All small business owners understand that the importance of an online business presence can’t be ignored. Additionally, due to the pandemic, customers are more online than ever thought. Every individual spends hours on the internet every single day. Therefore, if you run a business, then its online presence matters and is essential.
Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Youtube, etc., have massive audiences connected. Here you will get better opportunities to connect with potential users. These people scroll social media to get inspiring, entertaining, and valuable content.
So, to attract these users and connect with the audience, you need to use social media platforms well. In this regard, you require social media marketing and social media management. These two are the most critical elements of a digital marketing strategy. Both are equally important but they are not quite the same thing.
To use them effectively, one must understand the difference between social media management and social media marketing. This article will guide you through the basics of social media management and marketing, their differences, the balance between the two, and more.
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Social Media Management
Social media management involves having an account on any social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. It involves creating content and managing engagement with the audience, including liking their comments, responding to their messages, building engagement, and more.
- Social media management intends to manage your online presence to create awareness of your business or brand. Social media management is all about building your profile identity, engagement with your audience, growing your brand, and making connections.
- The basic idea is to consistently create and share content that spreads awareness and engagement to your brand. The traffic you will gain is primarily free, not paid.
- People use social media platforms to be informed, inspired, or entertained, and social media management works to offer what customers want while still building community and awareness.
- It’s a long journey, and you won’t see any results overnight, but it is a more affordable method for newer businesses or those who want a simpler campaign. The key is to engage with your customers by providing valuable and genuine content.
For better reach:
- You should create original, organic content to add value to your audiences’ lives and share on different platforms.
- Always keep your profile maintained and updated.
- Try to respond to every comment and message from your followers promptly and professionally.
Social Media Marketing
Like its name suggests, social media marketing includes promoting your business with a specific goal and budget in mind to grow and market your brand, company, product, or service.
Social media management mainly focuses on planning and executing strategies to generate leads, increase sales, engage users with your brand. But social media marketing works regarding a specific purpose to reach visitors and direct them to your website. For this, paid advertisement and promotions are involved in expanding your audience reach.
- With the proper use of social media marketing, one can target users for specific motives, i.e., generate leads, boost sales, and any goal you want to reach. With your organic and paid content, you can achieve your desired goals.
- It’s likely a paid promotion, for that one can include a call to action, i.e., “shop here,” “buy now,” ” visit here,” etc.
- With social media marketing, money is required to push the promotion. You can generate revenue, increase followers with paid ads. You need to spend some money, but you will get a return of investment (ROI) when customers follow your process and perform a specific action (make a purchase, subscribe, follow, etc.).
Balance Between Management and Marketing
Although both tactics have different concepts, they are still internally connected. One can use both effectively for higher reach and accomplishing different goals.
What is the profit of launching a campaign if you don’t have any presence online and followers? There will be no benefit of paid ads and promotions if your account is boring and irrelevant to your brand. Or, if you have a solid presence online and share organic content for free, you will benefit more by using paid ads to generate leads and boost sales.
The differences between the two are also important to consider when hiring a professional (there are people who specialize in either one). What is the benefit of hiring a person for social media marketing if they don’t show solid ROI? Or if you hire someone for social media management, what are they doing to ensure that your content will be consistent and interesting?
At the end of the day, social media marketing and social media management are different but should go hand-in-hand. It would be best if you created a balance between the two to avoid any issues.
Points to consider concerning social media marketing and social media management which might be helpful for you:
✓ Identifying Your Target Audience
Who is your target audience? What type of content do they like? Which platforms are they using most? This all will help you in reaching your right audience.
✓ How To Build Your Presence
After identifying your target audience, the next step is to focus on building and growing your online status. Grow your circle, connect with people of the same interest. Also, stay close to your brand oneness.
✓ Organic Content vs Paid Advertising
Now you have created an authentic online presence. It’s time to engage your audience with your genuine, valuable, and organic content. If you want to drive results in a shorter period of time, you can invest in paid content or you can focus on building your audience organically, which may take longer, but can give you a more engaged group to advertise to, and later use paid ads to further engage with, if necessary.
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Conclusion
Social media marketing and social media management are opposite sides of the same coin. Considering one and ignoring the other can’t be enough. Both need to be taken into consideration. Depending on your unique goals, you can make balance and use these methods accordingly for the benefit of your small business.
