You’ve recently decided to start your own business, and after a few months of trying to manage your business and your social media on your own, you’ve decided it’s finally time to hire a professional to handle your social media for you.
So, you hire a social media manager. YAY! This means that after posting for a week, you’re going to go viral, get hundreds of clients in the door right away, and get thousands of followers overnight… right?!
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your social media manager’s job is absolutely NOT to make you go viral and gain thousands of followers after posting on your account for a week.
Your social media manager’s job is to align your brand’s core values and mission with strategy, creation, and performance analytics to build trust and consistency across your business. Here are three things that you, as a new business owner, need to know about your social media manager:
1. Virality is not the goal. Building trust with your audience is.
The idea of going viral is obviously amazing. In fact, going viral is definitely a great benefit to utilizing social media for your business! But, going viral is: A.) not a strategy (like, at all) and B.) good for views, visibility, sometimes followers, and… that’s about it.
Having your brand go viral on social media does absolutely nothing to build trust with your audience. And without trust, you’re not going to see a higher follower count translate to sales like you want it to.
Coming from someone who had two of their own videos gain over 2M views and half-a-million likes, I can confirm firsthand that ’going viral’ will do absolutely nothing for your business if you don’t have a solid strategy to back it up.
You need to trust that your social media manager’s main focus when first working with you is going to be establishing your brand voice, tone, and identity with content that establishes your authority and builds trust with your audience.
As your audience grows, it gets easier to play around with trends and the idea of ’going viral’ because you’ll have a community that already knows, trusts, and loves your product or services!
Without trust, you’re not going to see a higher follower count translate to sales.
2. Your social media manager can only work with what you give them
Yes, your social media manager should be able to find creative and on-brand ways to market your business online. That’s not what I mean by saying “your social media manager can only work with what you give them.”
What I mean by that is that your social media manager cannot create a cohesive content strategy that’s going to provide you with the results you want if you don’t know the following:
- Your Target Audience: You, as a business owner, are responsible for knowing who your target audience really is (age, gender, location, etc.) Your social media manager is responsible for creating a strategy that best positions your business to attract this audience.
- What You’re Selling: Believe it or not, a lot of business owners, especially in the coaching industry, hire a social media manager without having a clear understanding of what exactly it is that they’re trying to sell. If you’re unsure about what exactly you’re offering to your clients, how is your social media manager supposed to market it correctly?
- Your Main Social Media Goal(s): It’s normal for goals, especially in your business, to evolve as your brand grows. The problem starts when you hire a social media manager without knowing what you want to get out of it. Are you looking to grow your business? Gain new customers? Maintain or increase visibility? The more you know, the easier it will be for your social media manager to create a strategy that actually works.
3. Your social media manager is NOT your marketing director
I cannot tell you how many social media managers I know, including myself, have gotten hired by clients under the impression that they only need help creating and posting content that aligns to their brand, and then slowly becoming the one who’s being held responsible for their entire marketing strategy across every single marketing funnel they use.
I’m a social media manager that specializes in social media management and content creation. I do NOT specialize in email marketing.
I’m a social media manager that specializes in social media management and content creation. I do NOT specialize in using Google Ads that have nothing to do with social media.
I’m a social media manager that specializes in social media management and content creation. I do NOT specialize in building and designing your website just because I can design content for your social media.
Every social media manager is different and specializes in different aspects of social media marketing, but that doesn’t mean they’re responsible for any form of marketing outside of what you hired them to do!
Let’s summarize everything we just talked about…
Social media managers can absolutely transform the way your brand is seen online, generate viral content, and create a cohesive, clear, and effective strategy that makes your brand stand out from its competitors.
However, you shouldn’t go into hiring a social media manager as a new business owner thinking that they’re going to make your brand go viral after three posts, gain thousands of followers within days, and somehow become your company’s marketing director overnight.
It’s normal to have your social media manager and your guys’ combined needs evolve as time goes on and your audience grows. Nothing is meant to stay the same forever, especially in social media marketing!
But before you hire a social media manager, make sure you know what it is you’re looking to get out of social media, what aspects you need the most help in, and trust that whoever you hire is going to bring their expertise to your business the best way they know how.
Most importantly, please try to remember (on top of everything we just discussed, of course) that your social media manager is only human, just like you! We’re not superheroes that somehow have the answer to everything marketing related, though that would definitely be nice.
Be patient, trust the process, and let your social media manager do their thing!
