What It Takes to Become an Effective Social Media Manager

Being a social media manager requires the skills of social media management and a strong understanding of how social media can influence the consumers’ purchase decisions. The combined efforts of achieving these skills can maximize the opportunities of using social media as a marketing medium for your business.

How Social Media Influence Purchase Decisions?

Most of us grew up with fond memories of potluck parties in Grandma’s place where we remember the dishes that she and our aunts cook. Even though the dishes are served over and over again at parties and family gatherings, we constantly have that same anticipation and excitement. Add to the wonderful time we get to play with our cousins ’till we drop dead on the couch. It was the whole experience that made us look forward to continuing the tradition with our generation.

The analogy to purchase decisions is that modern consumers are also looking forward to having that complete and awesome “experience” with the products and services they avail. We are in the world that things are easily dispensable because it basically revolves around fads and trends. While these make life more exciting because there is always new to discover, there is this longing for something more credible and enduring, much like how our families make us feel comfortable, familiar but always satisfying.

At first glance, we see social media with a shallow perception that it is only a platform for hype and popularity. We measure things with likes, shares, and followers. It seems to fit the bill when it comes to achieving online presence and brand visibility. and yes, social media does influence online presence, and yes, it does build brand awareness; but it is actually “smarter” than we think – it impacts buying decisions. In fact, 71% of consumers said that they are likely to make a purchase decision because of social media recommendations.

So How Does Social Media Do this?

The psychology of purchase decisions can help us to better understand how the social media influence consumers. This is what marketers and salespeople are trained to know in order to capture their customers who drive sales to their companies. Social media plays a great role in influencing consumer purchase decisions because of the following reasons:

1. Consumers Buy With Their Emotions

We are humans, and somehow, our decisions are influenced by our intellectual and analytical abilities (which includes emotions). It is hard to resist something that “feels so right,” backed up by the convenience of purchasing through wireless and credit payments, door-to-door deliveries, and online catalogs. In social media, a business can create a “one stop shop” to fuel the customers’ interest. Through uploaded photos, thought-provoking posts, and high-quality relevant content, you engage your customers in trying and buying your products. You must make them feel the need to purchase in order to satisfy them. Professional food shots can make you want it, and adding a description of what it is made of, its price, and your restaurant or shop location enables a customer to instantly act on and satiate its cravings right away.

That is a complete customer journey, which can maximize the moment that your customer is engaged and led them to be “captured” right away. The social media is able to do this because of  the multimedia elements that can be incorporated into it. All of these contribute to stimulating the emotions of the buyers and let them act on it almost immediately.

2. Consumers Are More Convinced With Peers or Family Recommendations

Remember the anecdote about family traditions? That feeling of comfort and familiarity will make a brand appear to be more credible, just because your friends and family have positive experiences with it. In the online marketing, this can be amplified by online reviews, feedbacks, and testimonies from a variety of satisfied customers that can attest to the product’s performance. As a network and community-based platform, the social media can enable its customers to publicly express their experiences with a certain service or product. When it happens to be a wonderful experience, most likely they will recommend them through their social media accounts. It is like a pumped up “word of mouth” advertising.

3. Consumers Are Convinced Through a Diversified Customer Experience

A rich multimedia presence can further stimulate the interest of your customers. Upload photos, videos, and interactive elements in your social media accounts and update them regularly. Just make sure that everything will remain relevant to the nature of your business and see to it that they are fresh and unique all the time.

4. Most Consumers Tend to Follow the Crowd

This is exactly why social media make an effective marketing strategy. Because it is a community based, social network, it is practically made up of interconnected accounts that have something in common. It may be common interests, family, work, educational background, and the list goes on. When you were able to give a customer the experience he or she wanted, he or she will tend to share it to the group. When everybody is convinced, they share it too with other groups. That is what the term “popular” starts. It moves from an individual into group satisfaction. And when a consumer sees where the crowd is heading, there is a chance that he or she will follow it.

Learning about the psychology of purchase decisions can make a good background on how to utilize the social media as a marketing solution, and you as an effective social media manager.

The Makings of an Effective Social Media Manager

A social manager should be a natural multi-tasker, a fast thinker, a strategic planner, and a team player and has a strong sense of competition but in a healthy way. It may not be as “serious” as with other office manager’s roles, but the variation of skills and attention to details still applies. And most importantly, a social manager must deploy a robust social media management system that is capable of handling and managing multiple social media accounts.

Aside from innate skills, a social media manager must be able to be effective in executing the following tasks:

1. Posting updates in different social media accounts
2. Proactively finding and sharing good stuff from other online sources
3. Answering or taking note of customer inquiries and concerns and assigning them to the customer service team
4. Monitoring, tracking, and analyzing data using analytics and reporting tools.
5. Blogging and publishing original content.
6. Customer engagement by taking part of the conversations, answering questions, and responding to comments.
7. Community building
8. Strategic planning and brainstorming
9. Events and promo planning
10. Formulating or implementing contingency plans and complaint resolution
11. Guiding a consumer to a complete journey towards being a high-valued customer

Most social media managers are time oriented because of the volume of tasks and engagements that he or she must attend to within the day. Others see the role of a social media manager as one that inclines to productivity and creativity more than it requires to be a problem solver; nonetheless, being a social media manager  is never easy nor a glamorous job to begin with.

But what is great about being a social media manager is the capability to influence people. You are also responsible for making more informed customers out there, which are “smarter” with their purchase decisions because they know what they want and how they want it to be delivered.  It helps that you provide high-value contents that are helpful in addressing a consumer’s questions and needs.

As with any online engagement, the best results are achieved by using business tools. Social media management tools enable a social media manager to stay on top of his or her social media engagements. By automating mundane tasks, the manager has no more time to focus on his or her social media marketing strategies that attract, appeal, and engage. Going deeper to the purpose of using social media as a marketing medium enables a business to achieve better lead conversions that ultimately translates to a purchase.

Benefits of Using Social Media Management Tools

A more aggressive social media marketing campaign requires a social media management software. Having maximized results is why social media management is important. Here are the benefits of social media management software to your marketing campaigns:

1. You can manage multiple social media accounts simultaneously.
2. You can closely monitor all incoming data from your customers, so you won’t be missing out on anything.
3. It enables you to keep track of all engagements and activities that take place within all your social media accounts.
4. Publishing of content can be scheduled ahead of time, which is something that the tool can automate.
5. It enables you to gain valuable insights about trends and opportunities for your business to improve or grow.
6. You can better analyze your data.
7. You can measure the effectiveness and performance of your campaigns.
8. You can enrich your customer experience through multimedia elements like images and videos.
9. You can easily produce, publish, and moderate relevant content.
10. It enables consistent projection of the image you want your brand to convey by aligning it to the goals of your other online engagements like website and blogs.

See CrowdReviews.com’s social media management software reviews to know what clients are saying about the services of the top social media management software providers and to know what are the best social media management tools to use for your specific business needs.

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Sarah Holton

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