What does a social media agency do?

Social Media Reach Is Underpriced

Social media is one of the most essential tools that online businesses use these days to promote their brand. Many business owners, artists, and freelancers choose to do their social media marketing.

But this can be tough. Most business owners do not have the expertise to know how to maximize their effectiveness with social media or the tools that can best serve them. So, often, business owners and managers fumble around trying this and that until they find something that works.

This is okay if you have the time to spend figuring it out as you go. But many business owners and entrepreneurs have figured out that Tim Ferris is right in his book, The Four-Hour Work Week, in which he recommends outsourcing as the key ingredient to a business’s success.

If you are struggling with your social media and you are not sure how to use it to increase your ROI and promote your brand, you may want to look into enlisting the help of a social media firm.

Social media expert agencies exist for the sole purpose of using social media to promote brands and increase your ROI. This should be your goal with social media unless of course, you are just doing it as a hobby.

To see real results, sometimes it is necessary to hire an outside expert to do what you may not have the time to do yourself.

How a Social Media Agency Works

A Social Media marketing agency works by taking your information about your business and promoting it positively on all of the different platforms and varieties of social media.

Whether it be Facebook or Linkedin, Twitter, or Pinterest, each different social media marketing agency has something to offer that can help boost your brand.

It’s important to note that these agencies take the view that there is a quantum leap between advertising and marketing. Advertising is the specific promotion of products or services with the goal being to sell. While that is the long-term goal regarding generating revenue, the real purpose of a social media company is to focus on branding.

Branding involves a deeper dive into the various aspects of what it takes to make a business and a brand successful. Its primary goal is to create a brand a household name or at least increase its presence on various places on the web so that it is easily recognizable by the target audience.

7 Major Ways a Social Media Company Can Help You

If you own online business, there are several different ways a social media expert or firm can help your business grow. We have listed the top advantages below.

Business Marketing

As mentioned before, the major goal of these agencies is brand recognition and promotion, but it’s also important to promote the products and services of a company using effective strategies that bring in business. After all, you can’t stay in business if you don’t make money, right?

If you hire a media agency to help you with this, they can focus on your marketing and help you manage your brand presence on all of the social media sites. This puts your company name out there, along with your products and services to help build your brand across all of the major platforms and helps you reach the most significant number of potential customers possible.

Building Brand Recognition

Branding is everything, and social media experts can help you get your brand recognized on all of the major social media platforms. This creates a sense of continuity with your brand that can build your reputation and make people more familiar with your brand over time. Building brand recognition doesn’t happen overnight. But social media firms can work on this for you and help build your brand with various social media outlets.

You could do much of this yourself but handing it over to a social media management firm can be an excellent solution for the busy entrepreneur, artist, writer, or hobbyist who needs to streamline this system and make sure you get the right type of media out to the appropriate social media channels.

Getting the Right Clients

Another big way social media experts can help you with your branding and business is to get you the clientele you need. Experts with social media can concentrate on making your brand more accessible to the clients that are most likely to purchase from you or subscribe to your brand.

Getting traffic is easy. But getting targeted traffic is the key to lasting success. Managers of social media campaigns know how to use Facebook, for example, to create an attractive ad that is displayed at the right time when a potential customer is looking for certain recommendations from their Facebook friends. Pinterest subscribers will react to your pins more frequently when they are placed in the right place, on the right board, and at the right time.

Social media gurus have a keen sense of what to place and where and when to put it. So it takes the guesswork out of the process.

Projecting Brand Values

Along with the promotion of products and branding, you’ll want to make sure you communicate brand values. Think about the principles and slogan that you have in place for your business. Are you able to communicate this in your advertising effectively?

Think about how Coca-Cola uses their brand to promote their values in the “Smile Campaign.” In one commercial, they showed various people sharing a free Coke and a smile with strangers all along various places in the world. This illustrated the inner values of the Coca-Cola company regarding how they wanted their product to help spread joy rather than just to make them money.

In another ad, they illustrated how Coke could spread happiness in this beautiful ad featuring the famous Coca-Cola polar bears.

However a brand promotes its values, it can all be shared on social media. That’s another way a social media company can help you improve your brand and communicate what you value as a company.

Brand Promotion

We talked earlier about creating brand recognition. That was the first step in promoting your brand, by introducing it to the world. Once you do that, you’ll need to focus on promoting your brand further by being consistent in your efforts to get the word out about your brand in a professional manner. Knowing your target audience is the job of social media professionals. They will work with you to focus on the most important aspects of your brand and get the word out about how your brand can solve problems for customers.

This is where it is also essential to know which platforms work best for your ad campaigns and how to promote the subtler aspects of your brand best. If you have a great social media marketing strategy, your social media experts can plan a strategy that will put your brand in front of your target audience on a variety of platforms where your customers can be found.

Achieving Business Goals

Another advantage of a social media group is to let them help you promote your brand and your products and services in less time than it would take you to do it yourself. For the busy entrepreneur who needs to grow their business, using a social media company can help you make better use of your time so you can work on other things.

Getting the Edge on the Competition

Another great advantage of dealing with an agency for your social media tasks is that they can study your competition using a variety of tools that can help give you an edge on your competition. Competent social media experts know the strategies that have to be applied to win the game of business and make your brand more prominent than your competition when it comes to solving the problems of your customers.

The Art of Social Media Management

If you own online business, you may have seen software such as Salesforce.com or Semrush.com that takes an automated approach to management of your social media presence. The problem with these systems, however, is that they are too reliant on automated systems that attempt to take out the human factor.

Real social media success can only come from the personal approach. Hiring professional people who understand the social media business can help you get the edge on your competition and put it into the capable hands of seasoned social media professionals instead.

This approach is better than leaving it to automation. While many have found success with automated systems, there is always something lacking when the entire process is moved to automation. It takes the human touch to organize and carry out a successful social media campaign. Expert social media professionals can help with this process.

10 Things a Social Marketing Agency Does

In addition to the basic things we’ve discussed in this article so far, social media agencies focus on the following tasks to help promote a brand.

1. Brainstorm strategies to help promote your brand on various platforms. Remember that every social media platform has different specifications, standards, and specific ways to help your business. Social media management experts know which platforms to use and when and how to maximize your effect to reach the most significant number of potential clients.


2. Know the technical specifications of social media publication. Each social media platform also has different specifications for uploading and saving graphics and other digital media. Experts with this type of know-how know what these specs are and they can take the guesswork out of how to upload, manage, and promote various media within all of the platforms. This process takes a lot of time to do if you try to do it yourself. So it’s a good thing to outsource if you are a busy business owner.


3. Manage your social media profiles. Once you have your social media accounts up and running, you’ll need to make sure you keep them updated regularly. This includes posting regularly, posting new content, and replying to comments or interactions from customers or visitors.


4. Creating original content. The most important aspect of maintaining a social media presence is in creating original content. Social media managers can handle your pages on a regular basis and update your pages with fresh content. Regularly posted content is the most important factor in managing your social media pages.


5. Updating your profile. Another important task that media managers can do for your social media pages is to update your profile. While this is not something, you have to do often, when your status changes in any way such as adding new products or services, a new skill set, or other factors, your media manager can update this information for you.


6. Maintaining customer service. Did you know that social media platforms can serve as your best mode of customer service? Sure! More people are hopping on social media pages of brands they shop with because they think they will get a faster reply and faster customer service by communicating via Facebook or Twitter. Leaving a message allows customers to deal directly with a brand without having to wait for a reply from a customer service email that usually takes a few days. Email is always slower than online social media methods.


7. Advertising for your products and services. In addition to the other things, social media companies and agencies can advertise specific products or services for your business. This can help you increase sales with specific advertisements that they can put out on your Facebook or Twitter accounts. Even Pinterest and Instagrampint have become more popular for specific product ads since you can focus on photos and video and the pins and photos on these platforms seem to get a lot of attention from visual learners who are looking for shopping options.


8. Entertaining your audience No matter what type of business you are in, entertaining audiences is a part of this. People want to be entertained. They want to find something funny, touching, or unique. Giving your customers valuable information is also a way to grab their attention that can lead to better sales and revenue and increased levels of ROI.


9. Cross-linking your digital media assets. One of the most important things you should do when dealing with and managing your social media is to cross-link your digital assets. For example, if you have a YouTube video, you should put a link to your social media within the YouTube video description. Then link back to your YouTube channel from your social media outlets. Google is fine with this technique providing the content on all of your social media is relevant to each other.


10. Gaining leads and followers. Another critical task that a social media manager does is to help you gain more leads and followers for your brand. Facebook allows you to create business pages easily from any page and people can “Like” your page to follow your business page. Then every time someone likes your page, you will have a new potential lead for your brand. Anything you post will show up as a notification to these followers. That way, you can keep posting information and entertaining content in front of your followers anytime.

Why Hire a Social Media Agency?

So why should you hire a social media firm? Should you try to do it yourself instead? Everything always comes down to either money or time, doesn’t it? That’s the question you must answer: whether you would rather spend money or time. If you have the time to spare, do it yourself. But remember that spending the extra money to get an expert for your social media marketing tasks might well be worth the money you spend to get the results you need.

What to Look for in a Social Media Agency

When you are looking for a social media firm to help you with your social media goals, you should consider the following characteristics.

• Communications skills It is important that your social media expert has excellent communications skills. This is because they need to be able to produce content that gets the attention of your target audience. They should also communicate with your regularly as they post content. You need someone who can get back with you fast rather than having to wait several days for a reply. Social media happens fast. It’s too late to change something if you cannot get in touch with them when you need to.
• Turnaround rate for posts You need an agency with a fast turnaround rate, as well. Most businesses post at least once per week and many posts more often. Your customers and followers want to hear from you regularly, and this keeps you on the radar of your most important clients. So make sure your social media expert can produce content with a fast turnaround.
• Original content factor Posting original, interesting content is important. Duplicate content is frowned on, whether it is in Google, your web page, or your Facebook page. Make sure your social media manager produces original content and can put out interesting tweets, pins, and posts on a regular basis that is composed of original content.
• Client testimonials There is nothing more powerful than having client testimonials on your social media pages and websites to boost your brand. Social proof is the new “digital handshake,” and it shows your potential clients that you have followers and customers who are happy with the service you provide them. You can create client testimonials with video, podcasts, audio clips, infographics, and more. Ask your social media firm if they can help you with this important service. Also, be sure to check out the client testimonials of the social media firm you are considering before deciding if they are right for you.
• Results What matters most is results. What results will you get from using their service? You can check out the results that others have received using their service and then make a decision based on this factor.
• Fair Pricing Every business owner has to watch their bottom line. You want your ROI (return on investment) to pay off. So look at the pricing they offer about what they can do for you and see if the price is negotiable if you use them more often.

Social Media Help Pricing

You will find that different agencies charge different prices for social media help. Depending on how often you want them to post, manage, or update your sites and pages, you can expect to pay anywhere from $10 per hour to $1,000 or more per month. Most media managers charge a rate based on the job rather than an hourly wage. So you can figure out the basic rate based on the amount of time and tools that are needed to complete your tasks.

In general, the more customized you want your posts and the more results you require, the more you will pay for this service. Many social media experts will charge based on the results they can bring you. For example, they may charge you more if they can help you generate more leads and sales from what they do, rather then just charging a flat rate per project or hour.

Conclusion

Once you decide to utilize the services of a social media expert or agency, communicate with them regularly to let them know what you want. Have a conference with them and give them a list of the most important qualities of your business that you want to be stressed on your media platforms.

Provide them with pictures and videos of important products, services, and ideas you want to promote. Give them everything they need and then tell them how often you want them to post on your pages. Give them a try. If you don’t like the result, you can find another agency to do it for you.

Your social media presence is too significant to leave it to chance. So find the people who can help you most and stick with them.