Editor's Column July 2017 Management

Social Media Management

What is social media?

Social media, in a nutshell, is online communication channels that enable people to share information and interact via virtual communities and networks. Nowadays, the most famous social networking websites are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and the variety of platforms provides wide range of services to users. Easy access of social media networks through computerssmartphones and tablets caused huge growth in number of users. Social media allows you to create an online community and get direct feedback from your audience to learn more about what they like and dislike.

Why social media is important?

Social media has become a part of everyone’s life and it has totally changed the way people communicate and interact with each other. Moreover, visiting social media sites is now the 3rd most popular online activity and more than 2.5 billion people on social networks increasing by more than half a million a day.  Social media gives the opportunity to everyone to create his own free broadcasting channel to express his ideas and thoughts. On the other hand, the growth of social media has led to the appearance of a new promising industry called ‘social media marketing’.

It’s crystal clear that social media is a real treasure for people who can manage it properly. Follow the below tips in order to get best use of social media

 1- Identify the target audience

Targeting is one of the marketing techniques to focus on specific segment of the community. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have options to allow individuals/businesses to target users based on demographic and psychographic factors.

2- Select the channel

What’s the right social media platform to use? The answer of that question must be based on the audience you’re targeting. For example, the most popular social media network now is Facebook however people in Russia don’t use it as they have a substitute called VK so it’s important to know about your audience and the social media platforms they use.

3- Design the message

There are many messages exist on social media and it’s truly hard for users to read everything so try to create oriented and attractive messages by adding keyword and photos, normally photo goes viral more than text. Each message should have a specific objective and it’s better to create value to the followers, and always remember that the purpose of social media is to provide two-way communication between you and the followers so make sure you reply to their questions and inquiries. Finally, keep your accounts active by sharing regular content to keep followers informed about the running activities.

4-Hit multiple time zones

If you are managing social media accounts of a global organization you should determine where your followers exist and therefore determine the peak hour for them to share posts.

5-Use social media management tools

Social media management tools such as Buffer, Everypost and Hootsuite make your job easier by publishing content across multiple platforms, scheduling posts in advance and showing you detailed insights.

6-Measure the results

Don’t underestimate the power of measurements and know that you can’t control what you can’t measure. I’d call it the missing activity which admins of social media accounts ignore, however it’s very important to measure the outcome of activities in order to be able to improve your performance.

About the author

hossamali

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