As a social media manager, you know that working up fresh and relatable content and strategizing it for your target audience is no easy task.
Sure, you know you have been super inspired at some point, brimming with amazing ideas, then you sit in front of your computer and…
Nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
We've all been there at some point. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the number of posts you have to publish since you have so many clients with diverse needs.
We get it; creating a social media calendar and effectively managing social media content for different brands is hard work.
If you're ready to give up because you're so frustrated and don't know how to move forward, this article is for you.
Here's what we'll cover:
- How does social media content management work?
- 5 ways social media content management helps with content curation.
- How can social media content management help with audience targeting?
- How can social media content management help with community building?
- A deep dive into how social media content management tools can help you with your strategy.
- Bonus: How can social media content management help with employee advocacy?
How does social media content management work?
Social media content management is, in a nutshell, how you decide to manage social media for your accounts. It's a structured process starting with strategy development, where goals are set, and target audiences are identified to align content with your brand's objectives.
Content creation follows, and hopefully, you'll have a great content library to pull from, involving the production of diverse materials such as text, images, and videos tailored to engage the audience effectively. This content is then scheduled or put on a content calendar of some sort. As a social media manager, you must decide how to create a content calendar, whether you're going to old school it or using a Word doc. Or invest in a program that will make the process easy and seamless – we'll look at that scenario in depth later.
Once you publish your social media content, you need to monitor comments, engage with your audience, and foster community through timely responses and participation in discussions. The performance of this content is then analysed through analytics, which will provide insights into engagement rates, audience demographics, and the overall success of your social media content strategy.
Based on these insights, you can make adjustments to improve future content and better achieve the set objectives. This will help make the process dynamic and responsive to audience feedback and changing market conditions.
5 ways social media content management helps with content curation
Social media content management plays an important role in content curation by helping to streamline the process of selecting, organising, and sharing relevant and valuable content to engage a target audience.
Here are 5 key ways it can help with content curation:
#1 It helps you focus on the overarching picture
Before you begin preparing or curating any kind of content, you need to take a step back and think about your overall goals for the brand you're working with.
From that, you should set a killer strategy to help you reach those goals.
Whether you're trying to grow your brand or increase sales on a certain product, you need to curate your content to align with your strategy. And, if you're curating content, you certainly need content management for that content.
Influencer and photographer Julie Paisley is a great example of an Instagrammer who aligns content curation and strategy.
The photographer consistently keeps her brand voice and branding guidelines in mind, even when sharing hard news with her followers. By doing so, everything she creates is consistent with her brand and goes hand in hand with her strategy.
Content management should always start with a clear strategy that defines the target audience and their interests. This will help guide your content curation to align with what is most relevant and engaging to those users.
Doing so ensures that the curated content serves the broader goals of the brand, such as increasing engagement, building authority, driving traffic, or whatever other goal you have for the brand.
#2 Innovation is at your fingertips
If you have a social media content management tool, innovation is at your fingertips.
That's because these tools often include features that help you discover trending topics, industry news, and insights, which can be crucial for effective curation.
These tools can track specific keywords, hashtags, or influential accounts to find content likely to resonate with your target audience.
Instead of taking a lucky shot in the dark, a social media content management tool will let you know what will perform best.
For example, Sendible helps users find the optimal time to publish their posts based off of audience insights that the tool gathers which are then displayed to users in their analytics section.
All of these features are key to helping you stay fresh and relatable to your target audience. Although it can be challenging to always come up with new things, a social media content management tool will help you stay on top of trends.
#3 It helps you stay consistent
If you curate content, you definitely need a consistent schedule during your audience's peak engagement hours. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be available to post at 7:00 p.m. every night, though. You've got to have time away from the screen and enjoy a nice dinner.
By using scheduling tools, you can maintain a consistent flow of curated content without having to manually manage everything behind the screen.
This helps keep your audience engaged and ensures a steady presence on social media, which is important for building a loyal following.
The Sorry Girls is a brand that really nails consistent scheduling. The brand schedules a couple of posts per week and sees significant engagement in the comments. They rock at narrowing down what posts resonate best with their followers and when they should be posting.
#4 Analytics can help you alter your content curation strategy
You can measure how curated content performs in terms of engagement, reach, and conversion with analytics.
These data are key to understanding what types of content work best for your brand and refining the curation strategy to meet your target audience's wants and needs.
You’ll only really know the best strategy for your brand once you try things out. If something works well, great! If it doesn’t, then adjust when you need it. That’s the beauty of analytics being accessible and hand in hand with your content curation strategy.
#5 It helps your brand voice and brand identity stay consistent
Content curation through a managed approach helps maintain a consistent brand voice and identity, even when sharing external content. This consistency is key to strengthening your brand recognition and trust among followers.
Ikea is another great example of content curation with a set strategy. The brand consistently posts content that is in line with its brand standards and voice.
Even at first glance, its audience can see how the colours and tone of the picture are backed by the Ikea brand.
Overall, social media content management ensures that content curation is not just about sharing relevant information but also about doing so strategically and aligned with brand goals. These actions will help your social media efforts take off.
How can social media content management help with audience targeting?
Social media content management significantly improves audience targeting by using advanced tools and analytics to understand and segment the audience based on demographics, behaviours, and preferences.
Looking at these statistics can help you tailor your posts and optimise your content specifically for different audience segments to increase relevance and engagement. Social media content management tools enable you to schedule posts for times when target audiences are most active, which will help you maximise the visibility and interaction with your brand.
Plus, content performance can be continuously refined through A/B testing to determine the most effective styles and messages for each segment. So, if you aren't sure what resonates best with your audience, you can find out through A/B testing.
This ensures that content reaches the most appropriate viewers and creates a feedback loop through audience interactions, such as comments and shares, which provide real-time insights that inform future content strategies. Through these methods, social media content management delivers content effectively. It adapts and evolves strategies to keep the content highly relevant and engaging.
The Top Social Media Trends for 2024 That You Need To Pay Attention To
How can social media content management help with community building?
Here's the thing: If you want to engage with your community, you need to know what they're saying. Chances are that the brands you are working with have multiple platforms and channels for people to reach out to them. So, how is one supposed to know anything and everything people are saying about your brand?
It's almost impossible to conduct social media listening without a social media management tool. Unless you have hours of free time to conduct it manually, your social media listening could use some help.
A social media management tool will allow you to respond faster to customer interactions and comments and monitor inbound messages, tags, and keywords.
Duolingo is a great example of a brand that stays on top of social listening. The brand catches when people reference them online, probably through a social media content management tool, and often responds with a fun or interactive comment that really spikes engagement. The brand sticks to its humorous voice while actively engaging with its audience.
A deep dive into how social media content management tools can help you with your strategy
There's no better way to learn than to take a deep dive into some real-life examples. And what better example than Sendible, our very own social media management tool?
Sendible's content management solutions can help you streamline and simplify your brand's content management process.
They can enable efficient content creation, curation, and content scheduling across multiple social media platforms. Plus, they help you and your team stay organised and avoid writer's block when it comes to content creation and managing multiple social media profiles.
So, let's take a look at 7 ways that a social media content management tool like Sendible can help you with your strategy.
#1 You can bulk create posts and schedule them
One of the most awesome parts about Sendible is our bulk creation tool. It's so awesome because we get it. Scheduling a lot of content is hard, so it needs to be as straightforward as possible.
In the example above, you can see how simple it is to create and load content onto your social media platforms in bulk.
#2 It's really easy to get things approved
With Sendible, you don't need to spend a lot of time sending Word docs to track changes. All you have to do is click a button, and it will send your curated content calendar for approval from someone from your brand.
In the example above, you can see what a request for approval looks like when it is sent over. All the viewer needs to do is review and approve.
#3 It makes your content curation easier because of integrations
With a social media content management tool, you don't need to flip through 837,736,811 different tabs to create content.
Sendible allows you to integrate tools like Canva and YouTube to make your content curation and creation a breeze.
#4 A strong content calendar will save you time and ensure consistency
The key to a good social media campaign is consistency. That's why having a good scheduling tool is essential to your brand's success.
Once you have placed your scheduled content and it has been approved, you can look at your brand's calendar and see if there are any gaps that you need to fill.
Sendible also offers a spectacular holiday calendar with preloaded picture suggestions to help you make fun and relatable content for the public and your brand.
#5 You can analyse your social media performance through curated analytics
One of the best ways to know whether your social media strategy is performing well is to actively look at analytics.
Sometimes, what you think will perform well may fall flat to your target audience, and that's where analytics are so important. You'll only really know if you're consistently looking at them throughout implementation.
If you find that something isn't working well, simply pivot, make the necessary changes, and move on.
#6 It will allow you to focus on high-level campaigns
Suppose you're using a social media content management tool. In that case, you can have an overall view of what you have planned in the calendar and notable holidays you'll want to address.
However, a calendar is so much more than scheduling in advance. Once you have the overall view, you can focus more on your strategy and implementing high-level campaigns.
By tapping into analytics, you will know when the best time to post is so you can save the highest-performing slots for your strategic campaign posts and really give them the spotlight they deserve.
#7 Social listening tools will help you boost your engagement
Conducting social media listening manually is a lot of work. Thankfully, Sendible has the Priority Inbox to keep you in the loop for important messages.
Not everything is available to be displayed in the Priority Inbox, but here are some of the main things you can see:
- Facebook Page profiles: comments, replies, direct messages
- Facebook Ads: comments
- Instagram Business profiles: comments, likes, reposts
- LinkedIn Company Page profiles: replies
- YouTube profiles: comments
The tool shows you interactions and responses within the last four days, helping you stay on top of what people are saying about and to your brand. Answering comments and interactions with your brand should be an essential part of your social media management strategy. In 2024, silence is not golden, especially regarding social media.
Audiences want to know that they are heard and, even if something bad has happened, the brand is doing something to resolve the situation or make changes for the future.
Check out how ChipsAhoy handled its brand when someone has a not-so-tasty version of their yummy cookies…
By responding to the client and allowing them to reach out and resolve the issue, ChipsAhoy not only settled the situation with the customer but gave a good public relations response that showed the public they care for their clients and will work with them to resolve any situation.
So, whether good or bad, actively answer comments and replies coming through for your brand.
Stay on top of them, and you will probably see good increases overall for your brand.
Bonus: How can social media content management help with employee advocacy?
Social media content management can significantly boost employee advocacy by empowering employees to share and engage with the company's content in a coordinated and effective manner.
Here are two ways how it facilitates this process:
#1 It makes the content more accessible
You can encourage employees to disseminate information aligned with your brand's messaging by providing easy access to shareable content. Social media content management tools can serve as a home for approved content that employees can share, ensuring consistency and accuracy in public communications.
#2 It allows you to recognize and motivate employees
Content management systems can help identify top contributors based on engagement metrics, facilitating reward and recognition programs that further encourage active participation.
Through these strategies, social media content management not only simplifies employee advocacy but also maximises its impact, turning employees into powerful brand ambassadors.
Final thoughts on social media content management
Managing a social media account is a lot of work. If you're a social media manager, chances are that you are managing multiple accounts.
And with multiple accounts come multiple strategies, goals, and timelines.
The best and most efficient way to ensure that you stay on top of all your client's needs is to invest in a social media content management tool that will help you stay on top of tasks, approvals, scheduling, and everything else that will make processes smooth.
If you're in the market for the right tool for you, be sure to check out our free 14-day trial to get a taste of Sendible's content management tools today!
