In a world where the digital landscape is continuously evolving, there’s one role that stands out as being particularly dynamic – the social media manager. This multifaceted role melds together marketing, customer service, strategy development, analytics, copywriting, and design into a stimulating cocktail of everyday tasks. Intrigued by this tantalizing array of duties? You’re in the right place!
You see, it’s not just about having a solid knowledge of various social platforms or crafting punchy captions, although they’re important. What truly makes a social media manager is a versatile mix of soft and hard skills, coupled with a passion for digital trends and the ability to adapt to new developments. The exciting part? You don’t need prior experience or a fancy degree to kick-start your journey into this dynamic field.
In this comprehensive guide, we aim to give you the roadmap you need to start your social media management journey from scratch. We’ll unlock the secret recipe of skills and strategies you’ll need to transform from social media enthusiast to a professional manager.
So, are you ready to become the master of tweets, the connoisseur of content, and the wizard of analytics, all while starting with zero experience?
Buckle up, because it’s going to be an exciting ride!
What Does a Social Media Manager Do?
A social media manager builds a brand’s social image and presence by developing strategies, creating high-quality content, analyzing data, and performing many other tasks related to handling the company’s social media channels. If you want to become a social media manager, no degree is required. However, the skills you need will include a deep understanding of all social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn, copywriting and editing skills, and an understanding of algorithms and SEO.
What are the particular responsibilities of a social manager?
Social Influencing
As a social media manager, you will establish the authority of your client’s brand across different social media channels. You need to be active on all social media platforms by posting content daily and growing the brand’s online presence. You will respond to comments on posts and stories from your audience.
Your goal with social influencing is to reach the Influencer Mega tier and maximize the number of people who see your brand’s content, ultimately leading them to the company website and generating sales.
Social Listening
Analyzing the needs and perceptions of your audience around the web is also a crucial part of your job as a social media manager. You will manage the brand’s online reputation and quickly solve any issues that affect the brand’s image.
You will need to observe what competitors in the industry are doing and improve your strategies. Social media is ever-changing, and you need to stay up to date with the latest information in the industry to be ahead of your competition and prepare for opportunities in advance.
Social Networking
Connecting with influential and authoritative brands and figures in your target market is crucial to promoting your brand. This is a way to establish a brand’s authority. You will interact with your target audience by answering questions they might have about your brand or industry and in doing so, you have to build the voice of an expert.
Social Selling
As a social media manager, it is your responsibility to turn the interest you generate for your brand into a steady flow of customers and leads. You will provide better customer service than your competitors and have a good support team to assist with any queries.
Excellent communication is crucial. You need to show potential customers why your product or service will help solve their problems. You must remember that professional communication can be the difference between a sale and no sale.
Daily Tasks of a Social Media Manager
What will your working day as a social media manager look like? Here’s a list of tasks you’ll handle on a daily basis:
Research
You’ll have to spot new trends, read the most up-to-date and relevant social marketing blogs, and discover answers to issues or problems customers in the industry might have. This ensures that you upload appropriate information to all clients’ social media platforms.
Copywriting
Good social media managers write copy daily. You will write attention-grabbing captions for social media posts and stories. It takes talent to condense lengthy blog posts into a single compelling statement for social media.
Scheduling and planning posts
You will have to schedule and plan posts for all social media platforms to get the best results. Consistency is essential when it comes to growing your audience on social media.
Setting up profiles
The social media manager’s job is to set up and optimize all social media channels. These channels include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Youtube.
Creating graphics
Creating graphics is one of the biggest tasks you will have as a social media manager. You need to produce attractive content and graphics which your audience will engage with. If you have never created graphics before, you should opt for a tool like Canva, which is straightforward to use and has a free version. If you have graphic designing experience, you can go for more sophisticated tools, such as Adobe Photoshop.
Responding to customer service inquiries
The more people that engage with your content on social media, the more customer service work you will have. You will connect with many different individuals, assisting them with any business queries.
Finding relevant content to share
Sharing relevant content in the industry is extremely valuable to your audience as you keep them inside the loop of all the latest information. Not only that, but it shows your audience you are also up to date with all of the latest news.
Reporting
As a social media manager, reporting is critical. This is where stakeholders can see if you are actually providing them with value and generating leads each month. Are you growing their online presence, or is it standing still?
What Are Businesses Looking For in a Social Media Manager?
A Creativity Guru
One of the biggest challenges in the overcrowded social media space is brand differentiation. Content that truly stands out from the crowd is exciting, unique, and valuable. Businesses look for a creative eye that sees what looks appealing on the screen and is able to anticipate the next boom in social media and come up with buzz-worthy ideas.
Here is a great example of a punny pre-Easter tweet from Oreo.
As a social media manager, creativity helps you:
- Lead productive brainstorming bringing out the best ideas
- Build innovative campaigns
- Create aesthetically appealing multimedia content
- Pay attention to every visual detail of a social post, including images, links, and formatting
- Perfect and elaborate the brand’s voice and persona
Useful Creativity resources
- Join a creative community, such as Creative Mornings, and take part in their events.
- Take improvisation classes and workshops.
- Subscribe to online classes like LinkedIn Learning which offer courses on everything from creative writing to photography.
A Bright Copywriter
Businesses look for exceptional digital conversationalists and excellent writers that are able to enhance their brand’s voice and craft original and diverse content for their social media pages – from converting ads to witty teasers and small talk. As simple as this task may sound, it involves varied and extensive writing skills that help you evoke an emotional response from your readers. Note that any incorrect grammar and typos impair the company’s image.
Google does a great job pairing witty captions with their images to provide maximum value and engagement.
An Outstanding Time Manager
Managing time effectively is critical for creating and implementing a social media strategy. Social media managers are responsible for the whole life cycle of campaigns – from the generation of the very idea to building the plan, to its timely execution. Timeliness is essential for driving engagement. Creating a social media calendar is one of the best ways to organize content and its distribution.
Useful Time Management resources
- Carefully prioritize your tasks by value.
- Utilize a technique to measure and control the time you spent on different tasks, such as Pomodoro and Google Timer. This will help you stay aware of the time and avoid falling behind your plan.
A Strategic Money Master
Budgeting and achieving a good ROI is an important consideration for businesses. You might have to manage the company’s budget for social media activities, paying for social media management tools, online images, and more. At the very least, you will have to be able to give input to the financial department regarding your budget requirements. Knowing what works for the different social circles and how to target your audiences effectively will help you avoid unnecessary expenses and stay within budget.
Useful Money Management resources
- Explore the opportunities for organic and paid social media marketing to build a social media following. Running an advertising campaign on any social media platform will cost the company money, which you’ll need to include in your budget.
- Use a social media budget template or create your own calculator using a Google Sheet or Excel Spreadsheet. Make sure to include all relevant details, such as the category of social media content, ongoing and one-time expenses, in-house and outsourced expenses, cost per item, and total cost.
A Proficient Task Juggler
The capacity to act fast and switch between multiple tasks is essential for a successful social media manager, who has to juggle publishing and tracking posts on many pages while planning on the future content to be published.
Useful Multitasking resources
- Keep constant track of the daily tasks and arrange them in terms of priority. You can use your social media calendar, a spreadsheet, or a project management tool to keep all your tasks organized and avoid missing any of them.
How to Become a Social Media Manager with No Experience
Most businesses expect you to be a social media ninja and to be able to prove it before they entrust you with their brand image. How can you gain experience and increase your chances to land the job?
Take an Online Course on Social Media Marketing
Find in-person or online courses tailored to social media management. Social media marketing is in constant flux due to rapidly developing technology, the emergence of social media consumption on mobile devices, and the impact of influencers. A specially-designed course will help you understand these and other trends so you can make smart use of social media marketing.
A social media marketing course will cover the following important subjects.
- The differences between the various platforms and how to hone a marketing campaign for each one
- The specific content that works best on each platform
- How to come up with a winning content strategy
- Audience engagement tactics
- Creating brand awareness
- How to tailor social media campaigns for each platform
- How to generate leads
- How to best communicate with and manage the various social media communities
- How to leverage analytics – understanding and interpreting social media analytics
Start by Building Your Own Online Community
If you want to become a social media manager, no degree will give you the practical insights into the process. Most people learn best by doing. Create your own page across all major social media platforms. Use these platforms to practice building, engaging, and maintaining an online community.
Start by creating an account on the leading social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, SnapChat, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest. Use these platforms to build and engage your following by sharing interesting news items and current trends on a topic that you are interested in. Supporting and promoting a brand or a cause is one of the top reasons people are active on social media platforms. If you plan to work in a particular industry, stay on top of developments and share them on your pages.
Include text, images, and videos in your content to make your message memorable. According to research, when information is accompanied by an image, people retain 65% of the information three days later compared to only 10% without an image.
After a while, you’ll know what works best on each platform. However, knowing how to use social for your personal pages is just the beginning. Becoming a professional social media manager requires using specific tools that will help you improve and measure your performance.
Learn How to Use Social Media Management Tools
Being responsible for the social media marketing of a going concern involves a diverse range of time-consuming responsibilities and tasks. Fortunately, there are many fantastic tools that marketers can use to ease their load considerably. So, knowing how to become a social media manager boils down to knowing which these tools are and how to use them. Here is a list of some of the most popular options used today.
Native analytics
Every social media platform has its own analytics tool that gives social media managers all the information they need about their audience’s engagement with the brand on the platform.
Todoist
Since social media management is all about regular posting on your chosen platforms, this tool is invaluable. It schedules your postings and ensures consistency, which is key to building an online community.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo displays the most shared content and trending influencers. This helps marketers understand what type of content their audience relates to best. You can see which of your pages readers engaged most with and adjust your content accordingly.
Brandwatch is another recognized social media listening and analytic tool tracking a myriad of everyday online conversations, including videos, forums, Facebook and Instagram posts, blogs, news, tweets, images, and many more. This enables brands to gain insights into consumer experiences, trends, brand perception, and influencers.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool that marketers use to discover the popularity of searched terms, identify trends, and get valuable details on related queries, topics, and demographic information.
Feedly
Feedly aggregates information from around the web in one convenient place. Marketers use it to see updates on the topics they need to follow, no matter what their sources, such as news websites, blogs, social media posts, RSS feeds, or other sources. Feedly is also a great source for content ideas.
Buffer Publish
Marketers can use Buffer Publish to set up a schedule for their social media accounts so their content is published at specified times.
Canva
This is an indispensable tool for social media marketers who have to create attention-grabbing images without necessarily being an artist. Many ads for social media marketing positions require you to be able to do graphic design. If you can use this tool, that requirement is no longer a hindrance.
Unsplash
Unsplash is a huge public library of free high-quality images that you can download to enhance your content. There are professional creators that you can follow who constantly add new work to their collections, so you won’t run out of options.
Animoto
Video has moved to the top of preferred content formats, but it is notoriously difficult to produce so it looks professional. Animoto has come to the rescue of anyone who needs a professional-looking video in a short time – a huge boon for marketers.
Build Your Manager Skills
Improve time management
You need to manage your time effectively since you need to plan and structure campaigns while leading and executing them from start to finish.
As we’ve already discussed, you’ll have many diverse tasks to perform as part of a marketing campaign. You’ll need to create content in different formats, create publishing schedules, maintain various social media profiles, respond to customers on social media platforms, and keep track of trends in the industry. In addition, you’ll have to produce reports and report on them, brief your team, consult with writers and designers, and manage ad budgets.
Staying on top of all these responsibilities requires effective time management skills. Here are a few simple tips for managing your time better.
- Create a daily schedule.
- Determine your most productive time of day and plan to do essential tasks then.
- Set time aside for reading and responding to emails.
- Close all browser windows and tabs you’re not working on.
- Make full use of social media tools to speed up your production.
In addition, mastering social media tools can be invaluable to saving time and keeping everything running smoothly.
Perfect communication
This position requires above-average communication skills. You need to communicate with both clients and your team efficiently, interpreting analytics and communicating it to business leaders, instructing the social media team, and responding to customers on social media platforms.
Social media managers need to come up with a social media strategy and communicate it clearly to management and the social media team. Also, if you are solely responsible for your company’s social media, you are the one that will have to tweet and post on all channels.
One of the best ways to improve your communication skills is to do public speaking. Join International Toastmasters. It’s a great organization that helps all members to develop their public speaking skills in a fun and supportive environment.
Master Social Media Skills
Analytical skills
Being able to look over data and utilize it to make more informed decisions is essential if you want to become a social media manager. It’s not good enough to simply be able to check metrics; you have to analyze those figures and make sense of them, using the outcome to inform your marketing strategy.
Social media analytics tools are indispensable for this purpose as they produce various reports that provide vital information about your marketing efforts. For instance, Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you all the information you need about your website visitors and their actions.
Learn about content curation
Content curation is a fundamental skill for social media marketers that involves sharing the content of other brands and people. Strategically sharing content from others in your industry adds variety to your content on different platforms, helps to establish you as an industry thought leader, and provides additional perspectives to your customers.
Implement a social media listening tool and stay abreast with all recent industry trends and innovations to be able to incorporate this information in your posts, provide value to your community, and position your brand as an expert and industry leader.
Marketing
This is primarily a marketing position, so solid knowledge of basic online marketing principles, such as lead generation and identification of your target audience, is a must. There are many good resources online that will give you all the information you need to understand marketing basics.
Udemy is a one-stop resource for every conceivable digital marketing course. Determine what your skills needs are and choose a course accordingly.
Customer care
Did you know that 90% of customers use social media as a way to communicate with a brand? With 63% of them expecting to be provided with customer service on social media, it has become the primary channel that customers and clients use to share their experiences. So, developing a social customer care strategy is one of the key responsibilities of a social media manager. The following Mango’s tweet provides a good example of this point.
This is where customer service happens and you as a social media manager will be the one to handle it or see that it’s done professionally on each platform by the team and not by chatbots that can only answer generic queries. Note that outstanding customer care starts with understanding your customers, which will allow you to make a lasting positive impression on the minds and hearts of your following. For your inspiration, check out some customer support podcasts.
Leverage Networking
You can use online and in-person networking to land a job. Tell contacts, your alumni connections, friends, and family about your intention to land a social media job and ask them to consider referring you for a social media position should one open up. Keep in mind that most jobs are filled internally or through a referral before they are posted online. Employee referral programs are a popular recruitment approach at some companies, so make a plan to capitalize on it.
If you have a specific company in mind, start building a relationship with the brand on social media. Respond to the brand’s posts and tweets, express your admiration for the brand, make suggestions, and share their content. Also, follow similar brands; you might learn on their social media platform that they are looking for a social media manager.
Create Opportunities to Show What You Can Do
Look out for opportunities to start building your portfolio. Offer your services to small businesses in your area for free or payment in kind. It’s an opportunity to practice your skills, get a more specific idea of how to become a social media manager, and have hands-on field experience. If it’s a success, include the gig on your resume; if not, you can leave it off your resume and simply learn from the experience.
Volunteer at a Non-profit
Non-profits are notoriously short on cash, and at the same time, in need of spreading the word about their activities. This is a golden opportunity if you want to start building your social marketing expertise. If you post about your work for them on your personal social media pages, you never know who will notice and offer you a real position.
Find an Entry-Level Position in Marketing
Consider taking an entry-level position in marketing. You’ll be gaining valuable experience, which you can include in your resume. In addition, you can continue your online social media activities and be right on the spot should the company needs a social media manager. Businesses are more likely to hire from within, and if you have shown your value as part of the marketing team, you’ll increase your chances of landing a social media manager job with the company.
Final Thoughts on How to Become a Social Media Manager
Businesses of all sizes and across all industries need to build relationships with their target audience and form strong communities to stay competitive. This means social media marketing has become a prime career option. In fact, CNNMoney has rated Social Media Manager among the top 100 careers for growth opportunities, good pay, and job satisfaction.
If you want to capitalize on this opportunity and are wondering how to become a social media manager with no experience, knowing what skills it takes and how to find the right resources will put your mind at ease.
You don’t need a degree or formal qualification to become a social media manager. All you need to do is take the first step and start mastering your skills. In addition, many of the social media tools that you’ll need for your work are free, so you can start using them before you apply for a job.
And the best news: you can gain valuable experience without spending a cent! Simply use your own social media pages as your first performance venue.
