How To Become A Social Media Manager
📖 Learning
Social Media is amongst most the powerful platforms available across the globe today. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are capable of influencing presidential elections. Moreover, such platforms are now providing employment opportunities to hundreds of thousands of people in different countries. You have positions like social media specialist, social media marketer, and what not. One such popular and desirable job responsibility is that of a social media manager. So what exactly is a social media manager? This guy is responsible for planning, implementing, managing and monitoring company's Social Media strategy to increase brand awareness, improve Marketing efforts and increase sales.
Interested in knowing how to become a social media manager? Then this post is for you. The steps described below will give you a direction on how to become a social media manager.
Learn About Social Media
Practice Social Media Management
Set Prices For Your Services
Start Selling Your Services
More About Services
FAQ's
Conclusion
Learn About Social Media
You can't become proficient in English if you don't know the alphabets. A similar analogy applies to become a social media manager. The first step is to know what social media is and how it works. This involves making a list of different platforms and exploring them one by one. Consider LinkedIn. You are aware it's a social media platform meant for professionals. But what next? You have to go beyond making connections, writing posts, and following people. Do you know about LinkedIn advertising? Do you know about building your business profile on LinkedIn? This is just a preview of the several features you were clueless about.
The same applies to platforms like Facebook and Twitter as well. Most of us don't take the efforts to explore beyond the basic features of social media websites. Ignorance is bliss but not if you want to become a social media manager!
Parnas Ghosh
Practice Social Media Management
You have to practice. Theory without practical is incomplete learning. This also applies to social media management. You may know all of the platforms inside-out but it's waste if you don't implement your learning. You can practice with your private social media accounts if opening an experimental business account isn't possible. Build your followers, engage with them through interesting content, and curate a brand.
Once you are confident enough, experiment with a business account on the platforms. The rules of the game may change slightly but the fundamentals remain the same.
Set Prices For Your Services
When it comes to pricing it's a personal decision. It's your call. How much your time is worth and what budget your potential client has are some parameters to base your decision. If your clients are a multi-million dollar business they can afford to pay you thousands of dollars per month, but if they are a small business, they may only pay a few hundred dollars.
The quality and quantity of your content matter above everything else. How much content are you going to be putting out every month and the kind of engagement you bring in determines your rates. At the same time, services don't encompass only posting content. Growing followers, advertising, etc. also need to fall under your offerings.
This is the reason why businesses pay insane amount to social media managers. Having a strong and dominating virtual presence is essential for every organization to stay relevant today.
Vidhi Punamiya
Start Selling Your Services
Okay, so you have come up with a pricing strategy. What next? Start selling your services, of course. You may not convert every lead, you may be subjected to constructive criticism, or face rejection in some other sense. That's inevitable. Every journey has crests and troughs and selling your services is no different. Once you have built your reputation, clients will automatically come to you.
More About Services
Here's some more information to gain clarity on the services a social media manager offers:
Posting Content
Content delivery involves scheduling posts, creating images, blog posts, audio, and video. You can also share others' posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Content is king so posting is imperative. It's necessary to educate your audience and uploading content achieves exactly this aim. Just make sure you give due credits when dealing with someone else's content.
Community management
You have to manage your followers. Simply having thousands of people like your page or as part of your Facebook group isn't enough. This is a community that you are talking about. And a community stays only when it's well-knit. Hence, the need for community management.
Businesses need help with regular posting on social media platforms. They also need to retain digital customers  Pinterest management is a great opportunity for you to help businesses who have a blog. There are several other opportunities to develop your community management skills.
Conducting polls, organizing giveaways, and posting questionnaires are a few methods to implement community management.
Advertising
Gone are the days when social media was only about making virtual friends. Advertising is one of the most powerful features of social platforms. This is a more advanced skill set. And it's risky as well since it involves monetary investment. However, to become a successful social media manager, you need to learn the art of digital advertising. There's enormous potential in advertising, both monetarily and credibility.
Copywriting
Copywriting is about knowing how to write persuasive content that involves selling. You can write copy for websites, sales pages, landing pages, product descriptions, and email sales funnels. This service is a good-to-have for social media managers.
Grow followers
If you want clients to stay with you month after month, you need to master the art of growing followers in addition to retaining them. If you aren't helping your clients grow their followers, your work won't be appreciated and you'll soon be out of business. Posting content is valuable only if it can bring new people.
Moreover, you can grow followers for free on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With Facebook, it's a bit tricky because you need to spend money on ads and boosted posts.
Lakshya Singh
Trending Content
No one is interested in stale news. Content is generally of two types: Evergreen content and trending content. The former refers to stuff that's going to say constant throughout. Whereas the latter depends on the current affairs and trends. And on social media, people are more interested in trending content.
Therefore, you need to stay updated as a social media manager. This ensures the services you offer are relevant to the time. For example, content around coronavirus is being followed by almost everyone on Facebook, etc. Thus, your post or polls on coronavirus will bring in engagement for sure at this moment.
Bringing Engagement On Posts
Instagram algorithm favors posts with significant engagements. What does engagement mean? Social media engagement includes likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks.
Another service you can offer as a social media manager is to bring engagement on someone else's post. You can render services to people who want to improve their existing social media content.
Areas Of Specialization
You can specialize in Instagram management. You can be someone who specializes in Instagram but you also offer other ancillary services. You can also do Pinterest management. It's a niche because Pinterest is really good for bloggers. On Pinterest, you can help your clients promote their blogs and websites traffic and pin every single day.
Though it involves some research, you can identify niches to specialize in as a social media manager. With the emergence of new features across different platforms, now is the right time to pick one and build in-depth knowledge around it!
Higher Paying Services
Blog writing and email marketing are some services for which you can charge serious money. These are the offerings that deserve high premium prices.
Vidhi Punamiya
FAQ's
How do I become a social media manager?
These are some ways to become a social media manager
- Enroll in a degree in communications or marketing. (Optional)
- Learn from online courses and YouTube platforms.
- Stay updated with the industry tools and tech.
- Look for social media opportunities and do internships.
- Keep learning and adapting.
- Be comfortable working and learning on your own.
Is social media manager a good job?
If you get a job to work on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest, and other popular social media channels, then it may sound like a dream come true. And for many people, it is as its the most satisfying job role according to PayScale. PayScale indicates that the job satisfaction of social media managers comes in at a 3.8 out of 5, or "highly satisfied" rating.
What does a social media manager do all day?
The work of a Social Media Manager is to manage, create and schedule social posts. Also, the work includes monitoring analytics and react quickly to trends.
Is being a social media manager hard?
Even though there are some unexpected tasks required, being a social media manager is a fun, rewarding job. You instantly see the results from hard work and it's interesting to be part of an industry that is so fast-paced, ever-changing, and new in every aspect.
What exactly does a social media manager do?
Social media managers create and maintain brand promotions, company information and marketing campaigns for their company across several different social media networks. A social media manager is expected to keep up with new trends and company and industry news.
Can I be a manager without a degree?
Managers manage people and projects within an organization to achieve the goals of the company. Having some kind of a college or university degree definitely helps when you want to become a manager, but it is not always necessary. With patience, time, and commitment, you can certainly become a manager without a degree.
Conclusion
Making content go viral on social media is an art and a social media manager is the artist behind it. There is no right way to do it. It all comes down to what works for you. Some only share content on social media. While other managers rely heavily on advertising and creating unique posts, etc.
As is with most things in life, the best approach is somewhere in the middle. This post should give you a head start on social media management. To achieve mastery of a skill, one needs to persevere and gradually build expertise. The same applies to becoming a successful social media manager. There's no concept of overnight success.
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