If you do any reading about using social media for promoting your business, you’ll soon realize that there are two main topics being discussed: social media management and social media marketing (or social media advertising). So, what’s the difference between them?
On the face of it, that’s an easy question to answer:
- Social media management uses unpaid posts, responses to comments, review management, and other “free” social media tools to promote and reinforce your brand.
- Social media marketing (or advertising) uses paid ads, boosted posts, and other paid social media tools to promote and reinforce your brand.
So, at its most basic level, social media management doesn’t involve paying the social media platform; social media advertising does involve paying the platform. But the difference is really a lot deeper than that, and the upshot is that both tactics are required for an effective overall social media strategy.
This week, we’re examining the differences between social media management and social media marketing to help you understand how both can work together as part of a fully-featured social media strategy for your business.
Social Media Management: “Free” Marketing
In theory, if you do all of the work yourself and don’t account for your time as a business owner, social media management can be free. You can make posts that highlight your products or services, engage with your audience through fun or interesting content posts, and build a solid community of engaged online followers without ever breaking out a credit card or cutting a check.
But that’s a huge lift for most business owners:
- If you’re still a tiny operation starting out, you may be doing everything yourself or with a small team – none of whom really have time to devote to managing your social accounts.
- If you’re a larger operation, you may have a bigger team with more support – but your audience will expect more content, and your social management can soon overwhelm even a dedicated in-house marketer.
In addition to the time required, striking the right balance between informative and promotional posts, finding the right voices for communicating to diverse audiences, matching specific messaging to specific platforms, and more all require a certain level of expertise. Staying on top of the constant changes in the social media landscape take a fairly sizable amount of time, in and of itself.
That all being said, when you partner with a full-service social media management agency, like the digital experts at M&R Marketing, you can enjoy the engagement and deeper customer relationships that come from having an authentic, personalized social media presence without needing to spend hours a day deciding what to post about.
Social Media Advertising: Breaking Through the Algorithm
Your social media management efforts are important, but relying exclusively on unpaid posts is usually not enough. Even a brand with incredibly high engagement will only see their unpaid posts appear in the feeds of a tiny fraction of their followers. And if you’re a new brand, with few followers, getting traction on an organic post is almost impossible.
By adding paid social media ads into your marketing mix, you’re breaking through the algorithm. By targeting a highly specific and well-defined audience, your ads will show up in front of potential customers who are either in the market for or are likely to be in the market for what you’re selling.
While social media advertising might have more upfront costs than organic posting, the return is exponentially higher. Since social media ads are billed on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-mille (cost per 1,000 impressions), your marketing dollars are only going towards ads that your desired users are actually seeing!
Management and Marketing: Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together
So which tactic should you use? Social media marketing or social media management?
If you’re a golfer, you know that you never walk out on the course with only one club in your bag – you need a driver for long tee shots, irons and fairway clubs for second and approach shots, and your trusty putter for tapping them in from the green. Promoting your business with social media is a lot like that – you need multiple tools to get the most impact.
Your social media marketing and social media management efforts can and should work together to create a unified social media strategy for your business:
- Unpaid posts are a great and inexpensive way to build engagement with an audience that’s already following your brand. If your unpaid content is engaging and relevant, you can find yourself building very effective business-client relationships with members of your audience.
- Review and reputation management are other unpaid tactics. Through management of and careful responses to reviews, comments, and mentions on social media, you can build your brand’s reputation as being attuned and responsive to customer needs and concerns.
- Your paid ads and boosted posts complement the engagement work your unpaid content is doing. While your unpaid posts are building engagement and creating a community, your paid ads are increasing your brand visibility, introducing audience members to your products and services, and reinforcing your value propositions to a wider, but still well-targeted audience.
Put Social Media Management and Social Media Ads to Work for Your Business – Call M&R Marketing Today!
Our talented designers, copywriters, and digital strategists understand the importance of targeting and timing ads with compelling calls to action to get your audience engaged, involved, and coming back to you for the products and services they need. If you’re ready to put Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn in your marketing toolbox, call 478-621-9941 and talk to one of our friendly Sales team members today – they’re ready to help!