Approach social media with rigor, control and management for success

In today’s digital world, every business needs to have social media accounts (no surprises here) to engage and extend reach to new customers. Not only do you need to have them, but also importantly, you need to manage and monitor them - effectively. There are over 40 million business Facebook pages, so how do you build and protect your brand efficiently and successfully?

With just one platform, it can be easier to maintain a level of control over engagement, brand identity and reputational risk management. Yet, to maintain stride with competitors it is now popular to stretch beyond just one platform – selecting from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and available others.

Growing a franchise brand successfully is something that all business owners desire. Social media is a powerful vehicle to achieve brand build. However, if it is not managed effectively, the power-to-the-people nature of social media also has the power to disrupt and cause risk of damage to your brand – leaving your consumers wary.

Reputational Risk Management

Social media is the unequivocal people’s channel – enabling instant voice around consumer expectation, instant sharing of experience – at times without filter. Interestingly, it is not just the external voice – there have been instances in which employees have willingly published views or shared company experiences, via posts.

• Do you know who really has access to post content to your pages?
• Do you have a tool or mechanism in place to restrict access or remove a post if needed?
• Do you have a mechanism to share approved imagery for content authors to post?
• Do you have the capability to socially listen to what has been said about your business?

Efficiency

With a greater number of platforms, managing multiple pages across multiple platforms can seem time-consuming. Thankfully, solutions are now available to allow you to manage social media centrally, delivering time saving’s when scheduling posts and creating campaigns – across multiple platforms. Also, ‘prior planning prevents poor performance’ really does has universal application, and planning social media campaigns in advance, will certainly enable greater propensity to transform into meaningful engagement.

• Can you efficiently post content to multiple platforms from a central tool and centrally view engagement?
• Have you got a forward-looking social media framework in place, with planned campaigns and content?

Brand Management

Protecting a franchise brand on social media is indeed more challenging than a decade ago. Greater exposure and transparency of a brand requires an equal-part control and rigor – to ensure that risk to a brand is both managed and mitigated. Most importantly, focus on cultivating a positive social media-driven customer experience just as you would an in-person experience. Treat every customer touch point of your business with equal importance.

• Understand your audience and create value-add posts and offers
• Project a consistent brand voice and image across all platforms
• Be responsive and solution oriented – extend your customer service procedures to social media
• Keep it real – social media is the people’s channel – be personable and professional

Driving social media can be a valuable investment of time – however, ensuring that you approach social media with the same level of rigor, control and efficiency – as you would traditional marketing - is key. With the right preparation, tools and evaluation – growing and protecting your brand and business on social media can be efficient, cost effective – and successful.

Anthony Owen, President/ Founder of Manalto (MTL.ASX) www.manalto.com - provider of innovative enterprise-grade social media management software solutions giving organizations the ability to manage social media with efficiency and alignment to their operations and core marketing activity.