The Beginner's Guide to Social Media Management

The potential to reach more people on social media has led businesses to expand their marketing strategy to include social media networks. This in turn has increased the demand for social media managers.

According to Glassdoor, the base average salary of a social media manager is $55,000. In Nigeria, experienced social media managers can earn up to 300,000 Naira every month.

This article is for anyone, especially Nigerians, interested in social media management as a career path.

You will learn the basics of social media management, how to start your career in Social Media Management, and find links to helpful resources.

Table of content

1. What is Social Media Management
2. Who is a social media manager
3. Social media marketing VS Digital marketing
4. 4 reasons why social media management is a good career path
5. 8 basic skills every social media manager must have
6. How to become a social media manager in Nigeria
7. Conclusion

What is Social Media Management

A good place to start is by understanding the purpose of marketing. Hubspot does a good job of explaining the what, how, and why of marketing:

“Marketing refers to any actions a company takes to attract an audience to the company’s product or services through high-quality messaging.

Marketing aims to deliver standalone value for prospects and consumers through content, with the long-term goal of demonstrating product value, strengthening brand loyalty, and ultimately increasing sales.”

Marketing is a company’s way of attracting customers to its product or services. Social media management or social media marketing (SMM) is simply marketing done on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

In other words, it’s the process of selling a product or service by attracting people to the company’s social media profile. SMM is an important part of marketing as it helps companies to:

• Sell their products or services on a wider scale.
• Reach and connect with their ideal audience or customers.
• Build and establish their brand image in a positive light.

Who is a Social Media?Manager

A social media manager/marketer handles the social media marketing of a business. They create relevant and engaging content, interact with people on behalf of the brand, and build the brand’s presence across all social channels.

Sprout Social describes social media managers as people who are “in charge of representing a company across social channels as the sole voice of the brand.”

The role varies and depends on the size of the company. An average social media manager is expected to:

• Create and publish fun, trendy and engaging content on different social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, YouTube, etc.
• Grow the number of people following and interacting with the business’s social media profile.
• Create a social media strategy for the business and analyze its performance.
• Establish the brand’s social media identity. This means ensuring the voice and tone used by the business on social media sites is consistent and fits the brand’s public image.
• Develop social media campaigns that will either sell a new product or increase the number of people that know about the business. The goal is usually tied to the marketing plan of the company.
• Communicate with potential customers on behalf of the company by responding to enquiries, complaints, comments, etc.

Social media managers work closely with the rest of the marketing and design team. Depending on the size of the company, they report to either a digital marketer, growth marketer, head of communications or a marketing manager.

Social Media Management VS Digital Marketing

A lot of people confuse social media marketing with digital marketing, but they are two very different roles. Their difference mainly lies in the channels they are carried out.

Here are 3 differences between social media marketing and digital marketing:

4 Reasons Why Social Media Management is A Good Career?Path

1. It’s a stable career choice

The US bureau of labour statistics predicts that marketing and advertising jobs will increase by 10% between 2020 to 2030.

As SMM is now regarded as a key part of marketing, social media managers won’t have to worry about job scarcity.

Plus, social media is not going anywhere and companies will always need people to manage their social media presence.

2. You gain transferable skills

To excel in SMM, you need to learn a lot of soft skills like communication, writing, project management, teamwork, etc.

You can easily transition to a different field if you decide SMM is not the right fit for you.

3. It’s an easy way to start a marketing career

A lot of marketers start their careers in social media management. It is very easy to transition to different roles in traditional or digital marketing from SMM because you are doing the same thing but on a much larger scale.

Once you nail down the basics and principles of SMM, you can work and succeed in any marketing department.

4. It’s a non-technical role in Tech

The Tech world is currently the “IT” career field and a lot of people want to transition to tech.

Non-technical roles in Tech are job roles in the tech space that you can do without knowing how to code.

Social media management is an easy way to start your tech career. You can work for a tech company and help them communicate and reach their target audience on social media.

In fact, there is currently a high demand for social media managers in the crypto space. Learn SMM and you might have the chance to say wagmi ?? all the time.

8 Basic Skills Every Social Media Manager Must?Have

Social media managers are an integral part of the marketing team. They are expected to oversee and manage all the marketing efforts across different social media platforms.

This means they are expected to adapt and learn different skills to succeed in their role.

Although the requirements may vary based on the industry, here are 9 skills every social media manager must have to succeed:

1. Creativity: A social media manager must be creative. You have to be good at coming up with relevant and fun ideas that will help the marketing team achieve its goals on social media.

A great way to train and build your creativity is by consuming content of all forms i.e books (fiction and non-fiction), funny videos, articles, movies. Etc. This will help you never run out of ideas.

2. Communication skills: Social media managers are always communicating with either an audience on social media or their teammates.

Knowing how to effectively share your thoughts and ideas will elevate you from an average social media manager to a great one.

3. Project management: Social media managers are always swamped with work. In between coming up with new ideas for a campaign and responding to comments on social media, a lot of things can fall through the cracks.

You have to be able to handle and keep track of what’s expected from you. Project management tools like Asana, Trello, Notion are a must-have for social media managers.

4. Content creation: A huge part of SMM is content creation. Content is any form of media, which may be in audio, visual or written form, that either educates or entertains a group of people.

Content creation is the generation, implementation, and distribution of ideas and topics in either audio, video or written form for your audience to consume.

There are basically 3 types of content: informational, educational, and entertaining/fun content.

The common types of content format are: audio, video, image and written formats.

You have to be comfortable with coming up with ideas and transforming those ideas into different forms that will help your company achieve its marketing goals.

5. Writing: Writing is the act of creating content in written form. It involves passing across your thoughts with words in a clear and concise way, with the aim of guiding the reader towards a particular action.

As a social media marketer, you will be required to write strategy docs, copy for social media designs, captions, campaign reports, and a lot of other things.

It’s important you know how to write in a clear and compelling way with no grammatical errors. Grammarly is a great writing tool that helps you edit and improve your sentences.

6. Design: Social Media Managers must have a good eye for design. This will help you easily communicate with the design team.

In smaller companies, social media managers sometimes double as graphic designers. They make all the designs for the company’s social media channels.

As a newbie, especially in Nigeria, it’s highly likely that you will be expected to create designs. This is why it’s important for you to learn design basics like Color theory, element hierarchy, and typography.

Design apps like Canva and Adobe Spark are beginner-friendly and easy to grasp.

7. Social media management tools: These are tools that help you manage and oversee social media accounts across different channels. They make your life easier and more organized. With these tools, you can easily:

• Schedule content
• Create content calendars.
• Analyze and generate social media performance reports.
• Oversee all your social media accounts in one place.
• Collaborate with other members of your team.

Examples of social media management tools are Buffer, Hootsuite, Later, etc.

8. Analytical: You must be able to understand and draw insights from data as a social media manager. This will help you:

• Understand the type of content that works for your business.
• Fine-tune and improve your social media strategy.
• Improve future social media campaigns.

Most social media sites have inbuilt analytical dashboards that show you data about your social media account. It’s very common to see data on:

• Your audience growth
• Your audience demographic I.e age, country, etc.
• Your posts performance

9. Customer service: As the face of the brand, there is a high chance you will have to respond to questions and enquiries from potential customers.

A great way to handle this is by noting the questions people ask about the product or service.

Then, forward the questions to the customer service team and ask for guidance on how to answer such enquiries.

Additional skills that are not required but will give you an edge over other social media managers are:

• Video editing: Video marketing has become an integral part of social media marketing.

From TikTok to Youtube, videos are everywhere and they are currently the preferred form of consuming content.

Having a basic understanding of how to create and edit videos will help you stand out. Capcut and Inshot are very easy for beginners to understand.

• Copywriting: Copywriting is basically sales in written form. It’s the process of convincing people to buy or carry out a particular action with words.

Knowing how to use words to sell a product or service will help you craft copies and captions that drive conversions, especially during social media campaigns.

How to Become a Social Media Manager in?Nigeria

So far, we have discussed the basics of social media management, the role of a social media manager, and the skills needed to succeed in social media management.

At this point, you should understand:

• Social Media Marketing and the role it plays in today’s world.
• The role of a Social Media Manager.
• The difference between Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing.
• The basic skills every social media manager must have.

Now, let’s discuss how you can become a social media manager. In this section, I will:

• Give you 5 actionable tips on how to start your career in social media management.
• Provide links to useful resources like courses, articles, tools and communities.

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