We regularly get inquiries in the office "I want to advertise on Facebook, what offer will you give me for maintaining my fan page?" The question asked is perfectly normal, but it has two components that are different. Advertising on Facebook like any other advertising has a specifically defined purpose and budget. Maintaining a Facebook page is a long-term process that helps build a community around our business.
Today we will look at two activities that are often perceived as one, probably due to the fact that social networks are a relatively new channel for communicating with users.
Between Social media marketing (Social Media Marketing and Community management (There is a significant difference, but they are easily confused because they overlap to some extent. For most people, social media marketing is a fickle and hard-to-define process used as a primary tool to promote a business, or having a Facebook fan page is considered social media marketing.
Community management can refer to the experience of befriending, educating, and engaging an audience. If you are posting content on your social channels every day, it means that you care about your audience and are making an effort to create a dialogue and that technically makes you a Community Manager.
To a large extent, the two activities overlap, especially in small businesses that cannot devote significant resources to social media management. However, understanding them better will also help to apply their strengths so that our goals can be achieved.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is like any other marketing - the goal of the actions is to reach new people, sell, increase brand awareness, build a good reputation. Social media is just a different medium - instead of a billboard, booth or other physical site, promotion is done on Facebook, Twitter or other channels.
Strategies vary, but this is because of the specifics and structure of social networks. When we work towards attracting new users, we usually ask them to follow our page so that they can then receive notifications when changes are made, to follow our content, our news. And this in turn provokes them to make a purchase decision or recommend our brand.
Social media marketing and its benefits (versus social media community management):
- Results in less time. Marketing messages are direct, while community management is an ongoing and lengthy process;
- More easily measurable values. The results of direct marketing efforts are much easier to measure. Traffic and its quantity are tracked. It's much harder to determine how stable and loyal a community is, right?
- Specific and clear direction. Unlike community management, in marketing followers need to be provoked to do one thing - click on a link and take action.
What is Community Management?
Social community management is different from marketing and is the process of creating a community that is cooperative, loyal and sharing. In modern times, this means attracting new people, reaching out to old and less engaged participants that we want to bring back to us, or creating more opportunities and interaction between current ones.
And here's how the two activities overlap - the more cohesive the community around your brand, the more interested and engaged it is, the more the opportunity to achieve marketing goals increases. Or to put it another way, building and maintaining a robust community supports our marketing efforts by providing the sympathy that marketing easily converts into action.
The management of communities and its advantages:
- User retention. Community management is very valuable because it keeps customers who have bought from you and are open to a relationship with your brand.
- Attracting users. Social media marketing alone doesn't do much to attract an audience. Only through community management can you get closer to your users and increase it.
- Improving reputation. Community management focuses on building your brand reputation, not just increasing your sales. This is a plus in the long run and especially when a communication crisis occurs. Crisis is a big topic in itself and we'll cover it in a new article soon.
This analysis and comparison of the two activities - Social Media Marketing and Community Management - is by no means meant to contrast them and help you choose which to focus your efforts on. On the contrary! Both activities are important for the development of your business and brands. It's good to put our users in safe hands, because the better they know our brand values, the more engaged they are with what's going on around them, the more loyal customers they will be.
Often these two activities are combined by one person.What is important to know is that they require different skills and different approaches.
If you feel like you're not getting the most out of your experience, our team will help you build trust. We'll create a loyal and satisfied community around your business. That way, your customers will be more inclined to buy when we offer them a good deal.
Here we are: Facebook, LinkedIn, office@proper.media.
Sources: www.forbes.com, sproutsocial.com
