What Does a Social Media Manager Actually Do?

By Beth Jones

Experienced Social Media manager Beth Jones takes us through a typical day.

A Social Media Manager (SMM) is a job role that did not even exist a few years ago. But with the huge growth of Social Media, there is great demand for such a position.

As companies realise how much influence Social Media has over purchasing decisions, yet do not have the time to do it themselves, many businesses are now outsourcing their Social Media marketing to a SSM.

95% of Millennials expect a brand to at least have a Facebook page. Think it’s just because they were raised with the internet? Think again—87% of Gen X’ers (ages 30-44) and 70% of those ages 45-60 feel the same.

A Social Media manager may work for a marketing agency, or they may be a one-man team, managing up to 20 or more clients throughout their week.

A day in the life of a Social Media manager

A Social Media manager’s job is to ensure their clients’ brands have a presence online that is:

• on the platforms where their customers spend their time
• cohesive with their branded image both in physical store locations & across the other marketing platforms.

In order to do this effectively and to assist businesses with legitimate growth, a good Social Media manager wears many hats – from marketing funnel creation to being a customer service representative.

“Your Social Media manager should work hard to understand the needs and growth goals of your company – and have a plan to make them happen”

Some of their most major tasks:

• Social Media content creation – This one is a given, and it’s also the one people consider the easiest. In reality, it takes planning, strategy, design, analysis, and implementation. A good Social Media manager doesn’t just put random, canned content up on a page and hope it works – they know what’s driving engagement. Additionally, communication styles change from platform to platform and some messages even become obsolete from one platform to the next. It’s important to know where each message belongs and how it needs to be presented.

• Marketing funnel creation/filling – Whether people recognize it or not, brand presence on social platforms (done properly) is soft-selling. Relate this to networking events – we don’t attend networking functions thinking we’re going to walk out with thousands of dollars in sales. We attend them to build relationships so that, when the time presents itself, those people think of us and not others. The same process happens with Social Media. The goal is to have a daily presence in the lives of your customers and potential customers. Users that engage with brands online are absolutely part of the funnel. There are also many tools that can be used to collect data and contact information from a target audience.

• Customer service & brand reputation manager – It’s almost second nature for people to take their life experiences online, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that their friends/followers are going to hear about it if customers are unhappy with a product or service. Social Media managers use tools to monitor the feedback online about the businesses they manage. They also understand how to handle this effectively publicly (so others know the brand was quick to respond and cares enough about their customers to try to fix the problem), privately, and then back to the public again. A SMM should know their clients well enough to know how to direct an angry customer so the problem can be resolved. And they should also know when a customer just needed to feel heard.

Your Social Media manager should work hard to understand the needs and growth goals of your company – and have a plan to make them happen!