Whether you’re a business or an individual brand, one thing is certain: you need to be known on social media.
A recent report revealed that roughly 4.70 billion people around the world use social media. That’s more than half of the entire human race.
Can you imagine?
If you’re not leveraging this wonderful platform, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
How to build a social presence for your brand online
To get started with growing your social media presence, here are some of the most important investments you must be ready to make.
- Social media manager
- Social media growth packages
- Social media influencer
- Social media growth tools
- Social media ads
- Social media sponsored posts
- Giveaways and freebies
Social Media Manager (SMM)
You may have a cool personal Facebook account or a cute-looking Instagram profile. But let’s face it, you wouldn’t know how to promote a brand on either of both platforms if you were tasked with that, would you?
That’s what I thought.
Owning and handling a personal social media page is quite different from running a branded or professional page. While you might care less about what people think about your personal Twitter page, you can’t do the same with your brand’s page. That’s because your brand page is your brand identity online. And you wouldn’t want to give off a bad impression.
That brings us to the concept of a social media manager.
Every successful brand you see out there has a social media manager working around the clock to build its page. From top guns like Nike to the local SME making the rounds in your city, everyone hires a professional manager to look after their page across the social media space.
So, if you’re serious about building a presence for your brand online, this is an investment you cannot do without.
Usually, social media managers come as freelancers or agency companies. Depending on your budget, you can get a freelance manager willing to take up your page for a price ranging between $15-$50 an hour. As for agencies, you should budget between $250 and $700 per month.
Reasons to hire a social media manager
In case you need further convincing, here are the reasons you will need the help of a social media manager in building a social presence.
- Strategy development: An SMM will help you develop the best strategies that will bring you the quickest and best results. They will help you figure out what platform to be on (FB or IG, or LinkedIn), what to post, when to post, etc.
- Undivided attention: You need to remain active on social media 24/7 to get good results. The only person that can help you achieve that is an SMM.
- Audience growth: An SMM is well-trained in how best to acquire followers, leads, and customers.
- Engagement growth: Engagement is the key factor on social media. An SMM has all the tools needed to make sure your pages don’t suffer on this front.
- Customer support: An SMM can act as your brand’s customer rep on social media
- Reporting: An SMM can keep you updated on the success of your investments
Social media growth packages
Once you hire an SMM, they will tell you the need to purchase certain items known as growth packages. These packages are meant to fast-track your goals and help you realize a good ROI on your other social media investments.
Some of the common growth packages you’ll be advised to buy may include, but not limited to:
- Tools for content creation – software (e.g., Canva)
- Ready-made content – e.g., image rights, visual content, voiceover, etc.
- Promotional engagement – e.g., bought followers, likes, etc.
- Membership – e.g., paid Facebook groups
- Mentions, tags – e.g., influencer mention
I’ll like to state that depending on the exposure of your SMM, you may be encouraged to or advised against the practice of buying promotional engagement. The reason is that some SMMs believe promotional engagements are unethical.
In truth, they aren’t completely wrong. But they aren’t right, either. While fake and bot promo engagements used to be a popular thing in the years before, times have changed now. Today, many brands offer legit and authentic promo packages.
For example, nowadays, it is possible to buy Instagram likes, followers, or even comments from real human accounts. The same for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media channels. The only challenge is knowing where and how to find vendors selling the real deal. Which is why I said it all depends on the exposure of your SMM.
Please ensure you hire the right SMM.
Social media influencer
An SMM is not the only hire you will make. Often, you will need to hire the services of a social media influencer to grow your page, too.
A social media influencer is someone who has built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise in a specific niche. For example, you can have a fitness influencer, travel influencer, beauty influencer, health influencer, finance influencer, and so on.
Your SMM will help you decide upon the right influencer to hire.
Reasons to hire an influencer
What influencers do basically is that they promote your brand name and page to their audience in the hopes that their audience will engage with your page as a result.
Usually, influencers have thousands to millions of engaged audiences. So, when they give you a shoutout, mention your brand name, or promote your profile on their own page, it normally results in many people following your page or interacting with your content.
Essentially, influencers give you exposure and popularity, which ultimately leads to sales, leads, profits, and audience growth.
How much do influencers cost?
It depends on the level of influencer in question.
Nano (1-10k followers) $10-100
Micro (10-100k followers) $100-500
Mid (100-500k followers) $500-$5k
Macro (500k-1m followers) $5-$10k
Mega (1m+ followers) $10k+
Social media growth tools
Next are growth tools. Like other marketing campaigns, social media demands software investment to facilitate goal accomplishment.
As you can imagine, different social media platforms would require different tools. For example, Instagram demands tools Later for post scheduling, whereas Twitter demands tools such as TweetDeck for tweeting from multiple accounts.
Of course, you would only need to invest in tools that are necessary for the platform you’re on. No point investing in Tailwind if you aren’t going to be building a presence on Pinterest or Comment Guard if you aren’t going to be on Facebook.
That said, you need not bother yourself about tool names for now. Once you’re ready to get started, your SMM will tell you the right tools you need for every campaign you’re working on at any given time.
For perspective, here are some popular names you may hear your SMM mention when it’s time to invest in social media growth tools.
Common Facebook Growth Tools:
Qwaya
Agorapulse
Socedo
Socialbakers
Sprout Social
Timeline Contest AgoraPulse
InVideo
AdEspresso
Common Instagram Growth Tools:
Crowdfire
Hootsuite
Woobox
Seek
Combin
Later
Foursixty
Repost
Common Twitter Growth Tools:
Tweepsmap
Followerwonk
TweetDeck
Group Tweet
Twitter Analytics
Twilert
Bluenod
Commun.it
Common TikTok Growth Tools:
Social Champ.
TikTok Analytics.
SocialPilot.
InShot.
Beecut.
Loomly.
Zoomerang
Common YouTube Growth Tools:
TubeBuddy
VidIQ
YouTube Studio
Social Blade
VidIQ
Ahrefs
Depositphotos
Canva
Social media ads
If you use social media apps often, you will have come across sponsored ads everywhere within your timeline. They pop up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and everywhere.
These ads are some of the fastest ways of putting your brand name in front of people who would not have heard about you.
Back to the sponsored ads instance I mentioned earlier. Think about it, if Instagram or Twitter didn’t display ads for that brand in your feed, how else would you have heard about the brand?
Can’t think of one.
That’s the beauty of social media ads. And that’s why you cannot joke with them.
Even if you don’t have the budget for the other points we’ve discussed in this post, please find a way to invest in ads. They’re tested and proven.
Instagram, for instance, has over 1 billion users. When you pay for IG ads, the algorithm displays your brand to a large fraction of its users per some preset parameters.
Lastly, social media ads are generally cheap and suited to almost every budget. For example, you can get IG ads for as low as $0.50. That’s 50 cents, my friend. Can you imagine?
There’s really no excuse.
Social media sponsored posts
Some individuals and brands on social media run sponsored posts for others. Sometimes, they’re agencies. Other times, they’re regular influencers.
Basically, what these people do is that they raise awareness about your brand via posts on their page. This is called sponsored posts.
Usually, these individuals have a large following. So, they spread the word about you with mentions, recommendations, and promotions to their audiences.
Sponsored posts can come for as low as $50 or as high as $1000. It all depends on your niche and the quality of posts you’re looking for.
Giveaways and freebies
Finally, in order to build a lasting presence on social media, you will need to give out money and other free stuff regularly.
This is important for two reasons.
One, it brings new people to your page and grows your audience base in the process.
Secondly, it keeps fans and followers from running away.
When people know there are always contests to enter, prizes to win, or freebies to claim on your page, you bet they will never leave.
