Social Media is time consuuuummming! I get it. But if you’re a brand or business you need to be there. It’s a marketing platform and with marketing, there are always a million things you could and should be doing but who has the time?!
Well, for some of the things YOU need to make the time. Regardless on if you hire out or not. There are some things that you as a face behind your brand need to show up for.
I am so honored and excited to be at Hook Agency this morning chatting social media with a handful of their clients. Since it’s an event that isn’t open to the public, I wanted to put a post together about what we’re chatting on for all you to know too.
Today’s topic is one that every brand asks themselves – what to hire out versus doing internally when it comes to all things social media?
This is the question we all ask ourselves and one that is going to be different for every brand, because we’re all at different phases of our business and have different end goals.
It’s impossible to do all things social media alone. If you’re at a point where you are doing all the things, but not effectively, it’s time to start thinking a little differently.
So what does a social media role entail?
What Social Media Entails?
- Strategy
- Creative
- Content Creation
- Editing
- Scheduling
- Social Collaboration
- Influencer Management
- Up-to-date Industry News
- Education, staying up-to-date on algorithm changes
- Community Management
- Customer Service
- Ad Management
- Sales Funnel + Goal Tracking
- Reporting
On top of these roles, you’ll will have a minimum of 5+ social platforms to stay on top of within each of these categories, even if it is just one brand. And each platform has a different set of rules and algorithms that you need to stay on top of.
All of these are a must if you want to have a successful social presence for your brand. And if you want your business to be alive in five years, you need to be on social media.
However, with how the algorithms are shifting every single day, it is important to stay online internally and intentionally and not always hire everything out.
So today I wanted to chat about 5 things I believe you shouldn’t hire out completely when it comes to social media.
What do YOU need to show up for?
As a face behind your brand there are always things that you should be showing up for on your social platform accounts regardless if you hire out or not.
Here’s the catch, you can hire it all and survive…BUT it’s never going to perform as well if you don’t show up once in a while from a personal brand level.
Know your Goals & Set your Intentions
When it comes to any social media platform, you need to know your goals and intentions behind why you are on that platform.
Your goals and intentions might look very different since they’re not the same thing. Goals you can measure, your intentions you cannot.
What is your intention? Why are you on social media? Why are you showing up on Social Media?
I was listening to the Amy Jo Podcast, “Help, I’m stuck” episode and she dove into intentions over goals on social media and it really hit home for me. I’ve always kept my eyes on my goals, but sometimes have lost track of my intentions, as I’m not constantly reminding myself of what they are and that’s what gets me in a social funk. Now when this happens, I’ve learned to identify it, take a pause, re-evaluate and get back on track.
Your goals and intentions will more than likely look different than your friends, competitors or arch-nemesis.
At construction2style, we have two sides of our business, which means there are two main goals we focus on. We have our DIY home improvement blog and in order to make money through our platform, we need readers which equals pageviews which equals brand sponsorships. Then we have our interior residential remodeling side, which means we need homeowners that don’t want to DIY to contact us to design or remodel their home.
However, within both of those goals, it comes down to getting as many eyeballs on our brand and developing relationships. And that’s where our intention comes in. We want to build strong relationships with people. In order to build a good relationship with a complete stranger, we need to put “us” aside and lift other people up, give value, and provide inspiration.
If we thought it was about us on Instagram, we’d log on, post for the day, reply to “our” comments, and get offline.
If it were that simple, relationships would never develop.
What is your goal and intentions on Instagram?
- Impressions?
- Phone Calls?
- Emails?
- Likes?
- Follower count?
- Comments?
- Pageviews to website?
- Selling products?
- Developing Relationships?
I encourage you to take a break and define your goal and your why behind being on Instagram or any social platform before you get caught up in the short-term trap of “likes” and “followers.”
Data will Tell
Unfortunately, you can’t measure your intentions, but you can measure your goals.
Since our goal is to get eyeballs on our brand, we focus on the reach and impressions.
Reach refers to the total number of unique accounts that have seen your post. Impressions measure the total number of times users saw your post.
As you can see, within one week we got in front of 172,351 eyeballs and reached 16,358 accounts.
If we measured by our likes on one post with all the algorithm changes, we’d probably be getting discouraged every day. Why does that matter if people are seeing your brand? If you have a good story to tell and your intentions are pure, when they think about buying or hiring, your brand is going to be in the back of their minds because they saw you.
There’s a few ways that you can view your Instagram analytics if you have a business profile. Within your actual photo, you can simply click on “View Insights” in the lower left hand side of post on your feed and this will give you a quick glance that appears as shown below.
If you’d like to dive deeper into your analytics, you can simply swipe up from the photo above and this, as shown below, will take over your screen and show more analytics.
Or if you’re on your main Instagram profile, you can click on the three lines in the top right hand side of your screen, click “insights” and you can see your overall profile activity as shown below.
Within your analytics, you can also learn from what’s already performing well! I’m often looking at this so I can determine what our readers want to see and what they engage with the most.
To view well performing content within your analytics go back to your profile –> click on the three lines –> click insights –> click content.
Under the “Content” tab, you’ll be able to view all of your content that shows the best engagement, click on each of the photos and read your comments.
Were they answering a question you asked? Did you write something personal? Were you being vulnerable? Did you share a new tip, recipe, tutorial? Or was the picture just that bad-ass?
If you click into each photo, it’s going to show you exactly how many actions were taken. Depending on your goal will also verify which content you want to create more of.
I also get the question a lot, how many posts per week should I post?
I used to say 3-5, but now with the algorithm changes it doesn’t matter as long as your posts are valuable and have meaning. If you have nothing to say, it’s ok to take a break. But if you’re going to take a few weeks off, you want to inform your readers, so they know you’ll be back because if you’ve built a strong relationship with them, they’ll miss you!
Create Real Content
With social media, especially Instagram, the next generation is craving more real life. They are actually making their photos look more grainy and are capturing more of the real life moments because they are over the “fake-ness” that is starting to be portrayed out there.
I wrote a whole post about that here –> Instagram Marketing Tips for your Business
One of our best performing photos was one that I snapped with my iPhone as Jamie was checking out the tile work he was doing.
Another interesting fact is that it’s not about the likes, but it’s about the actions taken to reach your goals. This hasn’t been one of our highest liked photos, but it has been one of our highest actions taken including getting us 358 saves and 653 profile visits, which is also key to remember.
So say goodbye to the preset filters and hello to the unedited images, which can be a hard one to juggle! It also does make me a little sad because I go to social media for inspiration and want to be inspired by nice things, so there’s a fine line with this. It also depends on the brand image you want to perceive.
Think about different brands and their ads that you aspire to be?
Some show the real of what their food actually looks like, but yet it still looks good. That’s the rule I’m following right now! For us at construction2style, I’m not going to always show my real messy house (even though that’s our reality with two kids) because we’re trying to sell beautiful remodels. Think about your brand, what you’re selling, find the line and make sure it’s still real enough, but not too far off from reality.
Tip: 1 in every 9 photos, show the reality and behind the scenes.
Think about your brand and what you want to portray and when it comes to the Instagram grid, which is 9 photos, make sure each of those 9 photos are of what you want to say about your brand.
For example, we want to sell remodels, interior design, styling, DIY tutorials, and family lifestyle. So when you look at our Instagram, in our last 9 photos that is exactly what you’re going to see. For what we’re selling, we use professional photography and for what we’re DIY’ing, we’re doing exactly that…DIY’ing our photography. Some pictures look sharp, while others like real life. And with that I usually like 1-2 of those 9 images to be real and authentic.
With the photo also comes the caption and it needs to be real, genuine, and speak from the heart. So if you are hiring out the content creation and scheduling, I’d strongly suggest that for one in ever 9 images you’re throwing in one that is you. That could be behind the scenes, the dirty work, under construction, demo day, the not so fun life behind what you do, etc.
Give Value, Be Vulnerable
No one wants to hear you talk about yourself and how successful you are. Yes, there is a time and a place for celebration, but if you are serving your audience you need to motivate them, lift them up, show them how easy it is for them to do it too, or how much better you will make their life if they buy from you.
Once you know your intention, providing value will come easy.
Social Media algorithms are constantly changing, which can be frustrating, but providing value to your readers or followers will always win if your intentions are good. And if not, people will see right through that and keep scrolling or even unfollow.
Don’t feel the need to have to publish content everyday. If you don’t have something to say that’s valuable, it’s ok to take a break for a day, week, or month.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was…at the end of every piece of content you write, take a second glance over it, and replace every “I” with “you.”
Then ask yourself, is this post I’m pushing out into the world for all to see going to benefit anyone else’s life besides your own? If not, you might want to think twice before hitting publish.
Remember, you need to make sure that you’re serving your readers and not yourself, because at the end of the day they are the ones you are wanting to get to take action.
Be a real human. Show your vulnerability. Serve your readers.
Instagram Stories/ Facebook Live
For example, for us at construction2style, we wouldn’t ever hire out Instagram Stories. With how fast social media world is shifting, your viewers want to see you show up. Not some sales-y ad, not some person who does’t represent your brand, they want to see and hear you and they need it to be genuine and real.
Tip: Show up in your stories!
Instagram stories are the perfect place to show up for this. And your readers are expecting exactly this! The feed is for the brand you want your clients and readers to perceive, but when it comes to stories, they want the reality show (if you will, haha!).
Just for fun, when I took my face off Instagram stories for 2 straight weeks, our stats dropped from 1.2 million monthly impressions to 200K impressions. Then when I came back on, they jumped back up to the 1 million mark within two days time.
Within algorithms, stories help your reach for static posts. And people want to see you behind your brand.
Sometimes when someone else is doing the story posting for you, they’re not showing up in the same way. It’s almost too professional, too on brand, and doesn’t feel as genuine as if you just hoped on and gave a little tour or tip. The person you hired is simply just creating images with text overlay, which is okay sometimes, but quickly your readers will think it’s too boring or sales-y and quickly either unfollow or worse, stop engaging with means they’ll stop paying attention. When they stop paying attention, you’ll quickly get lost in the algorithms or lose a potential client you want to stay in front of.
Influencer Management
Working with influencers can be a full time job in itself. You have to write contracts, deliverables, manage, edit, approve, track and more and depending on how many influencers you are working with for your campaign, it can be a lot of moving parts. Influencers can cost a lot so with every campaign you use them for, you want to make sure the ball doesn’t drop, which is why it’s nice to hire part of this out.
Tip: Check in from time to time.
As we at construction2style work with brands and through many PR teams, the brands that pop in here and there are the ones we have a much better relationship with, which means that we feel more dedicated and loyal to them, so we go above and beyond within their campaigns.
Not saying nor recommending you should take this on entirely because like I said, there are a lot of moving parts, but you should show up and build a relationship with them. Ask them how they thought the campaign went, ask for feedback, send a thank you email, etc. The little things go a long way!
Customer Service
Like all the roles with social media, there are a lot of moving parts and customer relations is a big one! Not to mix customer service up with community management. Community management is getting out there and engaging and building relationships with your potential clients.
Tip: When it goes offline, take it from there.
That takes up a ton of time! When it comes to customer service, I would have someone on top of it, but when there is a red flag the wording will always sound better from someone who knows your brand inside and out. When someone else is running your customer service, they will immediately direct it offline. At that time, I would recommend jumping in. You never want the response later to come from an agency or someone that isn’t directly working within your organization.
