How to Become a Good Social Media Manager

Ever want to become a social media a manager, but don’t know where to start?

I will not tell you that, this article you are about to read is the answer to all your problems, however I will let you find out yourself. I don’t need you to tell me how devastating buying different online courses can be, or the fact that you have been stuck with one course for some time now.  But if you are a fresher, maybe you are scrolling online, and boom you came across this post, I want you to understand that, Social media management is one of the thriving career you will want for yourself right now.

A lot of brands are depending mainly on their social media platforms to grow their businesses, even the brands that have physical offices, are also building their social media platforms, and there is a growing demand for social media managers. These companies are not just looking for who will handle their socials, no that is not their aim for getting a social media manager.

The question now is……..If they are not just looking for social media handlers, who are they looking for?, what do they want?  What are their expectations?. This article will answer all your questions, everything. But you need to carry out a simple tasks, go get a pen and paper cause they is a lot to write down.

Who Is A Social Media Manager

While a lot of people thinks social media managers are people that handle social media and do posting, they are right though, but that is just a tip of the iceberg. However a social media manager is an individual, who is responsible for setting strategies, that can drive engagement and brings results to the brand’s social media.

To some people, it may look like social media managers are busy creating contents calendars, scrolling on TikTok, or creating contents. But these people are handling a lot of work, in fact social media managers are one of the essential part of building a stronger online brand.

A social media manager is an important part of business marketing team, a social media manager is responsible for creating, managing, and publishing contents for a brands social media platforms & websites.  This simply means creating engaging copies, creating videos, visual contents, bring different contents ideas, building and maintaining a content calendar, coordinating across teams,  engaging with online social media communities, developing strategies to increase engagement/reach, and much more.

What does social media manager do?

Although I have already given you a hint in the last two paragraphs, however social media managers are responsible for developing strategies, curating contents calendars, producing contents, creating engaging copies, communicating with the company key stakeholders and overseeing the companies social campaigns.

The core duties of social media managers are as follows:

1. Scheduling posts and monitoring engagement

This involves planning and publishing post in a specific time,  as a social media manager, most time you might be choked up with a whole lots of work, and in other to  stay ahead of time. There are tools, social media managers are using to schedule posts and monitor engagements some of the tools are;

• Meta Business Suite (for Facebook and Instagram): This is one of the most essential tools most social media use to monitor engagement, schedule post, respond to chat, and also replies to comments.
• Canva (now also allows scheduling posts!): If you wake up a social media manager at night, and ask him/her what is one of the tools, they need for posting contents, they will scream out Canva loudly. Yes Canva can be use for creating carousels, creating graphic, editing videos, and getting contents ideas. A top tool for social media management.
• Hootsuite: Like Meta Business suite, Hootsuite can be used to schedule post, track analytics, manage multiple accounts from, one single dashboard. However, Hootsuite is not free, yea a user have to spend up to $99 to manage, 10 accounts.
• Zoho Social: Is another top social media management tool, also used for scheduling post, track  performance, monitor engagement  and collaborate with other team mates all, in one place.

The above tools mentioned here, are for scheduling posts, monitoring engagements, and tracking analytics. Every social media manager use two or more of this stools, to make work simple and professional.

2. Building Brand Awareness

Social media managers, are like the force of marketing behind every brand/company. Every brand have one goal and the goal is, to make their audience recognizes and remembers their brand.

Below are some of the reason for building brand awareness:

• Top-of-mind recall: Customers and clients, will always have brands with brand awareness, at the top of their mind.
• Builds trust: Brand awareness helps builds trust.
• Increases word-of-mouth: People will always talk about, brands they see often and remember.
• Boosts conversions: Brand awareness will always bring leads, which will result to sales.

How To Build Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness can be difficult, especially in this competitive era, where everyone is competing for a trend spot. Since I don’t gatekeep I will show you ways, you can build a strong awareness.

• Be Consistent With Your Branding:  Your brand is your identity, you need to show up often, in such a way that your visual identity, should be recognize at a glance.
• Create and Share Valuable Content: You content is your online personality, create value, its not just about your brand, its about your customer/clients. You main focus should be what they think about, your brand at a glance. Create and share value!!!
• Engage With Your Audience: Engaging with your audience, is just a simple cheat code, to be the algorithm favorite. Reply to comments, ask questions, tag people, and  join conversations.
• Use Paid Ads for Reach: A very easy way to build and online presence is by running paid ads, it will help you reach your target audience and drive conversions. Run Facebook ads, Google ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads.
• Encourage User-Generated Content: Asking to share videos and videos contents, using your product is a very good way, to build a strong online awareness. Ask them to send reviews if possible.

You need to understand building, a strong online presence will not happen overnight, and that is very okay. The goal is to show up consistently, deliver value, and build familiarity. Whenever your audience are ready, you will be their top choice.

3. Analyzing trends and finding solutions to brand problems

As a social media manager, you should understand that, you are not just a handler,  you are not just there to make posts, you are a strategist. Brands are expecting a lot from you, they are expecting you to fix what is not working, they are expecting you to spot what is working, they are expecting you to keep the brand relevant, drive results and relatable.

How To Analyze Trends And Finding Solutions For Brands.

Step 1. Stay Ahead: As a social media manager, you need to stay ahead of trends, always be on the lookout for trending sounds, trending hashtags, which formats is blowing up?, what exactly are my competitors doing to stay ahead of trends?. You can use tools like, TikTok Creative Center, Instagram Insights, Google Trends, Trend Hunter, and other analyzing tools, to stay ahead of trends.

Step 2. Identify Brand Pain Points: Brands are not expecting you to do the regular, its not just about making post that get likes. ask them questions like: Is your engagement dropping?  Is your audience growing, but conversions aren’t? Is your messaging unclear or outdated?. Try to understand what their pain point is and fix it.

Step 3. Find the Right Solutions: There is a solution to every problem, you should get the right solution to every problem. 

Check below to know different solutions to the problems affecting brands online presence.

• If you are facing low reach, experiment, with reels, hashtags, post timing
• If you are having poor engagements, ask questions, go live, show behind-the-scenes,  and post good contents.
• Experiencing weak brand message? Revisit brand tone, update bio, align visuals
• Working with the Wrong audience? Audit follower insights, retarget with ads
• If clients is Copying others blindly,  Double down on what works for the brand target audience.

Step 4: Test, Track & Tweak: Try working on a 30 days test strategy, track post performance weekly, Repeat what works. Replace what doesn’t. This is to know what exactly will work for the brand you are working with.

The un-filter truth is, Success on social media isn’t luck — it’s strategy, backed by insights and led by constant improvement.

4. Strategizing content and campaigns

Strategy! Strategy! Strategy!, as a social media manager, it’s not just about posting. You need to plan with purpose, every post, reel, and story should, serve a clear strategy, that connects your clients brand, to their target audience, and drives results.

How To Strategize Contents And Campaigns

 

Step 1. Set Clear Goals: Every strategy starts with a goal, you need to ask yourself:

• Is it brand awareness?
• Are we aiming to boost engagement?
• Do we need to drive traffic or sales?
• Is it about building community?

If you have a clear goal, it will be very easier to position your brand, rightly.

Step 2: Know Your Audience Deeply: Posting is not enough, you need to understand your audience, know their pain points, the type of contents they love, their most active time. Use tools like Instagram insights, and google analytics, to study your audience.

Step 3. Build a Content Strategy: You need to understand, how to use content pillar method.

Below are ways to use content pillar:

• To Educate:  Share Tips, How-To, Infographics
• To Entertain: Post Memes, Challenges, Relatable Reels
• To Inspire: Share Testimonials, Quotes, Case Studies
• To sell: Share product demos, launches, and offers.

You can do so buy, planning contents weekly or monthly, by mixing different formats, like reels, carousels, lives, and stories.

Step 4: Campaign Strategy: A good strategy will always make you stand out,  before launching a campaign its important to, define the campaign goal, Pick a theme or message, chose a platform for your campaign, lastly map out your content, journey.

5. Optimizing pages and posting organic-rich content

In the crowded online space, how do you stand out? imagine creating posts, and not getting any engagement because your, profile is not optimized. A well optimized page, website or profile will always stand out among other competitors.

How To Optimize Pages/Websites

 

Step 1. Polish It: You know the popular saying, ”Dress the way you want to be address” It applies to your pages/websites too, before people will engage with your page, they will judge it by the appearance.

You need to:

• Work on the brand username: It should be searchable, clear, and brand related.
• Have a clear bio: Your bio should tell people about you, what you do, and how you can solve their problems.
• Add a link in bio: Adding link to your bio, will help clients/customers, have other ways of reaching out to your brand.
• Add a Profile Photo: Stop using boring, profile photos, invest in good quality profile photos.
• Story Highlights: Categorize services, testimonials, FAQs, etc, its fun and catchy.

To learn how to optimize Social media Pages and websites: Check this Youtube Channel

Step 2: Post Organic-Rich Content: Your contents is your social media personality, invest in  rich contents, create value. Your contents should be able to teach, inspires and solve problems. Your contents should be relatable, your audience are humans not robots, talk to them directly. Be consistent, consistency brings brand trust and recongnition.

Basic skills for social media managers

As a social media manager there are skills you must learn, this skills are very important. The skills are:

1. Communication: You need to be very fluent in communication, learn how to speak with clients, customers and brand partners.
2. Writing and Editing: As a social media manager, you can’t skip writing, yes!! you must write. It is not about spelling and grammar, every social media manager must be excellent in drafting copies. Learning copy writing is crucial.
3. Creativity: Dear aspiring social media manager, explore!!. Social media management requires you to be as creative as possible, you need to a critical thinker and smart in decision making. Brands are looking out for you to grow their online presence, and in this competitive era, if you are not creative, you will be behind trends.
4. Customer service: Every social media manager is a customer care representative, go and learn how to attend to clients, and customers professionally.
5. Technology and social media proficiency: You must understand how different social media platforms works, study their strengths and weakness.
6. Collaboration: You must know how to collaborate with other social media managers, brands and customers. Collaboration is an important skill in social media management.
7. Time Management: If you don’t know how to manage time effectively, you might spend your whole day on working on a content calendar. In other to manage and monitor different social media platforms, you must be very efficient in time management.
8. Flexibility: The algorithm can change and the twinkle of an eye, you must be ready to adapt to change as fast as possible. The algorithms require social media managers to be flexible and develop adaptive techniques to improve results.

Social Media Mangers Salary 

As  a beginner, don’t you think its more important you focus on getting better, rather thank thinking about salaries? However, I will tell you the amount social media managers are earning this, is to help you stay motivated, knowing that the career path you are about to take, will foot your bills.

The average yearly salary for social media manager is $400,000. There are chances that you earn higher/ lower depending on your location, level, and the brand you are working for.

To see how much social media managers are earning check: Payscale 

Frequently Asked Questions For Social Media Management

 

1. How much social media manager earn?

The average social media managers salary is $400,000 yearly. These varies based on location, experience level, and brand.

2. Where to find social media manager

To get a social media manager you have to utilize online platforms, freelance marketplace and other networking sites.

3. Can I become a social media manager with no experience?

Yes you can, you just have to have the basic skills needed and you are good to go.

4. Can social media manager work from home? 

Most freelance social media managers works form home, this depends on your job description, and choice.

Conclusion

Social media management is a very career path, and you don’t need to have all the experience in the world before you can delve into social media management. There are opportunities to learn as you go, Just be open to learn and implement. Understand Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and other social platforms, like the back of your palm. Study the algorithm, learn time management, be flexible. You can become a social media manager too!!

Always Keep up with Zazartech For more educational contents