A great social media manager is, as Ron Burgundy would say: “The balls“.

It’s an undisputed fact that every business needs to be active in social media. The ever-changing demands of the modern day consumer requires brands to think fast and adapt quickly in order to stay one step ahead.

The role of a social media manager has appealed to the mass generation of socially-active internet users. It’s hard not to. Especially when some might think that you can earn big bucks from posting Facebook updates. Hardly.

Being a social media manager is kind of like being a stand-up comedian. You have to quickly understand your audience and your engagement with them is vital. In order to accomplish this, you need to know if the audience is laughing at your jokes and you need to know this in real-time. If you can do this, then you have already won the crowd.

So, how do you become a social manager? More to the point, how do you become a great social manager?

The answer will be surprising to some. Firstly, you have to want it. Second, you have to love it. Third, you have to learn it. And even if you tick all these boxes, you should ask yourself: “Am I a social person?” If the answer is no, then becoming a social media manager is probably not for you…

So let’s take a look at the stats.

• LinkedIn shows 57,910 results for “social media manager”
• Social media has now overtaken porn as the number 1 activity on the web
• 97% of all consumers search for local businesses online
• 71% of consumers receiving a quick brand response on social media say they would likely recommend that brand to others
• 93% of marketers use social media for business
• In terms of difficulty of execution, nearly half (49%) of B2B marketers put social media marketing at the top, followed by content marketing (39%), SEO (26%) and mobile (25%)
• 77% of B2B marketers use a blog as part of their content marketing mix
• On average, 25% of marketing budgets are now spent on content development, delivery and promotion
• 78% of small businesses attract new customers through social sites
• When asked to rank their company’s social business maturity on a scale of 1 to 10, more than half of global business executives gave their company a score of 3 or below

But the statistic that is most relevant to this article is:

• Just 12% of those using social marketing feel they actually use it effectively.

Being a social media manager brings with it some key benefits within a freelance setting. The most recognisable being the fact that you are your own boss. You make the decisions and answer to no one. You send the invoices and you set the policies. Heck, you could sit in your underpants all day on the computer if you wanted to.

The other is money. It is an in-demand role, but one that companies are still struggling to come to terms with. Some companies realise and understand the value social media could bring to their enterprise and are willing to invest heavily in robust social media campaigns. Being your own boss, you can decide how to set your costs and price accordingly.

Another attractive reason is the low barriers to entry. With low start-up costs and plenty of online resources (like this one!) to rapidly decrease the learning cure, anyone can launch a freelance social management business within a short space of time.

I’ll tell you my story shortly but first, let’s explore the essential skills you’ll need to become a great social media manager..

Fundamental Skills:

Marketing Knowledge

You should have a good grasp of the basic marketing principles. Some education in marketing would be beneficial, but otherwise you can find many quality resources online.

Experience

Your experience doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to life experiences. Have you managed your own social media profiles for a while? Do you know how to effectively maintain your own social accounts and understand what clients expect?

Sociable

I touched on this at the beginning of the article. If you are not a sociable person – someone who doesn’t like communicating much and isn’t very outgoing, then becoming a social media manager just isn’t for you. Sure, you can hide behind a keyword and monitor for a while, but clients will usually want to meet, speak on the phone, or have Skype sessions at some point.

Project Management

You don’t have to have a Prince2 certificate, but you do need to be able to manage projects and your time well. It’s typical for social media manager’s to work with multiple clients at any one time. Keeping tabs on everything is important so that it doesn’t get overwhelming.

Technological

Social media exists online. Therefore, you need to have a certain degree of computer literacy. Having good knowledge of social technology will enhance your services and ensure you are keeping up to date with the latest social trends and developments.

Interpersonal Skills:

Communication

It kind of goes without saying that if you’re going to be representing a company and engaging with their customers, then you will need to have strong communication skills.

Personality

Companies tend not to want to hire people with no personality to act on behalf of their brand. It doesn’t resonate well with them, or their audiences.

Responsiveness

I’ve touched on this a few times – social media is very fast-paced. Imagine if one of your social assignments was largely focused on customer service and you didn’t respond to customer complaints or queries for weeks. People online want rapid responses. Being able to fulfil these needs can stand your client (and you!) in good stead.

Entrepreneurial

To become a social media manager in a freelance capacity, you have to be a self-starter. You should be willing to go the extra mile and take a few financial risks along the way. If you don’t land a job that pays enough in one month, how will this affect you?

Multitasking

A great social media manager must be able to effectively carry out a wide range of tasks.

Organisation

You should always be very well organised when delivering social media management services. I use all kinds of traditional tools like calendars, white boards and task lists to keep myself organised. I also use many online organisational tools, such as: Thunderbird for accessing all my email accounts in one place, Dropbox to easily share documents with clients and bookmarks to keep track of all the websites I frequently visit.

Strategic Thinking

Being able to think campaigns through before they happen and sometimes thinking outside the box when needed, are great asset to have as a social media manager. Clients tend to want to know how you will do something before letting you do it, so being able to present a clear and concise strategy is essential.

Flexible (with travel)

Contrary to popular belief, a freelance social media manager has to leave his office sometimes! If this is a problem for you, then you should think about starting another profession. Nearly every sizeable project I undertake involves multiple meetings with the client. You should have reasonable pitching skills, as you may be required to sell your services face to face too, before being hired. You may even opt to take on in-house work.

Wider Skills:

Copywriting

Every good social media manager is a great writer. Writing forms the foundations of many aspects of online marketing, be it creating ads, writing blogs, engaging with customers, scripting sales copy or writing press releases.

Graphic Design

Pretty much all social media platforms provide the functionality to customise the interface and incorporate your own branding. If you are sharp with Photoshop (or similar design software), then you are in a good position to offer these services as part of your social media package. Similarly, creating content such as infographics, banners or images is standard practise for a social media manager.

Advertising

Every social media manager should have sound knowledge of advertising. Be it Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising or banner advertising, you should know the ins and outs of each discipline and understand how to optimise each format.

PR

Public relations is closely tied to social media marketing, in the sense that both involve managing the spread of information between a business and the public. You may start out not needing to have a deep knowledge of PR, as it is typically managed by larger brands who have an interest in persuading stakeholders, investors or the public to maintain a certain point of view.

Statistical

Everything in marketing should be measured. You should periodically measure and analyse your social marketing performance and produce reports to your clients to demonstrate your value.

SEO

Understanding how social media affects search engine optimisation will ultimately improve campaign performance. In 2012, there was an average of 5,134,000,000 searches on Google every day. If you think SEO doesn’t matter to your social activities, think again.

Traditional Marketing

Even though you generally won’t be involved in traditional marketing practises while undertaking a social media management role, you should understand how both forms of marketing affect each other and how each can be best leveraged to complement the other.

Video Editing

This will probably be the least used of your wider skills, but nevertheless it can assist you in your social marketing positions. I’ve had a few clients that required presentations or demonstration videos to be edited before being used within their social media campaigns. I’m for sure no expert, but having a reasonable level of knowledge in using Windows Movie Maker (or similar video editing software) can turn that video file straight from the camera into a beautiful, YouTube-ready video.

Even if you possess all the necessary skills to become a social media manager, there is still scope to improve your services by using different social tools and software. I’ll quickly recap on two different pieces of software I use that may help you in becoming a great social media manager:

• Hootsuite: I wrote an in-depth review of Hootsuite on my blog that also includes a video tutorial which should provide all the information you will need to know about Hootsuite.
• BuzzBundle: This is my favourite and most valued piece of software I’ve ever used. I use it mainly to find keywords around my content subject from across a huge range of blogs, forums and social sites and stream all this information back to me in one interface. I can then see who is discussing my topic and jump straight into the conversations to add my two cents.

What You’ll Be Expected To Do…

So, what does a social media manager actually do? As you can probably tell by now, the role of a social media manager is diverse. It’s not a case of “Well, I post updates to Facebook.” Here are a few general activities that social media managers will be expected to execute:

Strategy

You will be required to formulate campaign and platform specific strategies that meet the business objectives. You will create actions plans, content calendars, set metrics and KPIs, undertake various research activities and perform different types of analysis.

Content Creation

Content creates the foundations of any marketing campaign. How you decide to execute your campaigns will depend on the different forms of content you produce. As you would have no doubt already heard from someone, content is king. Believe them.

Community Management

Managing accounts also means managing communities. You should be the go-to person when representing brands in social domains and continually reach out and engage with your audiences. You will need to constantly strengthen social relationships in order to develop long-lasting followers.

Audience Building

Marketing to the same people over and over will not widen your scope and social reach. You should be increasing readership and your level of influence within your target audiences.

Customer Service

Many companies use social media as an instant channel for customer service. You will have to be responsive and helpful in your social activities, regularly being the first point of contact. You will be representing the brand and managing their customer perceptions.

Measurement

Every effort that consumes investment will need to be measured and analysed. I’vve previously written tutorials that demonstrate how you can set up your Google Analytics account on my blog.

Reporting

Once your efforts have been measured and analysed, your clients will want to understand how their investment has performed. This can take the form of visual aids for meetings or digital reports. Reporting is a key ingredient of any social media manager in order to prove your worth and demonstrate the value you have added to the business.

How I Became A Social Media Manager

I’ve been active in social media since July 2007. This was before the time of all the latest social marketing tools and software that nowadays are ingrained into all social marketers everyday life. Resources or tutorials weren’t as widely available that could help speed up the learning curve.

I did find an online course that looked pretty good in teaching me how to turn my social skills that I had been practising on my own accounts into a fully fledged business. I invested £600 on this online course to learn the basics and now that some years have passed, I can look back and say the value wasn’t all that great, but the ideas were there. It pushed me to think outside the box and motivated me to start my trajectory towards becoming a social media manager.

So before I had decided to turn my love for social media and networking into a freelance opportunity, I attended Brunel University where I completed my BSc and MSc in Business Management. It was at this time when I jumped on board with the poker boom and started playing online cash games and tournaments. Poker really helped me to develop my own time management, money management and analysis skills. I always knew I wanted to start my own business so this was a good platform to get my feet wet. Throughout my time playing poker, I was always engaged in online social discussions and even wrote a few guest posts for poker sites.

Before I knew it, I was a fully-fledged freelance social media manager…

So to kick-start my freelance social media work, I joined a bunch of freelance sites like Elance, oDesk and Freelancer. I still use some of them today.

After a few years of freelancing on small one-off projects and developing my social marketing acumen, I was hired by an online business services company to run their social media campaigns, as well as handle all their own clients social marketing campaigns. I still work with them today, which just shows the power of forging good working relationships.

I managed to attract clients in most months for the next few years and each project ended up being pretty diverse from the next. This allowed me to develop wider skills that I have since found almost a necessity in order to provide a well-rounded social media marketing service. I mentioned some of these wider skills required to become a great social media manager towards the middle of this article.

I also kept maintaining and building my own social media profiles. It’s important to practise what you preach and showcase your expertise on your own domains. My social profiles have regularly attracted clients, which keeps work coming in and builds up my networking potential.

I have been writing on my blog for a few years, but only recently updated my site. My own social activities also serve to build traffic to my sites, where I generate passive income. I like to “listen” to the social environment and engage with people who are already looking for my content. This serves well in building and strengthening connections, as well as attracting targeted traffic.

I have also been a keen guest blogger. I believe that writing articles for other relevant blogs only serves to increase your scope and exposure. Once or twice, I have had my articles featured by online magazines and publications, which was always nice.

Keeping my ears to the ground and getting myself ‘out there’ was one of the things I promised myself I would do, even though I knew the vast majority of my time would be spent in my home office. I tried to regularly meet up with business connections and clients to make sure they could match an online persona to a real life face. The vast majority of the time, I even managed to remember my business cards!

A strategy I’ve always tried to employ while freelancing is to try and turn one client into three. What I mean by that is word of mouth is the most powerful advertising there is. People do act on solid recommendations that their friends make. I found that taking as basic an approach as asking clients at the end of projects if they knew anyone who could benefit from social media marketing, worked out surprisingly well.

As social media is such a dynamic environment with start-ups booming and busting every few months, I knew that it was essential to keep up to date with social developments. Every so often, a client would ask me to set up profiles or campaigns on sites that some social media managers would have never heard of. Keeping tuned in enabled me to have at least some knowledge and experience in using these platforms, which dramatically lowered my learning curve and ultimately lead to better performing campaigns.

Around a year and a half ago, I decided to broaden by service offerings and set up a web design company with my business partner. “Thinking Forwards” was born in the summer of 2012. Websites and social media go hand-in-hand, so this enabled me to up-sell my services both ways.

So that brings me loosely to where I am now. Just to be clear; I have never used paid advertising or SEO for my own benefit while being a social media manager. My progression came solely through content marketing and guerrilla marketing tactics.

To Summarise On How I Became A Social Media Manager:

• Joined freelance sites
• Practised what I preached and actively maintained my own social media profiles and blogs
• Kept consistently networking and building my contact lists
• Continually created my own content on my own sites
• Took my content straight to prospects
• Proactively kept asking if people needed my assistance
• Guest blogging and featured articles
• Attended networking events and met up with clients and business contacts
• Tried to turn one client into three
• Kept up to date with new social networks and developments
• Started other initiatives where social media services were complementary
• Never turned down any work or networking opportunities
• Worked long hours, sometimes for small rewards, to build reputation, authority and presence

I thought I would leave you with some final advice from things I have learnt from my own experiences being a social media manager.

Remember that…

• Sometimes you won’t be right for a project, even if you think you are
• It’s OK to work for less than your desired amount, if the benefits warrant it
• You won’t win every contract, so don’t beat yourself up if you get turned down
• Things change really quickly in social media, so you will have to continually adapt
• You never know as much as you think you do!

Starting a career in anything takes time and effort. If you think it’s easy to become a great social media manager, then think again…

I wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

Fact: social media sites drive over 31% of all referral traffic on the Internet.

With all the new channels constantly emerging, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking about social media as a tactical plan instead of a strategic one.

The best social media plans set forth measurable goals and work with any social venue.

There are the big guns like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And other familiar names like Instagram, Pinterest, and Vine. However, these are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to all of the social media channels out there. And although they are “smaller,” they still have tens or hundreds of thousands of users. If a large percentage of these users are in your target audience, you should be strongly considering adding it to your active social media strategy.

Here’s the big benefit of smaller networks: barely any other business uses them!

Think about it. The biggest businesses need a huge audience, so they stick to the biggest social networks, they cannot survive on a couple dozen sales leads a day. But you CAN, and actually you can thrive.

Small home businesses owners typically believe that they should just try to copy the big businesses…

This is the reason you see thousands of your competitors doing the exact same thing on Facebook and Instagram.

With smaller social channels, there is zero competition! You can quickly amass followers and drive large amounts of traffic to your website in no time.

You start seeing faster responsiveness, better lead results, and more sales profit.

This article is all about a simple strategy that will work on just about every social network out there.

How to Find Small Social Networks

Expect to have to dig around for 30-60 minutes to find the best one for your business.

There are dozens of social networks that will work amazingly well for your niche audience, so you just need to spend the time finding the one that is right for your business.

Check out this list of social media channels you’re probably not using and see if they have any potential for your business.

Pheed

Pheed does more than let users share video, text, music, and photos. It also offers live broadcasts and a pay-per-view option. Users set their own price for their content.

Thumb

With Thumb, ask a question and get feedback from other users in real time. You can also share your own opinions and start conversations with peers on topics of interest.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile messaging app. Users can send photos and videos, share their location, and create groups. There are thousands of home business owners, boutique owners, and other vendors with shippable merchandise that use WhatsApp on Instagram. It is a stress free, confidential, and easy to use method for communicating with buyers around the country. By installing the app on their phone, the buyer can text you their size, address, and other information without sharing it on social media.

PicsArt

Is a photo editing app combined with a social network. Users can share their photos, discover images other users have uploaded, create a collage, co-edit, and enter contests.

hi5

Is a social entertainment site. Users can use features similar to other social media sites like sharing photos, connecting with friends, and meeting new people. But hi5′s big focus is on playable games.

Buzznet

Members can share photos, journals, videos, and other content based on their interests. Most content centers around music and popular media. Content can be tagged and found on topic pages.

About.me

Makes your personal homepage into a shareable digital business card. You can connect a resume, or “backstory,” and add a mission statement to your profile. Users also gain access to stats on who visited their site, what they clicked on, and where they are from.

Archetypes

Allows users create a customized “Story Page.” Users take a quiz to determine what their personal archetypes are and then that information is displayed on their page. Other features are included to highlight personal preferences and connect users with each other.

Tsu

Gives its members a chance to share in earned revenue for the content they create. This method motivates users to create compelling content as well as gives them ownership in what they turn out. Membership is by invite only so it’s a little exclusive.

How to Use these Smaller Sites:

Your goal is to find the few networks that are likely to have your target audience. All networks have their own purpose-their own niche(s).

For now, write down all the networks you think might have your target audience. As you work through navigating each site, you will ultimately determine if your choices are good networks to spend your time on.

Look at the Users:

Once you’ve chosen a few networks to check out, you can start learning about them.

New social media sites pop up constantly. Start to spend a bit of time on the site. When you do, you will begin to understand how the site works and how users interact with each other.

Whenever a new form of social media emerges, of course you check it out. After all, you – and your business – should always be on the forefront of trends. Plus you want to know, “Could this be a good fit for my business?”

But, after browsing all the social media sites out there, which ones should you really stick with? The plan is always to find great social media channels that allow you to connect with your target audience. Finding and connecting with the right audience makes the secondary step of getting them back to your website (or other call to action) much easier!

Understand the Basic Mechanics of the Site:

Although these smaller networks don’t often have marketing guides written about them, most of them will have some sort of tutorial you can read to help you out.

For example, if you Google:

How LinkedIn works

You will find guides and tutorials offering explanations of the main functions of the site.

At the very minimum, every successful site has some sort of help documentation where you can look up the functions of certain buttons or definitions of site’s terms.

Learn How Users Interact:

Learning what the major parts of the network are will tell you the main purpose of the network from the audience themselves.

It’s important to know: what, why, and how people interact on the site.

Pick one social media network and get extremely good at delivering what your audience expects from it.

When you have systems in place for getting new followers, generating leads, and bringing people over to your newsletter, website, or funnel, only then would you move on to the next social network.

Learn How to Drive Traffic from Your Chosen Site:

It can be hard to figure out the best way to get users of a site over to your website.

To make it easier, you can look for businesses already on the network. Study them to find out how they connect their social profiles and activities with their website.

What you want to do is pinpoint as many types of interaction on the network as possible where users can click a link. There is no magic formula for getting people to click back to your website. For this reason, vary the length and format of your content for many different kinds of readers. Intersperse shorter, news-based blog posts with long-form content as well as video, infographics and data-driven pieces for maximum impact.

Find at least one realistic path of getting users back to your website. If you start to see responsiveness, then network has potential, and you have the foundations of a strategy.

Connect With Anyone You May Already Know (or Have A Common Connection With):

1. The best way to make new connections is to “follow,” “friend,” or use whatever connection mechanism the site has to connect with people of a certain interest.
2. What about sending an email to your email list? Since you’ve already identified that your target audience might like this network, you could invite them to join it and connect with you.
3. A quick email template could be:

Subject: I just discovered something amazing…

Hi (Name),

After searching for a great (your industry) community outside of the big ones (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), I have hit the jackpot!

A couple weeks ago, I started looking at this social network called (name of site). So far, I am really impressed with the quality of users in our industry on this site.

(Here is where you will insert all the great aspects of the network that your subscriber would be interested in).

I am emailing today to let you know that I think you would be interested in joining. It’s free, of course, here’s the signup link: (URL).

All you have to do is create an account, and send me a friend invite (my username is (username)).

I think you will really find this site useful too!

(Your name)

Your goal here is to start building some connections and followers. You don’t need hundreds or thousands, just try to get a few dozen for now.

How Much Time do You Have?

And now for the question every reader is screaming at their computer right now…

“How long does this process take to start seeing results”?

If you don’t think you could do it for longer than 5-6 months, you might as well not start.

This is the mentality you need to possess with any strategy you are using in your business.

Want to make the dime, got to spend the time…

Basically, Your Time Break Down Will Look Like This:

Every Monday, revisit your strategy to make sure you’re on the right track and focusing on the right areas

Time: 1 hour

Monday through Friday, implement the strategy. Schedule, create, and post updates. Engage with the community.

Time: 2 hours

Every Friday, check your metrics. See how you’re doing on your goals, and identify areas for growth.

Time: 1 hour

Total time: 12 hours per week

Depending on the scope of your business, your time could be greater or smaller than this. The above times are simply a guide and benchmark for your own social strategy. (https://blog.bufferapp.com/)

So, if you commit to a good strategy and follow it, you’ll get there a lot faster, but it will still take time.

You need to be patient and be willing to keep working for months without seeing much in the way of results. Overnight success rarely happens overnight. Your results will start slow but grow faster and faster over time (this is the process to becoming ‘sticky’).

The Key to Social Media Success:

How you execute your strategy on a consistent basis will either make you or break you.

Besides having the right mindset, you’ll also need other things, namely content.

Content is defined as articles, guides, white papers, or reports that you can share with the network community through your profile.

Decide on Content:

These five content marketing strategies have been found to drive popularity

Ideas

Buyers are doing more of their own research online. To help buyers recognize needs, you must leverage content that illuminates trends, highlights issues, and provides tangible ideas on how to solve problems. The more independent the content, the more credible it is.

• Webinars
• Article highlights
• Thought-provoking blogs

Personalization

Offering exclusive contests, discounts and deals are popular ways to connect with buyers who seek a “bargain” from every purchase. Create a dialogue with your followers, fans and connections. Here are some ideas:

• Monitoring activity
• Actively engaging the user base
• Answering questions
• Providing advice

The marketers that appear most successful are leveraging the right content at the right time to connect on a personal level and move the buying cycle forward.

Entertainment

Everyone needs a laugh now and then. Entertaining and thought-provoking videos, animations and cartoons are being used to gain followers, fans and connections.

Determine your Participation Frequency:

Every network is different when it comes to posting frequency.

You don’t want to post so much that you annoy your followers, but you need to post enough to grow a bigger audience.

To figure out how often you should post, you’ll have to test different frequencies.

To start, look at the most popular users (say 10-20), and record the number of posts per week they make.

Find an average of those numbers, and start with this frequency.

If you Want Success, You Have to be Consistent. That’s it.

Come up with a system that will help keep you on track: efficiency and ease of implementation.

Having to log in and make a post every X hours is not easy or efficient. You’ll miss some posts that would be beneficial and this will slow down your results.

Use automation (but wisely!)

Some things shouldn’t be automated:

• Curating content - don’t just share any content. Take the time to read posts so that you can share the best ones.
• Interacting with users - you can’t automate authentic conversation. If you’re ever commenting or messaging a user, do it yourself.

What can be automated, however, is the actual posting of the content. You can do all the curating beforehand and then have it posted automatically.

Streamline manual processes: Do all of the steps in batches.

Batching is a productivity technique, where you do the same task many times in one sitting.

This reduces time spent switching between tasks and helps you get “in the zone” while working.

When it comes to your social media strategy, pick a day once every week or two to curate content. Find as many posts as you’ll need for those weeks so that you can just schedule them to be posted.

And as for interaction, don’t constantly check your account for new notifications.

Instead, set a time or two, like first thing in the morning and last part of the working day, to check your account and reply to your followers.

Conclusion

Social media sites are one of the best sources of traffic.

But just because a network isn’t named Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean it can’t help your business.

Smaller social networks often have far fewer marketers on them than larger ones do, which makes any type of marketing on them much more effective.