Most people still see more marketing value in a press release or an ad, rather than in social media. The main reason for this negative perception stems from how social media is often managed, but this is easily fixed.

When managing social media content and social communities you need to monitor, measure and constantly optimize them to demonstrate their value, just as you do for traditional marketing campaigns. When you do this, you’re able to see important information like where your sales and leads are coming from, what’s resonating with your community and what is turning them away.

There are lots of ways to get this information and it’s only as complicated as you make it. Here are five ways to better manage your social media:

1 – Bring your communities together

One of the biggest and most legitimate issues with managing social media is that your presence is often split across multiple platforms – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. The result is all of the valuable information about your content, communities and conversations are also distributed across several platforms.

To overcome this, there are a variety of tools that will allow you to monitor all of your social media communities simultaneously, as well as let you publish content, respond to comments and analyse them, all in real time.

2 – Unchain yourself from the Desktop

Social media is as much about your business as it is about the world around you. You need to be able to go where the action is – with your community and customers to events and other activities that are relevant to your brand.

When you’re thinking about how to physically manage your social media, try not to lock it down to a desktop computer in the office. Think about how you can use other devices such as tablets and smartphones to provide real time management of community and content.

3 – Don’t just post! Analyze, report and set goals.

Most important – make sure your content is relevant to your community. Like the other parts of your marketing mix, social media is about more than just execution. Posting content regularly is important, but to get real value out of it you need to constantly analyse your results metrics, such as engagement, growth or sales; learn from them and set regular goals.

There are lots of metrics you can track. When you’re setting up or re-evaluating the process or tools for managing your communities, decide what metrics are most valuable to you, how you’ll measure them and what you’ll need to make it happen.

4 – Plan ahead and keep your team in the loop

Even if only one person is managing your social media, remember that person is representing your whole brand. Therefore, it’s important that stakeholders from across your organisation are aware of what’s happening.

Creating a regular calendar of content and sharing it with your team will ensure people are up to date with social media activity. It may also encourage other teams to contribute content of their own.

5 – Use change to empower your community manager(s)

Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter add new features for users, and update existing ones very regularly. This means the way you manage your social media, and the tools used to manage it, will evolve very quickly too.

To make sure you’re able to get the most out of new updates, make sure your team has access to resources that explain what new features are when they happen and how they can best leverage them. This will empower them to take advantage of each update, rather than avoiding it.

There are lots of ways to refine your social media management and get real value from it. However, these five tips are the building blocks from which more advanced social media management begins. What do you think – have you started with these? Are there any others you would add? Tell me in the comments below.