Social media management tasks include more than responding to comments or posting to Facebook.

For a well-rounded social media strategy, your business has to go beyond posting and responding to initiate success.

Here are 14 things you’ll need to tackle in 2017 if you want to see results.

social-media-management-tasks

Your social media manager is probably already on top of this, but if not, always start here …

Social Media Strategy

Not surprisingly, many social media management tasks start with strategy. Because to know where you’re going, you’ve got to know where you’ve been and where you want to go.

1) Know Your Goals. Start wide and then get granular; what are your company goals, brand goals, and campaign goals? We track these goals in our KPI template spreadsheet, which you can get here.

2) Craft Your Story. Good storytelling is a key element to today’s social media marketing. Without it, your emotional appeal (and likely sales) will fall flat. Use these 8 questions to help your sales story pitch.

3) Create & Distribute Content. Content creation and distribution is not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants task. It takes careful prep and planning to ensure your content is seen and shared. Additionally, you’ll want a publishing calendar to keep on track.

infographic-2016-content-distribution-plan

Community Management

Once you have a strategy for using social media, it’s important to turn your focus to the lifeblood of social … the community!

4) Use Automation (wisely!). When it comes to constantly delivering fresh content to your community, a little automation goes a long way. We use Sprout Social to schedule posts in advance and ensure our audiences always have smart content to consume.

5) Ready, Set, GROW! Don’t forget you have to grow your community too. Make a plan to find influencers in your space, create Twitter lists, and follow any potential customers. Don’t get stuck in the “if you build it they will come” mentality. Growing a community takes work … and time.

6) Respond In Real Time. One of the most failed social media management tasks involves responding in a timely fashion to online mentions. Sprout Social’s Q4 Social Index shows that customers are still waiting an average of 11 hours for a response from retailers. Ouch. Focus on doing much better in 2017 — here are 3 ways to implement real-time social media marketing next year.

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7) Experiment With Contests & Promotions. Contests and promotions can not only keep your current audience engaged, they can help grow your community too. Done correctly, contests can also help generate leads (no doubt this is one of your company goals!).

Social Selling

I’m guessing a big goal of yours is gaining leads or sales through your social media efforts. If that’s the case, your social media management tasks should definitely include these …

8) Be Seen With Advertising. Another great way to garner leads is with targeted advertising. Though the best campaigns have healthy budgets, getting your content in front of your exact industry niche is worth its weight in gold.

9) Align Social Content With Your Sales Pipeline. We typically put sales content into three categories: awareness, consideration, and decision content. Find out how to sprinkle these into your social media calendar and always, ALWAYS use a call-to-action to get users to take the next step.

10) Showcase Social Proof. Use the power of peer-to-peer recommendations and testimonials as social content, and don’t forget to ask for reviews on your social sites!

Report On ROI

How will you know if the above social media management tasks are working?

By running reports, of course!

11) Keep Track Of KPIs. We linked to our KPI tracking template under #1. Use this (or your own) to track monthly, quarterly and yearly key performance indicators and to see if your social media efforts are paying off.

12) Identify Patterns. We’re especially diligent in tracking micro changes in the content we share for our clients. We use these micro patterns to make small changes, which in the end, help us make larger changes to the types of content we create and share.

13) Know Your Metrics. Relying on engagement metrics is not a smart strategy. Be sure to look at all the metrics that help your social media management tasks prove a return — especially the ones that are often overlooked.

14) Keep Up To Date. Facebook recently reported that they’ve been delivering the wrong metrics on reports! Unfortunately, things like this happen all the time, so it’s the job of your social media team to stay up-to-date on changes to reporting, algorithms, and other social media terms of use.

Social Media Management Tasks Checklist

Print out our checklist to help you grab social media by the horns in 2017 …

social-media-management-tasks-checklist

Are there any social media management tasks you think we’re missing? Let us know in the comments section below!

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