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Monday, December 19, 2011

The Top 3 Tools You Need To Become An Effective Social Media Manager


I have a friend who recently transitioned from traditional marketing to digital marketing. Traditional meaning "offline" marketing while Digital marketing here will focus on Internet Marketing (mobile marketing will be another blog entry). 

Her transition made me remember when I made the shift exactly 4 years ago. I was working as an event marketing officer for a TelCo company and I have NO exposure on internet marketing. Suddenly, I was hired by an I.T. company whose business is purely on the Internet - e-commerce and e-marketing. I didn't know what to do back then. It's really funny now if I look back because back then, I was second guessing almost everything. Although I have basic marketing knowledge, my work experience prior to this job was purely "offline". 

2 Years ago, I was given the opportunity to lead my own small ad-hoc team creating and managing the company's first social networking account. And Yes, it was Facebook (as per my last blog entry). That was my very first 'digital' project I ever handled on my own. I immersed myself with online resources and how-to's regarding social media. After a few months, I was able to get the feel of how it works and what the impact of social networking is on our online presence as a company. 

So this post is about helping people who wants to transition from being a 'traditional' marketer (which by my own definition in this blog is someone who has no prior experience in digital marketing) to a Social Media Marketing Manager. 

I'm sure everyone now knows how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Viddler, and all other social sites. If not, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to get the hang of it as soon as you create an account. Managing a social account is no different in managing a personal account. How you project yourself to your online community is also the same for companies. The only difference is that companies measure everything in order to be more effective. 

As a starting social media manager, these are the top 3 tools you will need (in my own opinion):
  1. Post Scheduler - there's a lot out there but my personal favorite is HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com). If you're just starting your company social accounts, this tool will definitely help you publish content at good intervals. It can publish to Facebook as well as Twitter and can handle multiple accounts. Good news is that if your client is on a different time zone, the tool can be programmed to work on a pre-defined schedule. And all of this is available on the FREE version. The Pro version just offers advance analytics and I believe you still don't need it when starting up since you're still populating your social sites with posts. 
  2. URL Shortener - You will need this because if you're managing twitter, you have limited character allocations so a shortener will help you maximize your tweets. The good thing about this is that most shorteners these days have built in analytics so that you can monitor how many clicks it generates for you to know if people are really checking your link. A few personal favorites are bit.ly and ow.ly.
  3. Monitoring Tools - Once you have your post scheduler and your URL shortener, it's time to setup your monitoring tools so that you know that whatever you're doing is generating some sort of interaction or traffic. Facebook comes with its own basic analytic tools called Facebook Insights but all the data are pretty - well… basic. hehe. You can check social mention, Twazzup, How Sociable, twittercounter, and a lot more. You just have to make sure that it is capable to measure the social site you are targeting. 

Social Media Tip: If there's a chance that your company will decide to create accounts individually for all your brands, DON'T as in Do NOT link them all in one account. Create separate accounts  with different logins because as per my experience, there was a time when one of our tools were no longer being supported therefore we lost all our information and analytics with them. It was a social media disaster!

Another tip: If you reach at least 100,000 fans or followers, consider getting an upgraded analytics tool that can segment your data further in order for you to better analyze your social performance. 

LAST TIP: If you're an ipad owner or an Android user, there are a lot of Apps out there that can help you manage your social accounts using your mobile phone or your tablets. 

Alright, so basically that's about it. The three tools you need to have before you start your social media marketing endeavors. Trust me - you will need these! =)

Engr. Nicco Joselito Lopez-Tan
ECE, MMC

P.S. I might do an individual post of these tools on how to use them for beginners. =)

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous21.12.11

    superb.... Can't wait for d next article

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you. :) Next article would most likely be about Facebook Insights. =)

    ReplyDelete