Social media budget project. How to promote a company on social media

There are many successful examples where promoting a company on social networks brought much more significant and faster results than promoting a website in search engines. At the same time, the budget for SMM turned out to be several times lower. However, working with social networks does not replace promotion in search, but harmoniously complements it, allowing you not only to receive additional traffic from another source, but also to improve the indicators of external site optimization, behavioral factors important for search engines, which will bring the resource to the top of search results. simpler and cheaper.

Social media marketing technology (SMM) is considered a new method, the success of which is very difficult to calculate and predict. In order to ensure the achievement of set goals through promotion on social networks, it is impossible to find a detailed plan or guide of consistent actions that guarantee results. Rather, it is a creative work, the success of which is based on understanding its target audience, improvisation and careful analysis of the results of each stage. However, there are tips that have been tested and work in practice if executed correctly, which can be found below.

Before you start reading and implementing the advice, you should understand that promoting a company, brand, organization, individual product or service on social networks takes time, careful planning and will not bring instant results. Therefore, if your first steps towards promotion in social networks did not give the expected effect, you should continue working as planned.

Basic steps

Define your goals. Before you start working in the field of SMM, you should clearly define the tasks that you need to solve with the help of representatives of this vast audience. For example, an information resource that makes money from advertising only needs traffic, while for a commercial project or organization it is important not only to receive visitors and clients, but also to increase loyalty to a brand, product or service, and this is long-term business development planning. Only a clear understanding of the task will allow you to competently draw up a work strategy and all stages of its implementation.

Think it through. Before starting work on SMM, you need to determine:

• key social networks;
• frequency of publications and their nature;
• desired timing of reaching a given number of subscribers;
• methods of involving subscribers in the community;
• the need to involve other specialists;
• acceptable advertising budget.

Having basic reference points, it is easier to achieve both intermediate and main goals.

Plan work on different channels separately. There are a lot of social networks and video channels in which you want to promote your business, they all have their own format and audience. Therefore, planning the strategy, content, nature of publications and frequency of their appearance must be approached individually for each advertising platform. You should also separately analyze the effectiveness of each social network.

Use analytics services. Connecting services for collecting statistics and compiling analytics will allow you to see the results of your work in digital terms, evaluate the effectiveness of your actions, and quickly adjust your promotion strategy to achieve your goal. To analyze the success of a plan, you should use not only ready-made statistical data, but also your own performance indicators, the calculation algorithm of which seems logical, informative and useful to you.

Working on content

1. Use different types of content. Even people with common interests that you attract to your community will have different preferences and may have different moods. Therefore, it is advisable to combine the format for submitting publications, trying to satisfy the interests of all group members. This can be videos, text posts, links to materials from the site being promoted. The nature of the presentation should also change - from clearly entertaining and humorous to serious. As a rule, a community member reposts and discusses the material that he finds interesting at the moment. The next time he views it, he may even react to older posts that he simply didn’t pay attention to before.
2. Remember to post regularly. Train your audience to post regularly, for example, 1-2 times a day at the same time. This approach will not only make quality content expected, shared and discussed, but will also emphasize your punctuality and accuracy. Such qualities are indispensable in business; they help increase trust in the company.
3. Don't repeat yourself. Be original in your posts and try not to use generally accepted and already rather boring cliches. The members of your group are unlikely to be pleased with another wish for a good mood that day, which they have already seen from other groups. They will be much more interested in original or useful information that you have actually worked on preparing. Even if your posts are published once a week, after a while they will be expected, and not scrolled through the feed as just another banality.
4. Use services for professional image processing. Today you can find enough services that allow you to prepare an original picture for a post in a couple of minutes without any skills in working in graphic editors. This will not only attract the attention of the audience, make your materials attractive and unique, but also help save time.

Communication with subscribers

Don't hide behind a sign. Typically, an organization’s promotion on social networks is carried out on behalf of a faceless administrator, but posts, comments and explanations on behalf of real employees with completed profiles are much more credible. This not only creates the effect of communication with the team, but also demonstrates the importance of the audience for the company, whose employees are willing to devote their time to communicating with it.

Less formality if appropriate. Social networks are primarily a means of leisure and entertainment. Therefore, humor and easy presentation of information without the use of complex terms, clericalism and speech cliches are appropriate in posts and comments. It is often easier to extinguish negativity with an appropriate subtle joke than with a few paragraphs of dry text looking for those responsible and explaining the reasons that led to the commentator’s dissatisfaction.

Increase traffic

1. Make the page recognizable. The power of social networks makes it quite easy to customize the appearance of the page and provide it with the attributes of your brand. This will make it recognizable at first glance, and this service is inexpensive if you do not have your own specialist with the necessary skills to design a company page yourself.
2. Analyze direct competitors. By analyzing the pages of your competitors, you can not only find a lot of clues about the nature and type of publications, the frequency of their appearance, but also notice mistakes that should not be repeated. Of course, we are not talking about copying; it is quite enough to present your vision of the material, which enjoys a great response from a competitor.
3. Develop a community. Constant support for the interest of the established community will contribute to the emergence of new participants and reduce the outflow of those who may not find it interesting. An active large community is a powerful marketing tool that will provide traffic, demand even for new products or services and the formation of regular customers.

In any case, you should not be afraid of failures, try new methods of attracting your audience, different ways of drawing them into dialogue, discussion and, as a result, into your business. In general, this is the ultimate goal of promotion on social networks. The main thing is not to let the group members understand this. For them, interest in your activities should arise on their own. Only in this case will you achieve maximum benefit from such a complex but very interesting technology as SMM. You can be completely confident in the correctness of the strategy and its implementation if you involve experienced specialists in this field.

International brands allocate millions of dollars to work with online audiences, while small companies and private entrepreneurs can often afford to spend only a few hundred dollars (or even rubles) per month on SMM. However, the principles for allocating the budget most effectively are the same regardless of the amount invested.

First, determine what percentage of your income you are willing to invest in SMM. Specialists from the Duke School of Business analyzed the expense items of the most dynamically developing companies and saw that the share of SMM in their marketing budget is growing from year to year.

The formation of budgets depends on the segment, target audience and financial capabilities, so everyone has a unique budget, taking into account individual characteristics. However, there are a few basic principles to consider when planning your social media efforts.

If the entire budget is taken as 100%, then 60% should be allocated to creating content and maintaining pages on social networks (this includes preparing a content plan, copywriting, design, posting and working with comments). Direct 30% of budget funds to promotion and promotion (advertising on social networks, competitions, promotional posts from opinion leaders, etc.). Another 5% each goes to research and analytics, as well as training and development.

According to many years of research, a successful picture on social networks is the lion's share of a successful post. In addition to the well-known Photoshop, there are many online image editors with beautiful templates that will help you create bright and memorable images for your posts. For example, or.

Try, experiment, choose what suits you best.

Don't forget about video, it is the future. According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2016, 73% of professionals intend to post videos more often in 2018, and every second will use live broadcasts.

If you think that advertising is not for you, you are mistaken. MarketingSherpa notes that the age category of Internet users from 18 to 34 years old is highly likely to subscribe to a brand on social networks (95%), although they do not accept other types of advertising.

Even those brands that have been in the top for many years advertise themselves. In order to determine which social network is most effective for your product, you should spend 10–20 dollars investing in the most popular social networks: Facebook, VKontakte, Instagram, Twitter, and then compare the indicators.

This is what the IT research company WordStream came up with. Your results may be different.

Social networks are a wonderful feedback resource. The needs and desires of the target audience are visible from comments and reactions to a particular post. In order to accurately move in the right direction, you need to carefully monitor the mood within social media and respond to them correctly.

The educational plan involves adding (paid and/or free) to various groups and communities that deal with a common topic with you. This will help you grow professionally, increase your audience reach, and subsequently reduce costs on certain services in SMM promotion of your own product.

Main rule: all costs must be justified. A balanced and clearly prepared media plan will be the key to a successful SMM strategy.

In this article, we examined all possible formats for running social networks for small businesses and illustrated them with the experience of entrepreneurs. At the end of the material - practical advice from Eva Katz and our project manager Vladislav Bezpalko, which will help you understand whether a specialist or agency is really useful and not drain your budget. And finally, a checklist that will help you evaluate the results of running social networks - yours, a hired freelancer, a full-time specialist or a third-party agency.

Social networks should bring sales

Lead them “for show”- means taking away time, finances and human resources from your business, which you could spend on improving your product, hiring the right specialists or launching a new direction. Not managing them at all means losing potential clients, partners and opportunities for development. Any business needs competent SMM, and you can choose traditional paths:

• Agency.
• Freelancer.
• Self-management + consultations.
• Self-guided.

From our experience, most often a business goes through all the methods - first it tries to manage social networks on its own. If he doesn’t get the results he wants, he hires a freelancer, a jack-of-all-trades who manages his own accounts, runs ads, communicates with potential clients and works with bloggers. If the work of a freelancer does not bring satisfactory results, he looks for other ways. Let's look at the pros and cons of each method of maintaining social networks for an entrepreneur, store, or service industry.

Hiring a third-party SMM specialist: simple, cheap, but often leads to a drain on the budget

Why do we say that freelancers are more likely to drain clients’ budgets than agencies? Yes becauseinterviewed entrepreneurs who hired third-party SMM specialists and"got burned." And here's what we found out.

Flexibility, mobility, lack of formalities, accessibility and quick response to events - in the eyes of many entrepreneurs, agencies lack these qualities. Therefore, small and micro-businesses hire freelancers who write texts, launch advertising, take photographs, analyze statistics and write promotion plans.

Trusbox.

“An agency will always be less flexible than an individual employee. Working with an agency is good for large, established businesses, but we are young and agile - we need more reaction and less formalization.”

But can a freelancer’s services be of high quality if he alone has several projects?A freelancer is cheaper than an agency, but does not have as much capacity and resources as a full-fledged project team. And time - a freelancer cannot fully immerse himself in each client’s business, develop individual concepts, non-stop test and implement new tools. Therefore, the results are often very average, and the disappointed entrepreneur again runs social networks on his own and periodically takes consultations or turns to an agency.

Now imagine what your company’s social networks will look like if they are run by such a busy Marina. She won’t have time to “play” with targeting settings, write down portraits of the target audience in detail, create a comparative table of competitors and test new features on social networks. Most likely, this will be a stream of work that will not bring a big increase in sales and the desired influx of new clients.

Not all freelancers work like this - there are cool specialists on the market who manage to manage several clients, give consultations, write courses on texts or promotion on social networks and keep abreast of all the latest features and trends in their field. But such SMM providers charge at least 2-3 times more and do not do everything by hand - instead, they establish cooperation with photographers, graphic designers and targetologists. As a result, you have a disparate semblance of an agency working for you - the results are already higher, but can it be said that in this case, every specialist involved is immersed in the project?

Freelancer does not understand the product and works according to a universal scheme

The freelancer applies a standard approach to any company, and does not take into account the specifics of the niche and the needs of the audience, and does not go into such subtleties as the philosophy or emotional message of the brand. And in the management of social networks, this is a very important story.

In the hands of such a specialist is a set of universal, tested tools, which he applies from project to project.

Evgenia Serikova, Gift to an Angel charity foundation:

“Freelancers, especially if they are salaried, most often act as ordinary content managers who do not engage the audience and do not use sales tools.

We probably have no experience interacting with outsourced SMM specialists. I can’t say that the experience of working with freelancers was negative, since nothing critical happened, but we didn’t notice any positive changes either. Freelancers often do not understand the product and do not always write texts that emotionally reflect the company’s activities. Our foundation often collaborates with various companies, and the experience of interacting with their specialists in working with social networks once again confirms that a person must know the product 100%, otherwise the content looks very dry.”

It is difficult for a freelancer to understand the specifics of a product and develop a long-term strategy

A freelancer rarely spends time understanding the specifics of a product - he thinks in bare KPIs without reference to the benefits for the client and audience. As a result, in order to achieve the coveted number of subscribers, the specialist builds up the audience, sells it head on and does not think about how to retain living people and win their loyalty. Agencies also have this sin, but let us immediately add that we think differently. We’ll tell you how further, but for now let’s return to freelancers.

Sergey Abdulmanov, Mosigra company:

“We tried to outsource the management of Instagram for the Danetki project to a freelancer. As a result, about 10 thousand people were forced into a group with constantly updated data - they did not get into the audience (many children came), in geography, they could not retain the audience and present the product.

In this market it is difficult to find someone who knows what to do and how. The specialist must find the right tone of voice in communications. We are very client-oriented, and the usual KPIs of an SMM manager are not designed for a long-term strategy. Also, our specialist must be well versed in board games, and this is a rather long training.”

Freelancer does not understand complex technical topics

If a freelancer specializes in a specific topic, especially if he has a specialized education, he will easily understand the nuances. But there are not so many SMM experts for all medical, IT projects and other complex areas. Therefore, such a business needs a full-time specialist or agency that will be immersed in the project.

Vladimir Samarin, Cloud4Y company:

“We have a technically complex business - a cloud provider; we use hardware and software technologies in our business. To understand and convey to clients our advantages, including technological ones, we need knowledge and experience in the IT field. The community of IT specialists, with whom we also communicate on social networks, does not tolerate unprofessionalism when writing posts.”

Hiring a full-time specialist: knows the product and is immersed in the business, but does not have the agency’s capacity

A business that doesn’t see the benefit of freelancers and doesn’t want to go to an agency hires a full-time SMM specialist. Such a specialist often also performs the functions of a marketer or PR specialist, works with only one project and is completely immersed in it.

An in-house specialist shares the brand's values

If a specialist works only with one brand, most likely he shares its philosophy and is ready to use the products or services that he promotes. Ideally, a full-time social media manager broadcasts the company’s values ​​on social networks not only because he is paid for it, but he is truly passionate about the project and wants to develop it.

Elena Lapko, NOOSA-Amsterdam:

“One full-time specialist is responsible for social networks, PR and marketing of our brand. We work with unusual Dutch accessories, and it is important that the person who “speaks” on the Internet on behalf of NOOSA-Amsterdam shares the values ​​of the brand, knows what customer objections we usually work with, and wears our jewelry himself. Our PR specialist knows how accessories change during wear, how to care for them, what to give to your mother, friend or other half.

An outsourced SMM manager, in my opinion, would manage accounts according to a universal scheme - the same for different areas of business. A personal approach is important to us.

We dilute posts about products with publications from different parts of the world, where the culture of local residents is in tune with the philosophy of the brand, we shoot image videos and animations, hold a competition, talk about the meanings of button symbols on products, and show photographs from production in Nepal, Indonesia and Peru. We play on world events, touch on “hype” Internet trends, but remain within the framework of our concept and do not go too far.”

A full-time SMM specialist is always at the center of events

A freelancer who manages several projects at the same time cannot constantly travel to the site of each client. This is how all live content is lost - live broadcasts, situational posts, stories and reports. What remains is the standard format - photos and texts - which looks bland if it is not diluted with interactivity. But even in texts it is impossible to convey the mood and atmosphere of the brand without regular excursions to the “inner kitchen”.

Evgenia Serikova, charitable foundation"Gift to an Angel" :

“Our full-time PR specialist initially worked remotely - interacted with bloggers and attracted additional traffic. Then we hired him on staff, because due to his very active activities, he needs to be “at the center of events” - conduct live broadcasts, reports, fill out stories and post content in the “here and now” mode.

BUT! One person does not have agency capacity

A full-time SMM manager has all the advantages that a freelancer does not have - he is immersed in the project and is always in the center of events. He has time to analyze competitors, create a large audience map and test several ads for an advertising campaign. But at the same time, a full-time SMM specialist alone performs the functions of a manager, copywriter, targetologist, community moderator... And often also a photographer, designer, PR specialist, marketer and salesperson. That's why sometimes companies hire an entire department.

Sergey Abdulmanov,Mosigra company :

“We have a whole SMM department - they collect data on the company, create news feeds, include all new products and events in the content plan, and communicate with bloggers.”

Vladimir Samarin, Cloud4Y company:

“Our company has a marketing department. One of the specialists in this department prepares daily publications on VKontakte, Facebook and Twitter.”

But an SMM department of 3-4 people means additional expenses of 150-250 thousand rubles every month. Let's compare: agencies charge an average of 95 thousand rubles - although the final price may change up or down depending on the project. Therefore, if the costs for the SMM department are too high and will grow in the future, you should think about transferring social networks to an agency.

Transfer of social networks to the agency

The agency has more capacity and high responsibility for results. All team members have already been selected, accustomed to each other and replaceable. If the work suffers due to the mistakes of a targetologist or manager, you can always make a castling - replace one specialist with another who is more suitable for a specific project. If an employee gets sick or goes on vacation, someone else temporarily takes over the work, and the mechanism continues to work. No chaos, silence or missed deadlines - and this is exactly what happens if responsibility for the result lies with one person and he suddenly disappears, gets sick or abandons the client. And now we are talking about an agency with a good reputation in the market, extensive experience and employees who work for results.

Fickle and unprofessional freelancers are often criticized on social networks, but in reality, entrepreneurs are wary of agencies. The main fears are that the agency requires a lot of documents and regulations, does not dive into the business, the cost of an error is higher, the agency is less flexible than an individual specialist, at the pre-sale stage the project is led by some specialists, and after the sale by others.

Anna Gorodetskaya, handmade lingerie company Trusbox:

“An agency will always be less flexible than an individual employee - we are young and agile, we need more reaction and less formalization. We tried to work with promotion agencies and were dissatisfied - their prices are higher than those of freelancers (which is natural), but the speed of work and quality are lower (which is strange).

I am afraid that the agency will begin to demand piles of regulations and documents from us (which on the one hand is normal, but will take too much time on our part). Plus, one person will communicate with us during the sale and installation of the project, and another will work with us. For us, this will be a double waste of time - first we brief the agency for sale and formation of the project, and then the final contractor. The agency will not delve into the essence of our business, which means it will not be able to convey information about it to buyers. Agency managers will disappear just like freelancers, but the agency’s cost is much higher.”

Now let’s deal with every possible fear of a distrustful client. We do not sign for all agencies - only for ourselves. We tell you how we do it and why we came to this decision. Without water and abstract theory - only our experience and approach.

An agency will always be less flexible than an individual employee

Yes and no. Yes, it is easier to communicate with one specialist than with an entire project team, plus a single employee makes decisions and makes changes alone, which means faster.

On the other hand, every project team has a manager. This is exactly how it is in our agency - the project is responsible for communication with the client, approval of all plans, concepts and texts and transmission of reports. If a client has a question or something goes wrong, he can always contact the manager. We will decide everything within the team, but the project has one representative who will present the solution. This simplifies communication, eliminates long chains of approvals and makes us more flexible.

The agency has different people at the stage of pre-sale and work on the project

Here we again went against the system - we involve specialists in the project already at the pre-sale stage. The project manager, in conjunction with the content manager, prepare a commercial proposal, an example of an editorial plan and posts, register the first audiences, think through a social network development plan and advertising formats. We don’t wait for a brief, but look for information ourselves, monitor competitors and think through a rough concept.

By the time of the sale, our employees already know everything about the business and the client - they do not spend the first weeks of work collecting information and immediately launch the project.

Maria Rusinova, project manager at the 5 o’click agency:

“Together with the content manager, we prepared two commercial proposals. Already at the pre-sale stage, we immersed ourselves in the project - we went to the site, collected information about the business and the client, studied the target audience, thought through the editorial plan and wrote the first posts. Therefore, by the time we start work, we will already have the necessary information, and we will start right away.”

Agency managers disappear just like freelancers

People disappear - if an employee suddenly disappears from the radar, there is nothing we can do about it. But we will be able to replace the missing specialist with another one on the same day without delay or damage to the project. If one targetologist suddenly falls ill, your advertising campaigns will be set up by another - you will not lose potential clients or part of the advertising budget.

But such a case is from the category of fantasy. Our employees do not disappear - we can afford to “sift” them through test tasks and a 2-3 month probationary period. If it doesn't work, we are quickly looking for a replacement.

Not a single freelancer will agree to a 2-3 month probationary period and dismissal at any time. But this is also unprofitable for business - after 3 months the first results are usually visible and the specialist completely gets used to the project. If an SMM specialist messes up already in the first month, you can’t part with him until you find a replacement. To fire immediately means to sign up for project downtime and loss of money without any guarantee that the next employee will perform better.

Ekaterina Molchanova, PR managerin the T8 publishing holding :

“My work with a freelance social media manager ended with me firing him and starting to manage the client’s social networks myself. When you work with the social networks of a book, it is understood that you must read it, feel the atmosphere, the characters, and the plot. But the girl decided that she could handle it anyway - in the end I had to take everything upon myself.”

The agency does not immerse itself in the client’s business

Here we come to the most painful thing - the superficial approach in agencies. Large agencies have many projects, one employee is involved in at least 4 - he physically does not have time to immerse himself in each business. Especially if this is a manager who constantly communicates with the client, coordinates the work of the team and controls every stage of the work. Often, agency specialists use the same standard approaches to content, push bots into communities, get likes, don’t test audiences and hits in advertising campaigns, and in fact work on numbers and quantity, rather than on results.

5o’click specialists delve into the client’s business, test approaches and come up with a unique strategy for each project. Case in point - . In short, we increased the number of leads by 2.5 times. In order to process them, the client had to expand the sales department - precisely thanks to a revision of the strategy and constant testing of advertising tools.

Independent management + consultations: full control of the result, but constant workload

Another option that is suitable for micro-businesses, where everything is tied to the owner’s personal brand, is independent management of social networks. This way, the entrepreneur has complete control over the outcome, but on the other hand, instead of investing time and effort into the business, he spends resources on training and additional work that he could delegate.

Option one: learn everything yourself

The first and most difficult way is to master the skill of an SMM manager yourself. But then you will have to learn how to write texts in different formats, set up targeted advertising, analyze audiences and constantly monitor trends, new features and social media updates. And then - write down plans, adjust universal mechanics to your niche and constantly test tools.

This is a full-time job that takes energy and time. And at the first stage, you do not have enough knowledge and experience to adequately evaluate your own results.

Option two: go for a consultation with a professional

The second way is to take a consultation from a professional social media manager or advertiser who will analyze your audience, think through a strategy, write a step-by-step development plan specifically for your business, help you choose a presentation style, and give advice on the visual design of social networks and texts. All you have to do is follow the instructions, periodically check the plan and also improve your copywriting and targeting skills.

The co-owner of our agency, Eva Katz, has this format, and it works successfully - Eva’s wards find new clients, increase sales and manage social networks no worse than professional social media managers.

Therefore, if you do not want to turn to freelancers, agencies or hire a full-time specialist, we recommend taking a closer look at consultations - this way your social networks will definitely work for you.

We looked at the pros and cons of the four main methods of promotion on social networks + an additional format - consultations. Now we offer our solution. We are against dirty games in the name of blindly fulfilling KPIs - it is important for us to keep social networks cool, broadcast the atmosphere and values ​​of the brand, and increase sales using white-collar methods. Therefore, we are now testing a new approach with even greater immersion in the client’s business - one day a week our specialist lives with the brand, lives its life and delves into the work processes.

Our approach: complete immersion in the project and the introduction of a specialist to the scene

We have now expanded the immersion format. Now our employee goes to the scene of events once every two weeks, collects information, eavesdrops on people’s conversations and absorbs the atmosphere. So far, we are doing this only on one client project - the Person School of Stylists - and it is too early to talk about demonstrative results. But the first achievements are encouraging, team"caught a wave" and from the very first post I hit the nail on the head with the style, intonation and message of social networks.