Social Media Managers: Can You Benefit from Hiring One and What to Look for

However, the creation of a social media strategy and its smooth execution among ever-evolving trends is not exactly a simple task. More and more companies are contracting social media managers to take charge of the myriad of moving parts involved in social media marketing. 

Because this role is both new for many companies and also plays a critical role, this post seeks to help organizations know what to look for when selecting the right social media manager. 

Why Is Social Media Good for Marketing?

With over 3 billion people spending an average of two and a half hours on social networks every day, it’s easy to understand why companies, no matter their size, are prioritizing their social media strategy and putting an expert in charge of it.

Social media is an inexpensive (compared to traditional marketing mediums) way to increase your organization’s brand awareness and visibility. 

Because you can post about your team, operations, physical locations, commitment to social issues, and important communications, social media is also a great way to build trust among customers. Many internet users will investigate a business by checking out both its website and its social media before making an online purchase or visiting a store.   

We’ll take a comprehensive look at the role by covering: 

• What a social media manager does and doesn’t do
• The skills and traits that they should either already possess or be able to develop
• The trends any social media manager should be on top of in 2022 

Those who report poorly choosing their service provider attribute it to a weak vetting process. 

Other ways that social media is good for marketing efforts include: 

• Driving traffic to the website by sharing quality content from the blog 
• Providing an extra outlet for customer service and customer support 
• Using targeted advertising to reach the right audience and maximize the budget 
• Using social media analytics to gain customer insight and make data-driven decisions 

Why Do Companies Need Social Media Managers?

Social media is constantly evolving and companies are perpetually under new demands to keep up with quickly changing trends. To make sure social media investments are paying off, organizations have to not only generate but also maintain high levels of engagement. And results can only be achieved when there are clear goals in place. 

Hiring an expert that can dedicate their time and energy to social media helps others in the marketing department reclaim their own time and it takes the guesswork out of posting. When internal team members create social media posts, they are often posting at random. But a social media manager will create a strategy and a plan that aligns with the brand, company values, and goals. 

Social media managers will know how often to post and what type of posts perform well on each platform. Following a predetermined calendar paves the way for consistent, informed posting that helps build a following and increase traffic that leads to your website. 

Another important reason to have a designated expert assigned to your social media is to have someone in charge of responding to social media messages whether they are inbox messages or comments. According to Forbes, 66% of consumers have stopped doing business with an organization because of their poor customer service on a social media channel

What Does a Social Media Manager Do? 

Just because someone has a social media account and knows the difference between a story and reel, doesn’t make them ready for the role. 

Managing business social media accounts has become a complex, multi-disciplinary role that pulls on analytics, marketing, public relations, design, and more. 

Social media managers: 

1. Create, monitor, and measure the social media presence of a brand 
2. Develop and maintain promotions and marketing campaigns across varied social media platforms 
3. Monitor analytics and draw conclusions from analytics to drive strategy 
4. Communicate with customers in comments and via inbox messaging in a way that aligns with the company’s voice and policies 
5. Promote blog content 
6. Produce new, innovative content 
7. Tailor the material being published to the specific audience of each platform
8. Collaborate with marketing, public relations, HR, and the legal department 
9. Stay up-to-date on trends, the competition, evolving algorithms and application updates, what’s happening in the company, and industry news
10. Coordinate content calendars 
11. In the case of collaborating with influencers, the social media managers will coordinate the effort 
12. Implement automation tools to make the social media efforts more efficient 
13. Cover live events 
14. Set measurable goals and report on those goals using analytics.

What DOESN’T a Social Media Manager Do?

Just as it’s important to understand what to expect your social media manager to be able to do, it’s also important to understand what tasks you should *not* expect from your social media manager. Much like any other position in your company, you don’t want to distract a social media manager from their core tasks.

Even though social media managers must possess copywriting skills and knowledge, it is not realistic to expect your social media manager to be an active member of the copywriting team—producing blog posts, email campaigns, landing pages, etc. 
If your organization requires your social media manager to design graphics for the posts, you must be specific about your design requirements in the job description. And although they may be well-versed in graphic design, you should not expect your social media manager to also pitch in on website design. When the tasks get techy, consider a white label development agency.

What Abilities and Traits Should a Social Media Manager Possess?

There are many abilities and traits that social media managers require to get the job done. When hiring an entry-level social media specialist, however, it isn’t realistic to expect them to have mastered everything. But you should be able to at least see the potential in them to develop these abilities and traits.

1. Basic Copywriting and Content Writing Skills

Even though your social media manager is not an active member of your content and copywriting team, they must understand the fundamentals of storytelling and persuasion to drive engagement and clicks. 

Because social media managers will be writing, proofreading, and editing social media posts, they need to be strong writers with a solid grasp of English grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

2. Research Abilities

One big faux pas happening all too often in the world of social media is sharing information that turns out to be incorrect. 

It’s important that social media managers double and triple-check the facts before publishing. Not only is it important to check the facts, but they must know which types of sources to trust. 

Investigation and fact-checking are important skills that should also be complemented with a strong ability to conduct market research.

3. Customer Service Skills 

Social media managers are often interacting with customers in comments and inboxes. Therefore, they require the patience and tact that customer service specialists are famous for. 

Receiving customer concerns, demands, and complaints is not a responsibility for the easily discouraged. 

But customer care isn’t all about the negative, it’s also about being proactive enough to know when to listen to customers and detect patterns that need to be escalated because they can assist other departments such as sales, product development, or marketing to make the service or product better. 

Customer care also entails celebrating and thanking customers, making meaningful connections, and building and engaging a community that believes in your brand.  

4. Data Analysis

Social media managers need to track and understand business metrics like leads, conversions, and traffic as well as social media metrics such as likes, comments, and shares.

They should be able to use these metrics to connect the dots and understand the interconnectedness of the social media strategy to the overall business strategy, and make informed, data-driven decisions based on the metrics. 

The social media manager will set metric goals aligned with the business objectives and work toward achieving those goals.

5. Crisis Communication Management 

One thing that the COVID pandemic has taught us, is that all businesses must be prepared to cope with a crisis. 

In times of crisis, social media becomes your crisis communication channel, as social networks are the quickest way to spread information in real-time.   

When dealing with a public relations crisis specific to your organization, the social media manager must also know when to interact with customer feedback vs when to escalate it to ensure that social channels are easing the situation rather than making it worse.  

6. Budgeting Abilities 

Social media managers are often given a budget to work with and must come up with the best way to allocate their funds between paid advertising, social media management tools, design, etc. 

7. Big-Picture Mindset

A social media manager should be able to understand the bigger picture as far as where their responsibilities fit into the organization’s objectives. Getting likes and shares is great. But do they understand why they’re striving for the metrics they’re striving for? 

For example, a company with the main objective to increase brand awareness this quarter may need to adopt a social media strategy different from a company looking to build its newsletter email list with quality leads. 

8. Adaptability

In a field that evolves as quickly as social media, anyone involved in the area must be prepared to learn new things and pivot quickly. 

Much of social media was previously text, then images, and now the tendency is video. Is your social media manager someone who sees a change with curiosity and exciting potential? 

9. Creativity 

The market, across most industries, is saturated. When it comes to creating content that helps a brand stand out and differentiate itself from the competition, creativity is key. 

Not all posts are about making a sale. Posts should be valuable by being helpful or entertaining. When it’s so easy for users to just keep scrolling, what can you post to make people take notice—edgy design, humorous copy, buzz-worthy promotions? 

Fortunately, creativity is something everyone can hone with practice. When searching for the right social media manager, don’t shy away from asking how they stay in tip-top creative shape.  

What Are the Trends Your New Social Media Manager Should Have Their Eye on? 

What are the social media trends in 2021 that any social media manager with their finger on the pulse of the field is aware of? 

1. Value over Quantity 

Rather than the grind of mass-producing shallow content simply to be posting, more and more brands are beginning to be more thoughtful about what they post and the value it offers their followers by asking, “Is it entertaining? Is it helpful? Is it in touch with the current state of my audience?” 

Throughout the COVID pandemic, many brands have been surprised to discover that their poor-quality homemade videos, often recorded on a cell phone, performed just as well as their highly produced videos pre-COVID, as long as the video added value.  

2.  Formal Experimentation 

With social media working its way up in importance in the marketing budget, gone are the days of blind experimentation. 

It’s great to implement a new strategy but only when they are tested to understand their effect. What worked for one company or one campaign may not work for the next one. You’re going to want hard statistics about successful and failed experiments to inform future decision-making. 
“Social media platforms provide excellent opportunities to test new brand messaging, advertisements, and offerings — and to receive direct measurable feedback from target consumers. Marketers must use these tools to learn.”

3. Video Clips 

Multiple marketing reports, like this one from Hubspot, make it clear that video as a social media tool shows no sign of slowing down. 

The popularity of reels, stories, and Tik Tok proves that attention spans are short. Organizations are catching on to the idea that they don’t have long to say what they want to say before the user keeps scrolling. 

The Ethical Dilemma Facing Companies and Social Media Teams

Many of the popular social media companies people know and use are controversial because of their policies, whether it’s a controversial privacy policy or the refusal to react to hate speech. 

Companies and social media managers must face the reality that when they spend money on ads on these social platforms they are financially supporting the platform’s policies. 

We predict that businesses will begin to ask themselves: “Could our use of social platforms undermine our customer’s trust and our company values?”  

Analyst Jessica Liu explains why it’s ok for companies to walk away from social media in her Forrester report, “It’s OK To Break Up With Social Media,” (listen to the podcast). 

Conclusion 

Over 3 billion people spend an average of two and a half hours on social networks every day. 

A strong social media presence can be a good option for businesses to build trust and legitimacy, increase brand awareness and visibility, and drive traffic to your website.