The Social Media Manager is an expert Social Media Marketing professional who:
- manages corporate communication on the various networks and digital platforms,
- outline strategy, tone of voice, scheduling, online advertising,
- analyzes the numerical performance to facilitate the achievement of results.
Must possess knowledge of Social Media Management, Web Marketing, Content Creation, Ads, community management, email, blog, analytics, therefore, is much more a simple fan of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok.
To become a good Social Media Manager you need study and a lot of practice to have the skills necessary to embark on this career. Digital Coach’s Social Media Manager Certification Course is an excellent choice for you, because becoming certified as a Social Media Manager is certainly a trump card.
The highlights of the video and what you will find in the article are:
- What a Social Media Manager must do;
- How much is a Social Media Manager paid;
- What you need to study to become a Social Media Manager.
Who is the Social Media Manager
The Social Media Manager deals with corporate communication on social pages and profiles.
Depending on the sector of origin, or the reference market of the company in which he works, the Social Media Manager chooses the use of the various digital platforms, which have the power to amplify the range of action of the shared contents managing to involve the users and creating interactions.
Today the profession of Social Media Manager is a managerial task that requires transversal technical skills. A simple job of publishing content or responses to the community is no longer enough.
For companies pursuing the goal of
- Increase Sales
- increase the traffic of potential customers
- brand awareness
It becomes essential to make use of the contribution of the Social Media Specialist to ensure presence on the various channels. This is why the Social Media Manager profession has become one of the most important occupations in the digital world.
What does a Social Media Manager do
Among the tasks of the Social Media Manager we find:
- Creation and management of the editorial plan;
- Communication of the corporate brand and image care on social media;
- Product promotions;
- Advertising;
- Data analysis;
- Sharing of the contents of the blog and/or company website.
Design marketing strategies
The Social Media Manager thinks and designs the social strategy capable of engaging the public before posting materials on the page or profile.
As a “social content manager” identifies and focuses on topics in line with the specific audience. The first area to master is the production of content, whether textual, image or video, with an impact on the user. He doesn’t necessarily have to put his hand to the “packaging” of these products, but to conceive how to structure them, what to leverage, how to respond to the customer’s wishes by exploiting:
- beautiful captivating images
- useful videos
- explanatory texts
Elaborated starting from keywords or core elements for the target. For example, he can rely on video maker specialists to create professional videos, or on other technicians for live stories and graphic templates.
The best Social Media Managers are attentive to the revealing details of the posts, they understand whether it is better to publish on Stories or on the feed and, above all, they never publish the same message on all platforms, in a nutshell they must be able to elaborate a careful analysis of social networks.
Create the editorial calendar
The Social Media Strategist assembles the monthly, six-monthly, annual editorial plan. Identify the best days, times, and the most suitable formats for posting and distributing content according to the channels. The calendar can be built using common spreadsheets, such as Excel, or download the free social template calendars directly from the internet.
When it comes to planning, it is natural to think of the planning of business activities.
Based on a careful reading of the analytics, it decides and reviews the programming in order to improve the opportunities for visibility and the achievement of the established objectives.
This is the contribution of strategic supervision which also belongs to him in the management of digital advertising campaigns.
While a compulsive and chaotic organization is fascinating, knowing which social media management tools can help you automate certain processes, such as scheduling posts, is the key to professional efficiency in this role.
Process the content
Content creation is at the heart of the role of the social media content manager. Content is the lifeblood of networks, what “forces” your audience to read, engage, interact with your brand. It is important to learn how to develop a content strategy, create digital communication including videos, GIFs, infographics.
To gain experience you need to take action, get your hands dirty starting from the bottom and approaching visual and content marketing.
It might seem strange, but writing for social media requires a lot of attention. You must be able to write incisive CTAs (Call To Actions), use the right emojis, avoid typos.
It becomes inevitable to use graphics software such as Photoshop or InDesign belonging to the Adobe suite for web designers, or as very practical alternatives, Canva, Crello, Powtoon, Biteable.
In addition to the knowledge of the tools, to capture a good active listening pool, it is relevant:
- identify the right channel to communicate
- identify where the user of interest to us is present
- find out on which platform our competitors operate
Planning content scheduling in advance is another activity that makes a difference for your brand. Choosing a platform to manage, publish posts when they give the best results even if you’re offline, simplifies your life by improving your performance.
As already underlined, when drafting the content plan, the line to draw and the path to follow should be differentiating and distinguishable from the rest of the competing items.
Carry out online advertising campaigns
Doing the job of Social Media Manager means:
- manage budgets, sometimes even significant ones,
- take care of the brand reputation of companies.
Ads, Instagram Ads, Google Ads for YouTube and LinkedIn campaigns, known as social advertising, are complex to get to know in depth, for this you need good preparation, constantly updated.
One of the key aspects in distribution concerns advertisements. Most network algorithms prevent posts from being organically conveyed to the entire network.
Therefore, it is necessary to make use of sponsorships to make the material produced visible and the message shareable, in a widespread way in one’s own market niche. Otherwise, you risk developing beautiful graphics or breathtaking videos that cannot be enjoyed by anyone.
Become a professional Social Media Manager. Acquire the certificate that demonstrates your skills
Listen and manage followers
The social manager is attentive to listening to the network. Borderline with the figure of the community manager, is:
- curious connoisseur of the voice of the public
- studies the specific dynamics of the sector
- explores the characteristics of the brand and its users
- suggests the tone of voice with which to relate to brand followers
- involves the user to create a community
- provides information about the product/service
- moderate social chats
- manages the accounts of the company he works for
The social media manager must keep up with the users and have knowledge on various topics, because there is nothing more unseemly than giving wrong information.
Even if it doesn’t operationally belong to his job description, the SMM professional figure must be aware of the thinking of the reference community to set the next steps and the approach to adopt to capture the buyer personas.
Monitor Analytics and insights
Being an expert Social Media Manager means having the ability to interpret user feedback, the type of communication appreciated and rewarding, measure the return on investment (ROI), so that the managed profiles become sources of profit at the level of:
- branding
- engagement
- interest
- sales
- contacts
- lead generation
Social monitoring means not only knowing how to read your own results, but also the reports originating from the people who are part of your team, for a detailed data analysis and achieving the pre-set KPIs.
These are insights internal to social platforms, or analytics extrapolated from third-party software, functional to the exercise and control of this activity.
Monitor data from organic publications and social campaigns, know how to read statistics to optimize performance, juggle between analytics and objectives to achieve pre-established goals. We need the audacity to experiment, to test without ever stopping. A winning move or procedure is not said to be forever, so you need to look ahead to get good results in the future.
Skills of the Social Media Manager
In addition to the technical skills we have talked about, the Social Media Manager must possess some of the so-called soft skills:
- listening skills – particularly profitable in the social media listening phase. Always remember to pay attention to the network taking into account the conversations.
- curiosity – it is part of the portrait of the social media manager due to the role to which he is exposed.
- readiness and decisiveness – social media moves fast, not all comments or tweets can pass through multi-level checks, for this reason, in the event of a media crisis, decisions must be made in a timely manner.
- creativity – it’s not just about writing, design, photography. Your customers need to post what people want to see, therefore, you need to master the Instagram algorithm and build a YouTube marketing strategy.
- storytelling quality – yes, videos are increasingly important, but text is still needed on every single platform, even on TikTok!
- multitasking and overview – often, carrying out this job you do several things at the same time, but you have to know how to maintain the ability to face one more… Small emergencies or unexpected opportunities could arise. and you need to be able to deal with these situations, as they arise, without sacrificing long-term goals. The great challenge of the full-time social media manager is to constantly work on prioritizing the various activities, using the methods and strategies that he knows.
Do not forget, this last quality, the efficiency in coordinating a team and knowing how to divide oneself between several projects at the same time.
How to become a Social Media Manager
How do you become a social media manager? Which books should you train on? Is it plausible to assume the title of manager without graduating?
Of course, training on all social channels is required. There are training courses such as the Social Media Manager Course and other educational courses that allow you to frame the entire media marketing and Social Media Managing landscape. It is mandatory to master the new web tools, as well as having a good foundation in: search engines, design, site construction, inbound marketing techniques, email marketing, web design and SEO.
GO TO THE PROGRAMS OF THE COURSES
The main suggestion is to keep up to date, experiment and be aware of the news that is being launched non-stop on the media and app market with all the various implementations, from Instagram stories to video marketing, and test their functionality.
To help you understand how to become a social media manager from scratch, I made a video where you will find all my suggestions step by step.
Working as a Social Media Manager
To carry out the profession of social media manager there are two job alternatives:
- Social media “entrepreneur”, i.e. being self-employed;
- Employee within companies, SMEs, large companies, web agencies.
Usually, those who join a web agency are predisposed to work under stress and love dynamic contexts, while the freelance social media manager, perhaps because tired of the size of a large company or agency, registers for VAT and outsources his service to small business as a freelancer. In any case, the common denominator, despite the different contractual formulas or the facets of the same job, is commitment and perseverance.
Social media jobs can have a variety of titles (community manager, social media strategist and social media specialist, all commonly used) but with one thing in common: they are people who get hired when you want your brand to thrive on social!
Generally a company turns to SMM to be even more visible online, not limiting itself to search engines only, but developing and maintaining a direct connection with:
- potential customers (lead generation from social management);
- customers acquired (social customer care) through the network.
For this reason, today we find many social media manager job offers from companies, especially on LinkedIn. Today, more and more often, this figure is also enlisted in the ranks of politics, within technical staff, given the sensitivity to the web on the part of the audience of the main parties.
How much does the Social Media Manager earn?
The salary of the social media manager, is commensurate on the basis of his experience, fluctuates from 900 to 2000 euros per month, up to figures similar to the US market (around 50,000 dollars) when it comes to big brands with responsibility for numerous teams.
How much does a social manager earn in Italy and how much to pay the web marketing consultant specialized in social media? To answer these questions, we need to understand which figure we are talking about.
The community manager, a younger figure in terms of seniority in the world of social work, receives lower salaries than the Social Media Manager Specialist.
Candidates with good credentials, a varied portfolio, lots of practice and experimentation behind them, it is normal that they are more quoted also in economic terms.
With the growth of the share of the budget dedicated to social media in the marketing plans of companies, the request for qualified personnel who can fully occupy themselves with social network management has also intensified.
The social manager profession has become an increasingly valuable figure, to be paid a fair and competitive salary for the role held.
We are talking about a company manager, (in the smallest realities it is the marketing manager) who in his strategic vision can find himself designing the entire marketing and communication framework, combining branding and social networks; therefore overlapping with the areas of competence of the so-called brand manager.
Conclusions and additional information
In conclusion, can you be a social media manager without a degree?
Undoubtedly, a training course must be encouraged, you need to know how to develop a digital strategy, but you don’t need to complete a cycle of university studies in some faculty to be qualified to take on the role of this job. I would like to point out the interesting study on what to do after the diploma in preparation for professional choices in the digital field.
There are SMM courses of all kinds, including free courses for social media managers, but surely the added value is the experience that is acquired in the field: the practical work carried out daily, the aptitude for coordinating other people.
To help you choose, you can take advantage of our free career coaching.
We need to learn and be persevering, certainly not approaching it lightly with which we usually consult personal profiles to observe what friends are doing or “peek” at what people post. With perseverance you can achieve excellent results.
Remember that having a social media strategist is beneficial for companies, ecommerce and even small and medium-sized enterprises if they want to achieve awareness and profit results from the social network and the internet. Therefore, undoubtedly among the new digital professions, this is the one with the most opportunities to find work.
Request more information on how to make a career as a Social Media Manager
