A social media manager is responsible for your brand’s social media activities that include social media planning, automation, advertising, content creation, publishing, and analytics. It is an essential role in a marketing team that can increase conversions and return on investments (ROI).
Social media marketingOpens a new window is an important marketing function that includes a lot of activities on a daily basis. The social media manager takes care of your brand identity and conversations on social media networks. There is a lot more to the role of a social media manager apart from building your brand on social media. With the constantly changing dynamics of social media, the role of a social media expert keeps evolving. In this article, we discuss the ten key roles of a social media manager in 2020.
Table of Contents
- Who Is a Social Media Manager?
- 5 Key Skills to Look for in a Social Media Manager
- 10 Key Roles of a Social Media Manager in 2020
Who Is a Social Media Manager?
A social media manager is a person who is in charge of representing your brand across social media channels. They perform all the activities that are included in social media marketing, such as social media planning, campaigns, content creation and publishing, social media advertising, community building, and analytics.
Often known as the voice of your brand, a social media manager is responsible for communicating with your prospects and customers on social media networks on behalf of your company. This role is frequently compared to the role of a public relations manager, who has a similar set of responsibilities but on different channels.
Social media managers shoulder the huge responsibilities of maintaining your brand identity on social networks, generating quality leads from social media campaigns and building a sustainable community for your brand. Hence, you need to be aware of the ideal skill set of a social media manager before you start looking for one.
5 Key Skills to Look for in a Social Media Manager
Social media managers are an integral part of your marketing team and should have a similar skill set as that of a marketer. Let’s discuss the specific skills and qualities that you should look for in a social media manager.
1. Copywriting
A key responsibility of social media managers is to communicate with your audience on behalf of your brand, which makes copywriting a mandatory skill for them to possess. A person you hire as your social media manager should have expert copywriting skills that can convey the right message to your audience. Their writing should be creative, engaging, witty, as well as semantic, and grammatically flawless.
2. Creativity
Creativity is an important quality for a social media manager. Social media networks are competitive and dynamic platforms where your competitors are actively building their brands using creative content, techniques, and strategies. This is why a social media manager needs to have creative skills that they can put to use while creating a social media strategy, sharing content, promoting your products and services, and widening your reach on social media. Having creativity skills is a no brainer for the role of a social media manager.
3. Analytical Thinking
Analytical thinking is another important skill required to be a social media manager. Social media is a fast-paced dynamic platform where constant learning and modification is required to be successful. Social media analytics enable you to review your current strategy and plan your future strategy based on the outcomes of current performance and trends. Hence, analytical thinking is a critical skill for the role of a social media manager to make data-driven decisions.
4. Trend Savvy
Social media networks are constantly changing dynamic platforms where new trends go viral every other day. To make sure that your brand can leverage these trends for the maximum ROI, as well as ensure that your brand does not fall back with current trends, it is ideal that the candidate is trend savvy as an individual. Social media managers should be aware of current trends in your industry, domain, region, or any other demographic in your audience. They should also be able to align your content strategy with current trends on a real-time basis.
5. Planning and Strategy
Like any other marketing function, social media marketing requires strategic planning. A social media manager must have experience in planning a successful, long-term social media marketing strategy. The individual should be able to identify clear goals for your social media campaigns that are aligned with your overall marketing goals. The manager must also be flexible and agile to make prompt decisions and create real-time solutions in case of an emergency.
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10 Key Roles of a Social Media Manager in 2020
Now that we have established the ideal skillset for a social media manager, let us take a look at the ten key responsibilities of a social media manager.
1. Building a Social Media Strategy
A social media strategy is a long-term plan for social media marketing that defines its goals, actions, and course. Building a social media strategy that aligns with the business and marketing strategy to achieve subsequent goals is a primary function of a social media manager.
The first step for social media managers in building a social media strategy is to set goals for social media marketing, along with the key metrics that define these goals. The goals should be Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Rational, and Time bound (SMART), and should aim at achieving the overall goals of marketing and the business. For example, social media marketing goals include, increase in audience and followers, conversions in the form of link clicks, message clicks, engagement, and so on.
Once the goals and metrics are set, the social media manager needs to determine clear cut actions that will set the course for achieving defined goals. This includes describing social media campaigns, content, community planning, posting schedules, advertising, social media tools, and automation. The plan should also include analysis of trends, the performance by post type, segmentation, and timings, competitors’ strategy, and updated social media best practices.
Social media managers need to make sure that these strategies are flexible and real-time in nature, given the dynamic spirit of social media platforms.
2. Building a Social Content Calendar
‘Content is king’ still stands relevant in the marketing world. Content is also an essential component of social media marketing. It defines the voice of your brand, and it is essential to plan your content schedule ahead of time to maintain persuasion and consistency. Hence, a key role of a social media manager is to build a content calendar.
A social media content calendar defines the exact day, time, and social channel of when and where the content is to be published, whether it is a blog, infographic, news, video, or any other form. The social media calendar is usually planned for 30 days ahead of time with scope for last-minute trending topics.
Social media managers need to ensure that their social calendar is up-to-date, flexible, and real-time. They need to make tweaks and changes to the content based on their audience’s behavior on every social media channel. For example, LinkedIn is a professional network where you want to share content in a professional tone (while still being engaging), whereas Facebook and Instagram are personal networks where your content can be more casual, fun, and light.
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3. Connecting with Social Media Influencers
Social media influencer marketing has become imperative for brands wanting to leverage the power of word-of-mouth marketing on social media. Social media influencers are individuals or contributors that have a dedicated following on a social media network based on their niches, such as health and fitness, beauty, software products, or technology.
You can collaborate with the right influencers in your industry to steer their followers toward your product or service. This technique has proven to be an excellent strategy for social media marketing and is now used by small brands to multi-millionaire businesses.
Social media influencer management forms a key role for social media managers in 2020. Social media influencers can be micro-influencers – with the comparatively small but engaged following, and macro-influencers – with a large and diverse audience. A social media manager should identify the right mix of influencers in your domain, connect and network with them, and work collaboratively to promote your brand. They must ensure to convey the brand’s guidelines and that they are being followed by the influencers.
4. Social Media Advertising
Brands are heavily investing in social media advertising, given the opportunity to reach their target audiences and convert them at their convenience. Hence, social media advertising is another important responsibility of a social media manager.
Social media advertising includes a lot of processes such as ad copywriting, deciding ad budgets for campaigns and networks, analyzing ad performance, and determining the ROI on social advertising.
Social media managers need to ensure that your social advertising strategy is well-defined and executed, providing maximum ROI for your investments with quality leads.
5. Building a Community for Your Brand
An essential step for your brand toward being successful on social media for branding, lead generation, and customer service, is to build an engaged community. A social media community helps you directly interact with an audience who is interested in your domain or product/service idea.
Building a community requires a lot of dedication for activities such as creating original content, responding to every message and comment, sharing stories, encouraging audience engagement, and partnering with fellow contributors. The social media manager has to perform these tasks to build a community on social media in 2020.
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6. Automating Social Media Processes
Social media marketing includes a lot of manual and repetitive tasks that can be time-consuming and slightly monotonous. As you continue to grow your audience and move into the new decade, these tasks will continue to grow.
Hence, your best bet is to automate manual tasks using social media automation tools. Social media automation is another key role for social media managers in 2020. They are responsible for making the ultimate use of automation software tools to automate processes such as content publishing, scheduling, analytics, report creation, trend analysis, competitor analysis, and social listening.
7. Managing Social Media Tools
There are multiple elements of social media marketing that are managed using social media tools such as social media management, social media automation, content creation, social listening, ads manager, and analytics.
A primary function of social media managers is to be accountable for all these social media tools. This includes their assessment, credential management, billing and subscription, user management, performance analysis, and ROI measurement.
8. Trend Analysis
Trend analysis is the process of tracking trends on social media based on domains and industries related to content, strategies, layouts, designs, hashtags, engagement, and platforms. Social media managers are responsible for identifying and tracking these trends using trend analysis tools.
A social media manager must make optimum use of these trends in real-time while giving out a valuable message. They also need to keep brand content up-to-date with the latest trend in your industry, sharing, news, analysis, reports, surveys results, and so on that the audience will find informative.
9. Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is a great way to find out what works and what does not in your industry on social media. Hence, performing a competitor analysis is a critical responsibility of a social media manager in 2020.
For example, a competitor’s failed attempt at sharing graphic memes on LinkedIn helps you avoid making the same mistake, whereas a successful campaign on Twitter using influencer marketing can inspire you to try influencer marketing.
A social media manager could also understand your competitors’ engaging audience to build personas, understand audience behavior and targeting, and strategize social media marketing activities accordingly.
10. Social Media Performance Analytics
Social media analytics is an essential function of a social media manager. It is essential to measure the performance of all your social media marketing efforts against your established goals. It is also required to measure the ROI on your investments in social media marketing.
Social media managers are responsible for performing timely reviews of campaigns running on social media, which includes measuring the performance of content, targeting, resources, tools, campaigns, ads, and channels. They should also be able to make recommendations based on this data about necessary modifications required to the social media strategy.
For example, if during a mid-campaign review, the social media manager notices that the desired result is not being achieved, he can make modify the copy, graphics, or even the targeting to ensure, campaign goals are met.
Closing Words
The role of a social media manager has gained substantial importance along with increasing responsibilities, given the rise of social media marketing as an essential marketing function. The role of a social media manager has sole ownership of how a brand is positioned and successful across social media platforms.
Hiring a social media manager and equipping them with the right tools that will help them understand your audience, analyze competition, strategize, create content, execute campaigns, listen for brand mentions, communicate with the community, solve problems, and modify campaigns when something isn’t working will ensure your brand stands out on social media in 2020.
Is the role of a social media manager changing in your marketing strategy for 2020? We are eager to know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window .