With 2.3 billion people using social media, it's no surprise that it has become a key pillar of companies' business strategies.

Major brands have dedicated teams looking after their social channels, but what if you don’t have the capacity for a social media team? If you’re about to embark on managing social media accounts, we think you’ll like these tips.

1. Use a dedicated Facebook account.

You’ll thank us for this one. To become an admin of a Facebook page you must link the page to a personal account. This means, day and night, you will receive notifications from business pages linked to your private account. You’ll be bombarded with likes, comments, and analytics from business pages and your personal notifications will become few and far between. So, create a new Facebook account to keep your personal and work accounts separate. If you need to keep on top of things you can still receive notifications, but if you don’t want to receive them out of working hours, you don’t have to. Bliss.

2. Audit, audit, audit.

It’s difficult to measure ROI with social media, but something you can track is the number of followers, reach, likes, comments and shares. Keeping on top of progress is essential for figuring out what sort of campaigns your audience responds to. Audit your channels once a month (always on the same date) to keep track of progress (or lack of). Improvements can always be made, but you need to know what’s working – and not working – beforehand.

A well thought out content plan will keep you and your client on track.

3. Create a content plan.

If you want to ‘do’ social media well, you need to plan. Posting ad-hoc day-by-day isn’t good enough when it comes to successful accounts. Yes, you need to stay current and keep an eye on the day’s news, but preparing a monthly plan is imperative. Outline key social dates as well as key dates for your business (product launches, offers, events). Your plan doesn’t need to be fancy – we use a Google Sheet – but make sure it’s clear, you include all social channels, and you have a way to share this information with other employees or clients. Hootsuite has a free social media plan you can download here.

4. Keep up with the Joneses.

Who are your competitors? What are they doing on social media? What’s the latest feature on Facebook advertising? What are the popular hashtags on Instagram? Don’t get left behind – social platforms release updates and new features all the time, and if you’re not in the know, you’re already lagging. We like to keep up with Mari Smith for Facebook updates, she really knows her stuff.

5. Have clear goals.

This might sound obvious, but it’s easy to get side tracked. Are you using social media to increase footfall in-store? To raise brand awareness online? To encourage conversation and interaction? To sell something? Whatever your goal is, stick to it. There’s not much point in advertising online if customers aren’t coming in-store – why not create an online offer that’s redeemable in-store only? Always keep your main objectives in mind.