As social media plays a bigger part in business marketing, many now either outsource their account management to external marketing agencies or employ a person specifically for looking after their presence on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.
Basic social media management packages that agencies offer usually mean that they will research latest news and information available online and populate your social media channels with this content. They will also work on building your target audience based on the information you have shared with them. Though this is effective, it is not as good as combining it with news and updates on your actual business which helps to build a stronger relationship with audiences on social media. If you outsource your social media management, then you should think about being ‘Social’ in your daily activities and look to send them content such as the following to help them with building your brand awareness:
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- Photographs. Think of sending your social media management agency / dedicated social media employee photographs of the likes of new shop fronts, sold signs, happy customers, charity events, regional architecture and touristic venues. Photographs help to populate platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter making your timelines more engaging and more likely to receive comments and click throughs.
- Blogs. This is really an important part of social media and well written and industry related blogs can really help to build brand awareness for your company online especially if these are hosted on your main capture website. Think about outsourcing blog writing to an agency ~ Think about doing a daily blog.
- Videos. Yes, we know this is a headache and is most likely to be outsourced, but videos can range from product/property/service videos to educational and how to videos. If you get videos done then share the links with your social media management agency for them to share out.
Keep a note of anyone / any other business appearing in photographs and videos so whoever looks after your social media can tag them into your photos/videos on social media as this will help to improve chances of reTweets/Shares and improves interactions. Separate ideas for business owners on how best to use photos to engage their audiences on social media include:
- Invite local businesses to your shop/office. Take selfies and share to include mentioning them. A recent campaign we did included getting the town’s mayor to pop in to an estate agency when a selfie was taken for charity.
- Take photographs of company vehicles, news paper ads, awards, external ads/banners/boards.
- Be proud of where you live and take some great photographs of the area, include architecture, touristic hot spots etc.
If you have paid to outsource social media management and this includes them providing photographs, videos, blog writing and more then great – But unless the agency working for you is next door, they are not going to be there to capture the content only you can – Make sure you takes pictures whenever you can and get them seen on social media!