Ask any social media manager what they do, and they’ll respond with: “A lot!”. Social media accounts don’t run themselves and that’s why you should hire a social media manager.
Social media accounts require their owners to post content, interact with followers, and ultimately grow the pages into valuable marketing assets. And managing all your social platforms can be a full-time job in itself.
We all know that physical and online businesses need a social presence to succeed in today’s online world. Most large companies outsource social media management to a social media expert instead of using in-house resources.
But even solopreneurs need help so outsourcing social media management is a great way to free up your time when you don’t have a social media team.
If you’re considering hiring an expert with some social media skills to improve the performance of your business and free up some time, here are some of the things you need to know about why you should hire a social media manager.
What is a Social Media Manager?
A social media manager manages a business or individual’s online presence by creating a social media strategy, analyzing data, and creating high-quality content that engages their audience.
These managers also often create organic and paid social campaigns, manage communities, help with customer service, and more.
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What Does a Social Media Manager Do?
Social media managers have many job duties including:
- Develop social media strategy to get more leads and potential customers
- Cast client’s business in a professional light online
- Schedule and post content
- Manage messages and comments
- Measure success of each social media campaign
- Create analytical reports
- Launch and monitor paid advertising
- Keep up to date with the latest practices
- Liaise with copywriters and designers
- Network with other brands online
- Look for additional marketing opportunities for their client
- Offer damage control if applicable
- Train others on client’s brand
Create a Clear Strategy
It’s a given that all businesses aim to secure more revenue through their marketing efforts. But within social media specifically, there are many ways you can achieve this.
A social media presence is necessary to ensure your audience sees your content. You need the right followers as well as decent post reach and social media engagement.
A social media manager will work with you to devise a strategy that will influence all of the content posted on your feeds to meet specific objectives.
For example, running competitions is an excellent way to gain more followers on your pages, or posting a poll can get more people interacting with your page.
Whatever content is posted on your feeds, there will be a clear reason behind it that your social media manager will measure and report back on.
A comprehensive strategy will broach all different aspects of your social media pages to ensure the best possible conditions for the success of your campaign are being met.
Smart social media marketing strategies include factors such as finding the right social media channel(s) to best engage with your audience, as your target demographic may use certain platforms more than others.
Finding the platforms your audience hangs out on is something your social media manager will be adept at finding out.
Curate the Right Content for Your Social Media Channels
Posting social media content on your business’s social media pages is very different from posting on your personal accounts. Nailing the tone of your brand while also engaging your audience is a tricky balancing act.
Social media marketers work with copywriters, graphic designers, and video editors to make your posts stand out for the right reasons. If you’re a one-woman show or only have a small team, they will work closely with you as the business owner.
Many newcomers to social media can easily fall into the trap of using a universal template for each platform. However, it is crucial to take the time to modify and customize your content to cater to the different audiences found on each social media website.
For example, long-form informational content will likely be best suited to platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Chances are, you wouldn’t put a detailed blog post as a caption to an Instagram photo.
Meanwhile, while images will work well on any platform, they work best on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, where feeds are designed to feature pictures instead of text.
If the social media posts aren’t getting the traction you’d hoped for, a social media manager will analyze what happened. It could be the time of day didn’t align with when your followers are most active or simply that the content failed to connect with people.
Either way, they’ll aim for success within every single post.
Optimize Your Social Media Profile and Page
One of the most important tasks a social media specialist will do is optimize your social media profile. If you want potential customers to find you and buy your products, you must optimize all your profiles on the various social channels your audience hangs out on.
Optimizing your profiles with the right keywords and important information helps enhance your social media efforts.
Respond to Messages
There’s no escaping that there’s a lot of admin involved with social media, especially if you conduct a lot of your business through its messaging platforms. Social media managers respond to messages and comments for you so that your customers don’t slip through the cracks.
Customer engagement is especially important, especially for the potential customers that want to learn more about your products or services. It is vital to chase all leads to maximize potential profits for your business.
Your business’s reputation relies on prompt yet professional communication. Follow-up includes responding when things don’t go so well, and a customer posts a bad review, or if your business is the subject of negative publicity.
In this case, your social media manager is on hand to remedy the situation and not exacerbate it, as can easily be the case if you lack PR skills.
One piece of harmful viral feedback can seriously harm your reputation and business as a whole, but having a professional on hand can mitigate this potential risk.
Community Management
Many businesses today use LinkedIn groups or Facebook groups to grow their email list and create a community of their ideal audience. Social media managers can also manage these groups to ensure that these social media users are engaged and active.
Running these groups takes a lot of time so a social media manager can help you free up the time you spend answering questions on a regular basis in these groups. They can play a crucial role in community management.
Launch Paid Campaigns
Most social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, can display paid advertising to people across the globe. But, there’s an art to paid advertising on social channels.
Social media management often includes paid ads so you need someone who understands how advertising on each platform works.
When using paid advertising, you don’t want to spend massive amounts of money without strategy and hope for the best.
Social media managers first develop audiences to target the correct demographic, ensuring you earn the maximum ROI. The content of the advertisement will also need to meet strict standards set by the platform. They’ll then launch the ad and monitor its progress to ensure the money being spent is delivering as expected.
Some platforms like Pinterest require you to monitor ads closely so you can adjust the campaign as needed. When done right, paid ads can be an important part of your sales funnel.
One potential downside to launching a paid advertising campaign is that your content can easily get lost or diluted in a highly saturated marketplace. Remember, there are already over 3 million businesses advertising on Facebook alone.
A social media manager can be your secret weapon to standing out from the crowd by creating exciting content to ensure you’re not simply throwing money away on paid campaigns.
Manage Your Analytics
If you’re not a social media marketing expert, you probably haven’t even noticed the analytics section on your accounts, much less know how to interpret the data.
Most social media sites have a personalized analytics page for business accounts that detail important information such as user engagement with your posts, impressions, and mentions.
This information is very beneficial, as it can highlight what is working well, and what areas of your pages need more attention. They can then work closely with the editorial team or you to better curate your content in a way that ultimately grows your online presence.
Social media managers regularly check how their client’s feeds are performing by inspecting the analytics. They also compile the data into tracking reports, which is helpful to monitor performance and can also be crucial when getting investors on board.
Keep Up With Changing Social Media Trends
Keeping up to date with social media’s ever-changing trends can sound like a daunting task to many people. To social media professionals, this is their bread and butter and the area in which they thrive.
In a rapidly evolving landscape, user behavior can change drastically in a short space of time. For example, TikTok rolled out its U.S. launch at the start of 2018. By the summer of 2020, almost 100 million Americans were using the platform every month, with over half the audience using it every day.
Failing to stay on top of the latest trends can cause your business to lose ground to more savvy competitors. However, using the example of TikTok, it isn’t simply a case of creating an account and jumping on the bandwagon.
The content posted on this platform will differ drastically from other sites, with TikTok users primarily using it to create and share short videos.
A professional social media manager will know how to curate content for the different platforms to ensure your business stays popular at all times.
Final Thoughts on What Does a Social Media Manager Do
Most small businesses don’t have a marketing team which means a business owner wears many hats. We already work on content creation in other aspects of our business, so why not make social media marketing easier by curating the right content for each social media platform?
A social media manager is often more effective at creating valuable content for each platform, whether that is a TikTok video, Pinterest pin, or something else.
If you feel stuck in social media hell, endlessly posting content that seems to always lead to a dead-end, it might be time to fast-track your progress with a professional social media manager.
Social media managers know how to run all aspects of your online presence. Before hiring an expert, it is vital to think about potential shortcomings in your business and how social media could help fill these gaps.
On average, a social media manager will start at $400 a month and can run into the thousands if you want to run paid ads. This price will vary depending on how comprehensive a service you require.
Although posting content might seem simple enough from the outside, social media marketing as a whole is actually a pretty complex operation. Therefore, if you want your business to succeed on social media, investing in a social media manager is the best way to grow your audience and ultimately your revenue in the process.
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