In 2022, LinkedIn reported that social media management was the 3rd in-demand job by posting volume. Search Engine Journal also reported that social media marketing is the 4th in-demand job based on their stats.
Social media management has to do with content creation, scheduling and posting, developing social media strategies, meeting your client’s goals, and overseeing interactions and engagements on your client’s social media platforms.
The content can come in the form of written content, pictures, videos, etc.
Social media management is a highly competitive business but also profitable if you know how to position yourself right.
The role of a social media manager varies from company to company. Know the right tools, technology, skills, and services you need to have for each role.
You will also have to decide what type of social media manager you want to be. Do you want to become a freelance social media manager? Or if you want to work with an agency? There are several things you must put in place if you want to build a reputable social management business.
In this article, you will learn step-by-step how to become a professional social media manager in 2024.
What Does a Social Media Manager Do?
Social Media Strategy
A social media manager would have to come up with strategies that would help clients achieve their desired goals. Depending on the brand, their goals could be to create awareness, drive traffic, drive sales, etc. Your strategies would be tailored to these goals whether you are working as a freelancer or for an agency.
To create a strategy, you will need to know the brand, what it deals with and its target audience. Knowing these things will help you tailor your content to the type that will penetrate their target audience. For instance, if you are working for a beauty brand, you know you will be creating more of your content on platforms like Instagram. But if you are working with a tech company, platforms like LinkedIn, and Twitter would be more favourable.
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Optimizing Social Media Platforms
If the brand you are working with already has social media platforms, you would have to look through them and see how you can optimize them. You can look at what their competitors are doing to give you an idea of what to do.
If they don’t have platforms yet, well, the job falls on you to create and build these platforms for awareness, growth, and achieving the brand’s overall goals.
Creating and Publishing Content
We have 3 types of content; original content, repurposed content, and curated content. Your content would include photos, videos, and text. Your job might include designing graphics and taking pictures, and editing videos except you are working with a large company that has a media arm that does all these. You can also negotiate what you will and will not do for the client.
Platform Engagement
Aside from posting content, you will also have to engage the platforms by responding to comments. Engagement helps the algorithm a lot, so more people can see and engage with your post, doing this cannot be overemphasized. Don’t just do this but be consistent in posting and engaging on the platform.
You also want to follow other competition platforms to learn what they are doing better, like, and leave meaningful comments and by doing so, drive traffic and awareness back to your platform.
Review Analytics
How you do this is by checking data for reach, and engagement on posts published within specific periods. This way, you can know what kind of post is performing the best, then create and optimize more for such kinds of content.
There are other things you might get to do especially if you are working as a freelancer, you might have to be involved in lead generation, meeting with clients, etc.
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How to Become a Social Media Manager in2024
First, decide on what type of social media manager you want to be. That is if you want to be a freelancer, in-house employee, or work for a social media manager management agency. You can research more on what each of these are and decide on which you want to go in for.
Choose a Social Media Management Niche
Choose a niche in the sense of the kind of brands or businesses you want to work with. Do you want to focus on social media management for tech brands, startups, food brands, beauty brands, etc? You can also niche down by platforms, say a LinkedIn social media management professional.
The reason you want to choose a niche is that there is a lot of competition right now. To stand out, you have to be known as a professional or the go-to person when a certain niche or platform is being discussed.
Build Your Social Media Management Portfolio
If you have some past work experience it will be easier to fix your portfolio. If that is not the case, you can start where you are with what you have. So, start by doing portfolio projects.
You can approach small businesses or brands and start managing their platforms. You can even start by building your platform as a social media manager. Your chances of getting social media management gigs will increase if you have a portfolio of work. It does not have to be too much, with one or 2 portfolios under your belt, you can start pitching prospective clients or sourcing gigs.
Fix Your Rates
As soon as you start gaining real-time experience and building your portfolio, fix your rate. One way to do this is to note the amount of time you spend on a project and that can help you fix hourly rates or per project completed. You can read more about pricing strategies for online business owners.
Create a Website
Now, it is not enough that you have a portfolio, or that you are good at what you do, you need to be discoverable. This is very important whether you are working as a freelancer or with an agency.
On your website, describe who you are and what your brand serves, your portfolio of works, your products and services, pricing for your different services, how people can reach you, etc. Make yourself visible to your target clients. Create content in your blog section to nurture your readers.
There are several platforms you can use in building your website. Platforms like Wix, and WordPress, are a great place to start. If you prefer, you can hire a web designer.
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Pitch Clients to Be their Social Media Manager
Now, as soon as you get started with all of these, you want to start pitching to clients.
One way to attract prospective clients is by creating and publishing content for yourself. That way, they can easily discover you, vet you, and come to you if they want to do business with you.
But the truth is, you don’t want to rely on this pattern. It is best for you to pitch your ideal clients. One way you can go about this is to send cold emails, and DMs on social media. If you are targeting a particular business or brand, you can target CEOs, Heads of Marketing, CMOs, etc. Note that it is very important that you reach or email the right person.
You need to be strategic in your pitch. You can create and attach text, videos, pictures, or something that can help their platform.
Give yourself a target of the number of emails you want to send daily. You can also pitch clients on freelance platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, etc.
Marketing Your Business
Finally, market yourself as much as you can. How else can a social media manager show proof of his work if not first through their platforms? So, push out a whole lot of content on the platform that would serve you best. Sell yourself as much as you can.
Conclusion
I can guarantee you, if you follow all these steps here, in a couple of months you will get results. You can become that social media manager who is already working with one or brands.
