How to Become a Social Media Manager
Being a social media manager includes a package of different roles from a marketer, copywriter, and designer to strategist and customer service. It can be a bit intense but it is perfect for someone who loves a challenge. Managing all of the social media channels requires social media managers who study, develop, and implement the right strategy. The great thing is that there is something new to learn every day from soft skills to hard skills. The more you focus on developing these skills, the more you achieve better results.
Social Media Management
Simply put, social media management is basically about managing the important aspects of the planned marketing strategy. It is all about creating a credible business account across suitable social media channels. As we know, social media can be overwhelming. That's why hiring a social media agency can be a convenient solution so you can deal with an experienced social media manager. Before diving into the role of the social media manager, let's go over the common social media management practices.
Building a brand/business account, providing the company's information for more authenticity
Study the target audience according to age, demographics, location, and gender to identify the customers that might be interested in your business
Set realistic goals from one of the following:
Establish a brand identity
Increase sales
Audience growth
Response quality and rate
Drive more traffic
Generate leads
Increase brand awareness
Brand reach
Focus on the type of content that represents your business the best. Studies have shown that visual content has a high impact on social media reach and user engagements
Engage your audience to build a solid relationship with them through messages, likes, comments, answering questions, and competitions
Use a convenient call-to-action button to encourage the customers to proceed whether to purchase or simply ask questions through the messages
At last, measuring the performance and results is an important step to make sure that your efforts are going in the right direction. You need to know the answer to the following questions:
What makes a post stand out more than the others?
Are there some posts performing better than the others?
Who is interested in your business? And when are they most active?
How can you guarantee better results in the future?
What is a Social Media Manager?
Before the internet, the equivalent role to a social media manager was a public relations representative. A social media manager, also referred to as community manager, is the "voice of the business." He is responsible for monitoring, filtering, and measuring the company's online presence, representing the brand personality. He also executes marketing campaigns, bearing in mind the best platform, the convenient content, and the company's guidelines. His role involves acknowledging the paid tools, running promoted advertisements, and monitoring organic efforts. A social media manager works with a team of marketers and graphic designers, as well as the legal department to initiate together marketing campaigns. To sum up, the social media manager duties lie in one of the four categories:
Social listening: Responding to a customer's complaint and solving his problem to guarantee excellent user experience. It also includes monitoring any negative reviews and reputation issues on different social media channels
Social influencing: Establishing a remarkable social media presence by sharing relevant unique content
Social networking: Engaging the audience through likes, comments, and messages. In addition to communicating with other brands and considering "Influence Marketing."
Social selling: Generating leads and increasing sales by changing a prospect into a loyal customer
Now that we know the role of a social media manager, let's talk about the skills he must master to be the best.
Communication
Social media is literally about communication. A social media manager must have strong communication skills whether with his team or through social media. Communication is the key to building a solid relationship with customers and cooperating with the team members in implementing the marketing strategy
Copywriting
Writing an attention-grabbing content is a crucial part of the marketing campaign if not the main part. Each social media platform has a different audience and hence, different writing styles. Here are a few tips:
Use simple messages so that your audience can understand
Use short and compelling headlines
Use a unique introduction to grab attention
Use the company's blogs
Use an easy text to read, including bullet points, numbering, and subtitles
Research
A social media manager must be updated on the newest tools and trends. He must have the capability to research and come up with new ideas regarding the published content
SEO knowledge
A social media manager must combine SEO and optimising content through creative content. Including SEO in your marketing strategy is a smart step in attracting relevant customers and ranking high in search engines. Using suitable keywords while promoting your blog content really impacts the company's website revenue
Social media skills
A social media manager must have social media expertise. You must enlighten yourself with the following data:
Which are the suitable platforms for your business?
What type of content to use according to the platform?
How to optimise the content based on the chosen platform?
How to engage your audience on the different social media channels?
Customer service skills
About 45% of customers head for social media customer care to ask questions or when having a complaint. A social media manager must have the skills to match from answering questions about products to handling a complaint. Because in the end, a page full of negative reviews or bad customer service complaints will damage the whole business. Remember that 78% of online customers recommend a certain brand to their friends after a great customer service experience
Visual intelligence
A social media manager must maintain a consistent theme across all the content shared on every social media channel. Visual content is essential in grabbing attention on the customers' news feed. The right image or GIF can increase the number of shares, likes, and comments to the double or more. Also, a creative video can do the trick, following the latest trends. He must know the different types of visual content that can be used on every platform and have an eye to the best graphics. 80% of marketers use visual content as a part of their strategy and 63% recommend using videos
Flexibility
Social media is in continuous movement and even the best plans can be outdated. So, a social media manager needs to be flexible and has the tendency to adapt to new trends. As a social media manager, it is essential to experiment with different tactics and implement new strategies as the platforms they rely on. Being agile helps in finding new ways of building rapport with potential customers or responding to frustrated ones. Dealing with business changes, tracking the results, and analysing feedbacks (positive or negative) keeps a pulse on the different social media trends. A/B testing is also a great tool to determine the best relevant content and experiment with your sponsored advertisement before publishing
Time management
One thing you must pay attention to as a social media manager is "Time." Pay attention to the schedule you planned to perform your marketing strategy and the deadlines. Posting regularly is an important part to guarantee your continuous presence online. So, maybe it is a good idea to schedule your posts or create a content calendar
Familiarity with data analysis
A social media manager must monitor the efforts done and track the page's performance. He must know how to use the insights of the different social media platforms and understand the metrics. That's because social media relies completely on analytics to test various ideas. Also, it is essential to have a fair experience in some programs such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets to record and analyse the metrics
Social media manager position requires a bachelor's degree in marketing, public relation, or similar. While you may be not experienced in every field, being good at a few of them makes you a good social media manager. Also, most of the skills can be learned over time through research and experimentation. Just remember that obtaining the best results on implementing any social media marketing strategy needs "Patience."
