Alexis Kestler
Lately, intelligent businesses have accepted social media marketing and started to appreciate the significance of online communities.
In the last few years, intelligent businesses have accepted social media marketing. As more and more sales started to take place online, they’ve started to appreciate the significance of online communities. Today, most of them see social media as it is: a way to engage and connect with customers directly, and with positive outcomes.
What happened was an opening to the possibility that people can work as social media managers, even from their homes. Or anywhere, as a matter of fact. And yet, to stay in contact with a great number of various people. The job is not just removing the limits of staying in an office, but also intrigues with an option that your clients can be from anywhere in the world.
Why Businesses Need Social Media Management?
The first and most important reason is that small business owners don’t have time to deal with social media. (I am saying small because big companies mostly have someone employed in this position.) That is opening a lot of places for freelancers, or small social media agencies.
Then, some businesses use social media, but they are still not convinced in the achievement. Or they have some doubts about why a business should use social media.
Whatever the reasons are you might need one, the social media manager will be responsible for your overall strategy. That implies product launching, creating and publishing content, analyzing data, running ads, and answering your messages and comments.
Social Media Managers are in Demand
At the moment many companies are looking for help, and this is the position that will always be in demand. Networks are only growing in popularity, and there are almost no chances that this will stop in near future. It is one additional job for people who run their own business, the same as bookkeeping for example. There is just not enough time and/or knowledge to handle it, besides taking care of business and sales.
If you are reading this post, that probably means that you are interested to take that place. Your job as a social media manager is to be informed about all different SM networks that help to grow one’s business. Also, you will need to stay updated about the changes and trends that are happening in this segment quite fast. You will be the connection between the business and its audience, the one that will help to build a strong and organic community.
How Much will you Make?
You will have a minimal investment at the beginning, and it will pay off very fast and very good. Social media managers start earning somewhere between $25 and $75 per hour. But that really depends on where you live, and what you plan to offer to your clients. With more experience and experience you will be able to charge more.
There is a wide range of skills and tasks that you can offer, so it is actually difficult to determine how much you’ll earn if we don’t know the details. It is more usual that freelancers and agencies create packages and charge monthly fees, than hourly work. We were writing about this in our post How to start and run a social media marketing agency.
If you are uncertain about how much you should make, you can check at Salary.
Besides a decent salary, the reason why many people decide to switch to this job is being your own boss. You can decide how often and how much you want to work, how many clients you will accept, and where you will work. Basically, all you need is a good laptop and a wifi connection. Many travelers took advantage of that, but also stay-at-home mothers.
Depending on your preferences and current working situation, you can also decide if this is going to be your side job or full-time job. Whether you’ll be a freelancer or found an agency. There is a lot of opportunities you can adapt to your lifestyle.
What will you do?
Simply said, social media managers are helping businesses with managing their accounts. As I already mentioned, that can be a really wide range of services. Most often, that includes:
- Account setup
- Creating and sharing content
- Sourcing viral content for sharing
- Asking and answering questions
- Running advertising campaigns
- Building a social media presence
- Analyzing data
So, you will build engagement and positive relationships with followers, to help to create brand awareness. And to create a loyal and true audience, which will buy business’ products and/or services.
Which Skills do you Need?
No matter how weird this may sound, most social media managers are not formally trained, nor they have a degree. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to learn anything or have some skills. Just the opposite – to be good in this job you will need consistent learning.
First of all, you need to be honest about your social media knowledge. If you used it just for personal purposes, you will need to learn a lot. Most networks make difference between personal and business accounts, so you will need to read about it and watch some courses. And, how many do you actually know and use actively?
Please, don’t take this as a piece of cake. The difference between personal and business accounts is not just about using insights or running pages. You need to learn how and what to post to engage followers.
Then, your grammar and language need to be brilliant. Misspellings and mistakes look unprofessional, so you will need to work on that. You can also use tools like Grammarly.
Your content should be made of 80% information and news, and around 20% of information about the client’s business. So you will need to have high research skills, not just to write about stuff that your audience is interested in, but also to figure out what are they interested in. You will also need some creativity in designing content.
Also, you need to be available and communicative. By available I mean that no matter that this job gives you certain flexibility, you will still need to work around the holidays. Or, something can go wrong and you will be needed in your time off.
There is a lot more you will need to learn and know when you decide to become a social media manager. As I already said, it is consistent learning. If you don’t know where to start, read some of our posts for beginners. If you find them interesting and easy to figure out, this job is just for you!
After that, the internet will become your best friend for the next month (or longer). You will read blogs, books, forums, watch YouTube and different courses, and maybe even sign up for a class.
Good luck!
