A social media manager is an important asset to any small business. A company's social media presence helps establish brand awareness, cultivates a company’s reputation, and helps reach out to customers.
Hiring a social media manager to oversee these efforts can greatly benefit a small business. However, it requires more thought than just hiring someone who uses Facebook a lot.
Best Small Biz Help has consulted dozens of experts to get valuable advice on how to help small business owners hire a social media manager for their company.
Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare are a few important platforms that are utilized by various companies. Creating a Facebook page for your company can generate interest but if it is not managed properly then potential customers could be lost.
Social media managers oversee the creation and delivery of quality and consistent content. They want to make the company shareable and retweetable.
If you have 1,000 loyal fans you have the ability to reach one million people.
Nicole Krug, founder of Social Light, which is a “business strategy company specializing in brand marketing and social media,” knows that finding the right person to craft a social media campaign is crucial. Krug tells small business owners:
“You are looking for someone who stays on top of the changing social networks and is able to gauge what is right for your company.”
Krug explains that, “these are the people who are on the front lines of your social sites. They will post content and attempt to develop relationships with fans and followers of each network to create loyalty and ultimately revenue for your company.”
She continues that, “social media has matured into a comprehensive communications channel,” and thus the job requires extensive knowledge and experience. It is very important to hire a social media manager for your small business.
A social media manager would help your company stay ahead of online trends, reach out to potential customers, cultivate your relationship with current customers, and help your small business grow.
It's a #socialmedia #revolution. Are you ready? bit.ly/WokxJS #smallbiz #smallbusiness #biztips #marketing via @bestbizhelp
— Chelsey Lamwatt (@karolynchelsey) December 2, 2012
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Actually a very relevant article. In today's world you need as much exposure as you can get and social media is a fairly cheap way of getting to the masses as long as you can get people interested in what you have to say or offer on social media. Hope this helps
Great suggestion!
Excellent write-up. I believe that use of social media is important not just for small companies but for medium size and large ones as well. We use Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and Blogs with great effect. Having a savy social media manager is the key.
This is really a good article.
Thanks.
You are on the right track. A social media manager is an important asset in any small business. It has great prospects Keep at it.
Excellent article.
Very compelling argument!!
Great article with many vaild points for today's business world. Especially true is having a Social Media Manager to consistantly be on top of all the different media avenues used. Like you said it is a lost cause if it is not consistantly update.
Thanks for writing this article.
Excellent article and a reminder of the power of social media - which I forgot to include in our web site.
Loved the video. Great points in the article as well. For those small businesses that do not use social media, I think their lack of involvement stems mainly from hearing they should embrace social media - but not knowing the 'HOW to do it effectively?' part of the equation and the ' WHY' these strategies work. They think that it is too time consuming and difficult to manage. They just do not know how they could manage social media and keep up with their day to day activities. Telling them to hire a social media manager communicates that it is a solution to the problem of monitoring - a problem they are unsure they want to take on.
I think that small businesses need to understand 2 important things: 1) specifics on how social media work to positively and negatively affect their brand, product or service, and 2) detailed explanations of all the activities that a Social Media Manager would need to be doing on a daily basis in the social media space, to understand how important it would be to have dedicated personnel monitoring this new tool.
In addition to the above, for those businesses that use social media but do a poor job of monitoring, they have to change their concept of viewing this type of marketing as an expense centre and should look at it as a revenue centre. Understanding the implications of such would be key to this culture change.
A better understanding of the vast power of social media and how small business owners can efficiently leverage this tool would definitely raise the adoption rates.
Quite the relevant article and definitely is something that will be heavily required if not already. Plus, I think that they will even go as far as offering social media courses in a new capacity to involve FB, Twitter etc. and expand on social trends and studies from the past. Just my two cents!
Good work, good article
Excellent article. Concise yet awakens the interest for further investigation on the subject.
Great article! Can be used for other sources such as charitable organizations.
Hell Chelsey, an excellent article that shows how today's technology can help one's business grow.Your grandparents, I am sure, are proud of you as you follow in their foot steps of business, using technology.
Len & Bebe
Absolutely agree that not only small businesses but indeed even larger businesses and even organizations need to look this way. At the Guyana Red Cross we are looking to do just that. It really is the way of the future