I run many social media campaigns for businesses all around the united states. I have been an active reader of BHW for awhile and I feel I should start contributing to this site.

I have leaned many things over my career as a ssm and want to share a couple tips

A Local Following
When I first started out I found it hard to gain fans/followers for companies that need their followers to be in one city or state. These are the things I have found:

• Facebook advertising is great for this to start your page from scratch
• Cross promotions with local businesses via social media works great
• Liking and following all your local teams, city, ect
• Follow all the people that follow something local especially the competition (their conversion rate will be higher)
• Get in contact with anyone and everything from that area, the more people that know about you the better

What and When to Post
Post relevant content and make sure to always include photos. People are around 30% more likely to like a post with a photo. Post at least once a day on Facebook and link it to your twitter. All your Facebook posts should go to your twitter.
Don't waste your time scheduling posts on Twitter if you don't already have a nice following. Chances are the posts that you are bulk uploading suck and no one wants bad posts on their feed. Take your time and create amazing tweets that people will RT. 1 amazing post is much better than 15 bad posts a day.
Post all this stuff around 1 - 3 pm on the weekdays and weekends

Forget Writing and Creating Content Yourself
Creating content is no fun when you need a whole bunch of it. Hire writers if you have a bunch of blogs and get people to do stuff for free. It's amazing how much people will write for you if you allow them to include one small link. After their link is on your site ask them to do the same. You're not only saving time now, your getting more done! Tell them to talk about you on social media too. The more people you know online the better, and stay in contact with all these people.

People You Should Know
So you need help with a FB page or Twitter account? Ask for help then. It's pretty cool who you can get in contact with on Twitter.



Anyway i could go on and on with things that could possibly help a social media manager.

What are your most valuable tips?
Where would you say that you obtained the bulk of your fans?

cool tips there op

Nice info buddy, this is something my SEO partner has been looking to add to her packages. What would you typically charge a client? Monthly? Or a bulk one-off deal? and how do you set a service level agreement for your services? ie would you guarantee them a set number of FB fans over say a 3-month period or what? Much appreciated.

Most valuable tip for a social media manager or any business that want to get into social media marketing, is to stop, sit down and think before you start tweeting, posting, following, liking etc etc etc. To many people these days think that it is all about getting fans, followers, views etc. Instead of stepping back, looking at your business/market and actually figuring out a strategy that will drive money into their bank accounts or save them money(which it turn makes them money).

I have been asked by so many business owners about getting them a Facebook page or a twitter account and yet they have no idea what they are going to do with it. Or other local businesses that have X amount of followers but no one ever buys anything or comes to their store and what should they do?

It is quite nice to make a monthly recurring income from social media management but I can get a lot more money out of a company if I first help them understand how their business should and should not be on social media. Plus what they should actually do to drive money into their pockets with these types of marketing avenues. Once they understand, they are more willing to fork over more money a month because they do not just see it as you tweeting once a day for them but that you are actually making them money for their business.

Bulk of fans..

For local it is through promotions both online and offline. If the a person is "interested" in getting a discount on a service/product, it is more than likely they are willing to pay for it and as such the followers are paying customers and not just a number on a facebook page.

National level business, it is all about competitors. If you know they are using or will use a competitor, then it is possible they will use your service/product as well or instead of theirs. So it is all about brand awarenesss and brand recognition(two completely different things). Get your brand infront of people that are infront of competitor brands but with showing them your value of that competitor and you will have a follower that is willing to spend money on that perceived value.

B2B level, is about whether or not facebook/twitter is where the bulk of your paying customers are looking for your b2b service. If they are, then it is about knowing exactly what business "require" your services and going directly after them in social media. No reason to have 5000 followers that have nothing to do or do not own a business that "requires" your services/products. Then there are the business that do not have the bulk of their paying customers on facebook/twitter. If this is the case, the money is better spent else where no matter who thinks that having followers will help their business. These types of B2B are better to utilize things like LinkedIn, direct sales approaches, email, etc that can target these businesses that are not on facebook/twitter to find services/products.