Who Is A Social Media Manager?

The Social Media Manager is an increasingly important profession for the success of Marketing strategies. Let’s find out the identity, tasks, and objectives, how it must train and update itself to keep up with the changing social world, how much it earns, and why it is good to have a professional in the company. When it comes to digital marketing, there is still, in many companies, the perception that some of the activities that make it up are technical and complex, while anyone can carry others out.

Among the digital professions most affected by this name of simplicity, there is undoubtedly that of the Social Media Manager, the protagonist of Social Media Marketing. To avoid doubt, it must be said and repeated that being a digital native, owning a mobile phone, and managing your social profiles do not make you a specialist in the sector. On the contrary, it is a more complex job than one might think, which requires specific and varied skills: in this article, we go to deepen who the Social Media Manager is, what he does, why it is good to have a professional specialized in the company and what is his average remuneration

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Who Is The Social Media Manager?

Speaking generically of Social Media Manager often means summarizing in a single figure a considerable amount of skills so broad and heterogeneous as to include the work of an entire team. Create company pages, establish which channels to activate and which not, decline content differently depending on the platform, be able to create and then manage a community of fans, moderate comments, and know how to correctly read insights to get directions on how to optimize the strategy: these and many others are the activities that a specialized operator often finds himself managing individually. The Social Media Manager is the company’s figure managing marketing and advertising on social channels. This management includes numerous macro-tasks, including:

Planning, strategy, and goal setting
Brand awareness development and online reputation management
Content creation
Generation of inbound traffic
Cultivate leads and sales support
Community management and page moderation

The social media professional, therefore, generally has both a creative and strategic soul, knows the technical characteristics of the different channels thoroughly, keeps himself updated, knows how to decline the content in another way, and knows how to relate to the audience correctly, with the ultimate goal of transforming fans into customers and, subsequently, transforming customers into true brand ambassadors.

What A Social Media Manager Does: The Necessary Skills

In highly structured companies, which have an entire department dedicated to Social Media Marketing (not many, actually) and, above all, in large specialized agencies, each resource has a specific task: there is the Social Media Strategist, the Content Manager, the Community Manager, the reporting analyst, the Social Media Campaign Manager to manage the paid adv, those in charge of graphics and video-making … In most situations, think of SMEs or smaller agencies. However, all these tasks are performed by the same person or by teams that are reduced to the bone. But what are the skills and daily activities of a Social Media Manager?

Social Strategy: From Brand Marketing To The Correct Channel Setup

The first responsibility of a Social Media Manager is to develop and implement a social media marketing plan. The marketing plan, by the broader one, at the level of corporate communication, includes several essential elements and should be reviewed periodically, precisely to adapt to the changing social scenario, in constant and rapid evolution. It has at least three macro-activities:

Develop The Brand

Being the first to understand your value proposition is essential to be able to promote and enhance your online brand in the best possible way: on social media, especially if in the B2C field, contact with potential customers is so direct that it is undoubtedly an opportunity but also a risk because you are constantly exposed to the judgment of your audience.

How A Social Media Manager Identify Target Customers

The product or service you want to promote can only be for some: studying correct and realistic buyer personas, specifically for each social network, is essential. For example, a company that offers banking services might target a more “mature” segment of savers on Facebook, in line with the platform’s audience. At the same time, it might consider promoting savings accounts and funds for the very young on different channels—like Snapchat or even TikTok.

Set Clear Goals

All marketing plans include defined and realistic goals: the social KPIs must also be clear. An excellent Social Media Manager knows that if the main business goal is conversion – whether it is the purchase of a product, the filling out of a form, or the subscription to a newsletter or subscription – he will not be able to feel satisfied with a page that has many fans and interactions but no conversions. In these cases, we speak of vanity metrics, the achievement of quantitative objectives that do not bring a real benefit to the business. In setting goals, it is essential to identify the company’s challenges and issues. Here are 5 of the most common:

Insufficient website traffic and poor visitors
Weak brand awareness
Declining customer retention
Poor online reputation
Difficult sales

All these critical issues can be supported and, why not, largely resolved thanks to a complete and genuinely effective Social strategy.

Drafting And Declination Of Quality Content

Visual content has a lasting effect on the viewer: obviously, the image on social media must be coordinated with all brand communication. However, social networks, by their nature, lend themselves to more extraordinary lightness and impromptus; think of instant marketing: on some channels, it may be interesting to think about experimenting with a slightly lighter tone to intercept potential target customers by following what the general mood of the platform in question is. Whether it’s status updates with images, videos on YouTube, or ads on Facebook, what the audience sees is what they will remember, so the Social Media Manager must ensure that every content is compelling, relevant, and capable of generating engagement.

Today, more than ever, interactive and entertainment content is essential: the conscious user does not want to be bombarded with blatantly advertising messages; on the contrary, the most effective strategy is to accompany him in the world of the company in an immersive and fun way, such as testifies to the success of the new features of TikTok for Business, for example. With this in mind, the company’s proprietary content must necessarily mix with UGC (User Generated Content) linked to gamification activities or content produced by influencers and creators capable of generating buzz and organically involving their fanbase.

Publishing And Moderation Of Pages

After the content strategy has been implemented, the Social Media Manager will wear the hat of a community manager; the figure appointed to listen, observe, respond, ask questions, and involve the public. It is necessary to understand better the tone of voice of the company, the products/services, and the communication guidelines to be able to offer answers to users’ questions and comments that are consistent with the brand, comprehensive and courteous, and never stale or standardized. In fact, on social media, more than on any other means of communication, the relationship with the consumer is direct and personal.

Nothing is more harmful to a brand than not responding to its users, ignoring criticism, or replicating. In a controversial way to them, just as a showcase page, cold and closed to comments, which does not provide for engagement, will have no effect. The Social Media Manager is, therefore, also a moderator and, why not, a seller: a user often requests more information about a product or even a quote through Messenger or, in any case, private chat on social networks. It is essential to be autonomous in managing this lead to avoid lengthening response times too much by waiting to involve the Sales.