What makes a great social media manager?

Don’t be mistaken: being a Social Media Manager for your business takes more than a few posts and a bit of witty banter.

When you take on social media marketing you need to be capable of turning your online audience into loyal customers who are willing to spend money with you or the time and effort isn’t worth it.

Have you got what it takes to succeed as a social media manager?

A business’s social media presence is the face of the organisation, and with over 11 million – 50 per cent – of the Australian population using Facebook to connect it’s a good business decision to make sure you are there to interact.

At Social Media Mastery we are huge proponents of educating and encouraging people to get online and learn what it’s all about for themselves, but we are also sticklers for approaching your social media marketing professionally, efficiently and with a results-driven strategy.

The skills and expertise required to generate business with longevity, from social media are complex. AND time consuming.

Think about this: Do you know your CTR from your ROI? Do you know what a good or bad bounce rate is? Do you have the ability to solve very public problems diplomatically? Do you want to engage in Pay Per Click advertising or stick to organic virality?

I’m not saying you can’t learn these things but do you have the time to learn them and do you have the natural flair for online communication and engagement to build your brand community?

Here’s a list of expertise and skills a professional social media manager should possess:

  1. Strong interpersonal and networking skills,
  2. Comfort with technology, knowledge of the organisation and empathy.
  3. Proven abilities in planning, strategy and project management.
  4. Clear understanding of analytics, the ability to set up effective campaign tracking, interpret social measurement and ROI calculation as well as a heavy dose of comfort with statistics and Excel.
  5. The ability to interpret this data and gain workable insights to make recommendations.
  6. Lots of creativity and personality (even the stuffiest brand needs to show some personality to succeed on social media).
  7. Excellent copy writing skills, experience and expertise with photography and graphics production.
  8. A good understanding of business objectives and the ability to craft effective calls to action.
  9. Experience in crafting effective campaigns for e-newsletters, blog writing, website moderation, podcasts and vlogs.

Learn how to do these things yourself or hire a social media manager

Start by enrolling in the Government accredited Social Media Mastery Certificate IV in Business . Check out the latest dates for Social Media Mastery or you can leave the implementation and management to us leaving you to get on with the stuff you know best – running your company.

Considering your social media and digital marketing may be the most revenue-centric hours anyone will spend in your company – can you afford to entrust something as important as your business’s social media communications to an inexperienced trainee?

Follow Lisa on Facebook. Find out more about Social Media Mastery  This blog is published by POMO – a creative agency specialising in customer engagement based in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia.

How to prepare a winning communications strategy

It may sound like a cliché, but communication is the most important aspect of any healthy relationship – personal and business. In my last blog, “Why is a “Business Communication Strategy” essential for your brand?” I share with you the basics of communication and why every business needs a strategy. Today, I want to help you start preparing for building a successful communication strategy and giving you some seeds for thought.

It is important to use verbal and non-verbal communication in ways that avoid misinterpretation. For example, the use of humour can be a great way to build bridges, establish rapport, and resolve minor conflicts. However, if the other person is not in the mood to laugh (or just doesn’t share your sense of humour), your wit may have the opposite effect to the one you intended. So,we all know theory is all well and good but you need to be able to apply it in the ‘real world’ and make it a part of your business strategy…

Preparing to Be Strategic

Before jumping in and creating a strategy, however, you should be clear on the following:

  • The need for a realistic commitment to social media (time, personnel, budget).
  • The value your business can offer through social media channels.
  • What your business wants to get back from its social media engagement, such as brand awareness, sales, members, volunteers, specific project goals, or something else.

Implementing a communciations strategy is helped or hindered by your existing assets:

  • brand messaging,
  • amount of staff time,
  • size of your mailing list,
  • freshness of website,
  • ease of website revisions,
  • content management system, and
  • size of budget for social media efforts.

Spend the time to consider your existing assets and what may need to be built before you create a strategy. These are your starting points, and will likely be refined throughout the strategic development process.

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This blog is published by POMO – a creative agency specialising in customer engagement based in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia.

The future of digital marketing

Considering the current volume of digital and social marketing business, it’s hard to believe how young the Internet marketplace actually is.

Cumulative events leading up to where we are now have impacted the entire globe faster than any marketing revolution in history.

In 1994, spending for Internet marketing totalled practically nothing, but by 1995, the figure stood at over $300 million. Now, 21 years later, digital marketing spending and Internet marketing businesses have exploded.  PWC predict that in Australia alone we will spend $26.9billion.

Today, it’s hard to believe an organisation exists which doesn’t have some kind of digital presence.

As websites have multiplied beyond anyone’s imagination, searching for them has become increasingly important. Websites have become the first contact for many customers with a brand.

By the year 2000, heading into the new millennium, Google was (and still is) the dominant search engine and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was born. SEO specialists interpreted the Google search algorithm and built websites that complied with the way their spiders wanted to assess the quality of content.

Google assessed the authority of links from a website by grading it from 0-10 and giving it a rank. Links to a website increase authority, pushing it further up Google’s search results. High Google rankings have become valuable commodities.

The next ‘game-changers’ were blogs. The structure and nature of blogs gave them a head-start in Google’s search engine results. Their numbers exploded, massively increasing the pool of links. Niche marketers were quick to exploit these strengths and created thousands of blogs dedicated to selling products through affiliate schemes and running pay-per-click advertising. Blogging brought Internet revenues to the masses.

Internet usage continued to grow exponentially; browsers evolved; Web 2.0 came along. Suddenly, interaction, personal relationships and multimedia became the new marketing challenges as their platforms absorbed more and more Internet traffic. Social sites burgeoned as users ‘stumbled upon’, ‘dugg’ and ‘liked’ links to web pages.

Users’ insatiable desire for the ‘new’ became the driver for the creation of streams of constant content. Google changed its search design to allow for the new, distracting traffic. Users wanted the freshest content. Marketers complied.

YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter are now some of the most important channels that marketers need to broadcast on. Doing well on these platforms not only boosts SEO results, it also pushes links to appear in all the other types of searches.

Google has started to lose its grip on web traffic dominance as Facebook grows. Comments and ‘likes’ from users are becoming a new commodity for brands. Traffic no longer needs to be directed back to a website because we can engage and convert our customers right there on their chosen social platform.

And more change is on the way.

Mobile devices are overtaking computers as the primary method of accessing information and interacting on the Internet. We’re going local, and big players like Google and Apple are gearing up for it. Local marketing is going to change the game again, but that’s another story…

Follow Lisa on Instagram or subscribe to her on Facebook. Find out more about Social Media Mastery or visit her website. This blog is published by POMO – a creative agency specializing in customer engagement based in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia.