Social media management is important for many reasons. First of all, social networking is just that – social. That means that whether you are good or bad at social networking, the word will get around. It is absolutely imperative that you make your best effort in social media because when you fail to respond to problems or grievances on social networking sites, you are risking the sharing and alienation of more than just the person that originally had the grievance.
Even if you aren’t actually pursuing an active social media plan yet, you are able to get information and keep tabs on what people are saying and that is important for trends, problems and basic information.
It allows you to know what people are saying about your company, both the good and the bad, as well as what is being said about your competitors as well. You also get information on current trends as they are happening.
You also can do damage control quickly, when it happens by responding to complaints. In addition, social media can help you expose potential customers to your more active marketing programs.
If you use social networking correctly, it can help you in many different ways, not the least of them is generating leads and attracting new customers. But maintaining social networking sites, posting relevant content on all of them and being part of the conversation takes a great deal of time and energy if you do it manually. For example, you must create content across multiple platforms. Even if you are only using Twitter, Facebook and a company blog, you still are spending several hours per week.
You also need to be checking Twitter and Facebook for conversations that mention your company as well as checking Google Alerts to find out if your company is being discussed on the web. You also must monitor and interact with the community on sites like LinkedIn, and then there are the pictures for visual social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest.