B2B Myth of the Week: We Don't Need To Hire A Dedicated Social Media Person || Mascola B2B Marketing

B2B Myth of the Week: We Don’t Need To Hire A Dedicated Social Media Person

The Myth: We Don’t Need To Hire A Dedicated Social Media Person

The Truth: Social Media Success Requires A Dedicated Role

One of the best things about social media is its simplicity. My father uses Twitter, and he can barely forward an email. But this is where the simplicity ends. Using social media as a marketing channel is far more complex. If you’re thinking of having a staff member add social media to their existing duties, reconsider. There are solid gains to be made in the social landscape, but worthwhile results require dedicated effort. In short, good social media isn’t as simple as it looks.

First, Understand Why Social Media Presence is Vital

81% of the US population used social media in 2017, according to statistica. It is estimated that there were 2.34 billion users of social media last year. You can bet that folks who make purchase decisions on B2B brands were among them. If you have a dedicated person at the helm, the potential for increasing traffic and reaching new customers is limitless. A well-developed social strategy can humanize your brand and offer an efficient way for customers to engage with you. On top of this, market insights are made easy: consumer traffic and responses to certain posts show you what’s working and what isn’t in a very quick and digestible way.

Social Media is More Than Posting

Ok, so you know why you need it. But the benefits mentioned above don’t come from haphazard posting or “spraying and praying.” Here’s what a typical social media expert accomplishes:

Content strategies and calendars.

If you don’t have a firm set of goals, success can elude you. Having someone to create and update a specialized content strategy to push the brand forward and maintain its momentum is vital to your social media presence. This means strategizing a variety of blogs, white papers, infographics, and videos that all work towards the same end goal. On top of this, keeping a detailed schedule of uploads and posts provides a way to monitor the work so far and inform future ideas. This ensures nothing is being oversaturated, underutilized, or ignore. (Want to learn more about content strategies? Read this.)

Content creation and curation.

A social media person is responsible for figuring out what to post and when. This alone is fairly time-consuming. Even simple tasks like picking the right picture to accompany your blog take forethought. Your social media staff member is also responsible for directing what kind of content is needed and who will be creating it. In many cases, they’ll be jumping in and creating the content themselves. (You also need someone dedicated to creating great content, but that’s another topic altogether).

Analysis and Monitoring.

Social media moves fast. It’s hard to anyalize the data on the fly if it’s not your primary responsiblity. Your staff can respond to feedback and trends in real time, nudge what’s working and drop what isn’t. Real-time monitoring not only informs your current campaigns but the ones you haven’t designed yet.

Adjusts with the landscape.

Social media is constantly changing. Your social media specialist can identify the landscape and potential changes. It’s difficult to predict trends and adjust content on the fly if it isn’t your primary job.

This alone is a pretty big job description. And remember, there are always hiccups and social PR bumps along the way. It’s pretty hard to do it all if it’s considered an add-on to another job. In short, (and like everything else), if you want to do it well, you have to do it right.

Have questions about social media? Contact us. We’re here to help.

Tags: B2B marketing, B2B Myth of the Week, How to do Social Media, marketing, social media, social media marketing, Successful Social Media, Successful Social Media Marketing