So What Is A Social Media Manager? And how do you make money doing it?
Simply put: a social media manager is someone who helps a business become visible through social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or YouTube.
The manager interacts with people through social media. A manager can also monitor interactions, mentions, and conversations to see what a business should do when promoting itself and what it offers.
The work involves placing a human face on a company. Social media is all about interacting with people and creating a human touch. A social media manager will bring that touch to the customers. The work enhances the bond between the parties and makes an effort more useful.
Let’s Make A Distinction
If you’re a social media manager you focus more on the best way to use social media accounts. If social media marketing is more your thing, you’re looking more at creating and executing a strategy to generate leads for a business through a presence on social platforms. It can be a fine distinction, but by and large a social media manager paints the big picture, while the manager fills in the details.
What Skills Do I Need?
If you’re going to do this you need to make sure you have the right skill set. Luckily if you spend any time on facebook, pinterest, instagram, etc, you probably have most of them. Here’s just a few examples.
- The ability to communicate well with other people
- To plan and publish content
- To listen to and engage with people and what they have to offer
- To manage community involvement, including knowing how to interact with clients (Not scary! Again already doing it on FB).
- To convey information in written form.
- To manage social media sites of all sorts, including casual and professional accounts
What Will I Be Doing?
Most of your work will involve managing a social media presence, your own or another company’s. You’ll be responsible for running many projects on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and many other sites. If you do this as a freelancer You’ll eventually end up with your own social media marketing agency.
Here’s some things you’ll be doing in your new found role.
- Constantly review these accounts
- Work with the marketers and site managers to provide a clear growth path
- Provide updates to your clients (or employer) on their company’s social media status
- Convince the public about how great the company is.
- Ask questions and gather information from people on the site.
- Respond to any concerns or questions people have.
- Use this information to guide the pending marketing work.
The #1 goal of a social media manager is to reach more people and to establish positive relationships. This helps convert strangers into leads and leads into customers.
Remember: you may be doing many of these things already so why not get paid for it.
What Tools Do I Need?
This may seem obvious but every social media manager needs a consistent online connection. The faster and more reliable the better. An Ethernet link (wired connection) is ideal. However in all honesty with that being said use what you have access to.
If you’re going to manage these accounts you have to be able to communicate effectively, this helps make sure that everybody stays on the same page throughout the various projects. You have to plan your work with your clients / employer and see to it that the marketers, copywriters, and site managers are all on the same page. Use things like Facetime, Zoom, or Google meets.
It helps to have a software program that makes the marketing process easier to control.
You can find many social media management programs like these:
- Loomly,
- Agorapulse,
- HubSpot Marketing
- Agency Analytics.
Another good idea is to have both a desktop and a mobile device. You should test your posts on both platforms to ensure your content is easy to read on anything. More people are using mobile devices to find social media content than ever. Having something that checks on how well a post works on smaller screens and devices helps.
How Do I Find Work?
You can visit sites like ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and Indeed to find work. Social media management jobs are directly available through many employers, or you can step out on your own regardless, here’s some things to keep in mind when searching for work.
Every position varies by:
- How much experience is necessary
- What social media platforms you’ll utilize
- The message types the company wants
- The frequency of work, including how often a company should plan its messages
- Other duties that someone might request
An employer should let you know what works in a position before you start.
Here’s a neat little trick. Use Google maps to search for local companies with no ratings or reviews and offer to claim their business on google my business. This can generate quite a bit of revenue.
How Much Money Can I Make?
Well.. pretty much, as much as you’re worth, this is a results oriented industry. It’s no surprise that companies are willing to pay a premium for social media managers. The total you can earn every year will vary on how much experience you have.
An entry-level manager with four or fewer years of experience can earn about $40,000 a year working for someone else. If you have more work experience, you can earn $60,000 or more each year. If you’re freelancing the only limit on your income is you, the better your results the more you can charge.
Here’s some tips to make the most you can.
- Build a website (This is your portfolio)
- Build your own social channels (show prospects that you can)
- Know your target client
- Be persistent through all the social media sites you access.
- Create and keep a regular posting schedule
Is This Right For Me?
Ultimately, social media management is a great online job, whether you’re fresh out of school, or looking for a new career. If you like to learn, it can be an exciting career that is constantly evolving and changing.
This is a job that pays well if you’re a salaried employee, but you also have the potential skills needed to launch your own business should you choose.
Leave a comment below if you have suggestions for my next blog post or any questions regarding online income. I’ve got many more interesting articles coming out soon and I love to help!
One last thing, if you think social media management might be for you here is a good place to start
Find Your Freedom
Wakeman
wakeman@dumpmy9to5.com