als with­in the busi­ness, like cus­tomer sup­port and PR, so con­tin­gency plans are put in place, well before a social media cri­sis takes place.

The action of respond­ing to a com­ment, whether it’s good or bad, should also be done with­in a cer­tain time­frame. The soon­er, the better.

Your brand can either help solve a prob­lem for an exist­ing or future cus­tomer or client, or make some­one respect how your brand con­ducts itself on social media.

4. Perspective – Inside & Out

If you’re a brand that is debat­ing on hir­ing in-house ver­sus out­sourc­ing to an agency, there are ben­e­fits to both.

Advan­tages of Hir­ing a Social Media Mar­ket­ing Agency

  • It might be more finan­cial­ly feasible.
  • The social media man­ag­er may have fresh new ideas that you may have not have considered.
  • The social media man­ag­er may not be jad­ed by the cul­ture that comes with your brand and can bring in new inno­v­a­tive ideas that your exec­u­tives may appreciate.
  • They also most like­ly have the edge in work­ing with sim­i­lar brands with­in your spe­cif­ic agency, which also can help with best prac­tices, what works in your par­tic­u­lar indus­try and what doesn’t.

Advan­tages of Hir­ing an In-House Social Media Expert

Once trained, the in-house staff will:

  • Know the intri­ca­cies of the com­pa­ny cul­ture and what red tape is involved.
  • Under­stand the brand bound­aries when brain­storm­ing cam­paign ideas.

5. Reporting & Tracking

Hav­ing a man­ag­er who is in charge of all your social media efforts can help you improve exist­ing campaign.

But a social media man­ag­er can also keep your brand agile – switch­ing objec­tives, cre­atives, or con­tent if your cur­rent efforts aren’t doing as well as they could be.

A social media man­ag­er will check their cam­paigns reg­u­lar­ly – turn­ing under­per­form­ing ads off and opti­miz­ing oth­er cam­paigns to make sure you’re mon­ey is being well spent and your goals are being met.

A social media man­ag­er will look at cam­paigns over time and will know if a tac­tic is becom­ing fatigued or if the strat­e­gy should be adjusted.

This pro­vides tremen­dous val­ue at the end of the month report­ing as they will pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion telling a sto­ry of:

  • What was exe­cut­ed that month.
  • How well it did com­pare to pre­vi­ous months.
  • What should be done next.

Some­time cam­paigns will have a con­tin­u­ing suc­cess and can lead to oth­er great ideas, which wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be the case if you didn’t have some­one ded­i­cat­ed to these efforts around the clock.

Conclusion

Hope­ful­ly you now can see that you’d be far bet­ter off hir­ing a social media man­ag­er than not.

Some­one who can con­tribute 100 per­cent to your brand’s strat­e­gy and goals will yield a much bet­ter result than hav­ing an intern or low-lev­el employ­ee post­ing con­tent at ran­dom on behalf of your brand.

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