The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Great Social Media Manager
A great social media manager is, as Ron Burgundy would say: “The balls”.It’s an undisputed fact that every business needs to be active in social media. The ever-changing demands of the modern day consumer requires brands to think fast and adapt quickly in order to stay one step ahead.The role of a social media manager has appealed to the mass generation of socially-active internet users. It’s hard not to. Especially when some might think that you can earn big bucks from posting Facebook updates. Hardly.Being a social media manager is kind of like being a stand-up comedian. You have to quickly understand your audience and your engagement with them is vital. In order to accomplish this, you need to know if the audience is laughing at your jokes and you need to know this in real-time. If you can do this, then you have already won the crowd.So, how do you become a social manager? More to the point, how do you become a great social manager?The answer will be surprising to some. Firstly, you have to want it. Second, you have to love it. Third, you have to learn it. And even if you tick all these boxes, you should ask yourself: “Am I a social person?” If the answer is no, then becoming a social media manager is probably not for you…So let’s take a look at the stats.
LinkedIn shows 57,910 results for “social media manager”
Social media has now overtaken porn as the number 1 activity on the web
97% of all consumers search for local businesses online
71% of consumers receiving a quick brand response on social media say they would likely recommend that brand to others
93% of marketers use social media for business
In terms of difficulty of execution, nearly half (49%) of B2B marketers put social media marketing at the top, followed by content marketing (39%), SEO (26%) and mobile (25%)
77% of B2B marketers use a blog as part of their content marketing mix
On average, 25% of marketing budgets are now spent on content development, delivery and promotion
78% of small businesses attract new customers through social sites
When asked to rank their company’s social business maturity on a scale of 1 to 10, more than half of global business executives gave their company a score of 3 or belowBut the statistic that is most relevant to this article is:
Just 12% of those using social marketing feel they actually use it effectively.Being a social media manager brings with it some key benefits within a freelance setting. The most recognisable being the fact that you are your own boss. You make the decisions and answer to no one. You send the invoices and you set the policies. Heck, you could sit in your underpants all day on the computer if you wanted to.The other is money. It is an in-demand role, but one that companies are still struggling to come to terms with. Some companies realise and understand the value social media could bring to their enterprise and are willing to invest heavily in robust social media campaigns. Being your own boss, you can decide how to set your costs and price accordingly.Another attractive reason is the low barriers to entry. With low start-up costs and plenty of online resources (like this one!) to rapidly decrease the learning cure, anyone can launch a freelance social management business within a short space of time.I’ll tell you my story shortly but first, let’s explore the essential skills you’ll need to become a great social media manager..Fundamental Skills:Marketing KnowledgeYou should have a good grasp of the basic marketing principles. Some education in marketing would be beneficial, but otherwise you can find many quality resources online.ExperienceYour experience doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to life experiences. Have you managed your own social media profiles for a while? Do you know how to effectively maintain your own social accounts and understand what clients expect?SociableI touched on this at the beginning of the article. If you are not a sociable person – someone who doesn’t like communicating much and isn’t very outgoing, then becoming a social media manager just isn’t for you. Sure, you can hide behind a keyword and monitor for a while, but clients will usually want to meet, speak on the phone, or have Skype sessions at some point.Project ManagementYou don’t have to have a Prince2 certificate, but you do need to be able to manage projects and your time well. It’s typical for social media manager’s to work with multiple clients at any one time. Keeping tabs on everything is important so that it doesn’t get overwhelming.TechnologicalSocial media exists online. Therefore, you need to have a certain degree of computer literacy. Having good knowledge of social technology will enhance your services and ensure you are keeping up to date with the latest social trends and developments.Interpersonal Skills:CommunicationIt kind of goes without saying that if you’re going to be representing a company and engaging with their customers, then you will need to have strong communication skills.PersonalityCompanies tend not to want to hire people with no personality to act on behalf of their brand. It doesn’t resonate well with them, or their audiences.ResponsivenessI’ve touched on this a few times – social media is very fast-paced. Imagine if one of your social assignments was largely focused on customer service and you didn’t respond to customer complaints or queries for weeks. People online want rapid responses. Being able to fulfil these needs can stand your client (and you!) in good stead.EntrepreneurialTo become a social media manager in a freelance capacity, you have to be a self-starter. You should be willing to go the extra mile and take a few financial risks along the way. If you don’t land a job that pays enough in one month, how will this affect you?MultitaskingA great social media manager must be able to effectively carry out a wide range of tasks.OrganisationYou should always be very well organised when delivering social media management services. I use all kinds of traditional tools like calendars, white boards and task lists to keep myself organised. I also use many online organisational tools, such as: Thunderbird for accessing all my email accounts in one place, Dropbox to easily share documents with clients and bookmarks to keep track of all the websites I frequently visit.Strategic ThinkingBeing able to think campaigns through before they happen and sometimes thinking outside the box when needed, are great asset to have as a social media manager. Clients tend to want to know how you will do something before letting you do it, so being able to present a clear and concise strategy is essential.Flexible (with travel)Contrary to popular belief, a freelance social media manager has to leave his office sometimes! If this is a problem for you, then you should think about starting another profession. Nearly every sizeable project I undertake involves multiple meetings with the client. You should have reasonable pitching skills, as you may be required to sell your services face to face too, before being hired. You may even opt to take on in-house work.Wider Skills:CopywritingEvery good social media manager is a great writer. Writing forms the foundations of many aspects of online marketing, be it creating ads, writing blogs, engaging with customers, scripting sales copy or writing press releases.Graphic DesignPretty much all social media platforms provide the functionality to customise the interface and incorporate your own branding. If you are sharp with Photoshop (or similar design software), then you are in a good position to offer these services as part of your social media package. Similarly, creating content such as infographics, banners or images is standard practise for a social media manager.AdvertisingEvery social media manager should have sound knowledge of advertising. Be it Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising or banner advertising, you should know the ins and outs of each discipline and understand how to optimise each format.PRPublic relations is closely tied to social media marketing, in the sense that both involve managing the spread of information between a business and the public. You may start out not needing to have a deep knowledge of PR, as it is typically managed by larger brands who have an interest in persuading stakeholders, investors or the public to maintain a certain point of view.StatisticalEverything in marketing should be measured. You should periodically measure and analyse your social marketing performance and produce reports to your clients to demonstrate your value.SEOUnderstanding how social media affects search engine optimisation will ultimately improve campaign performance. In 2012, there was an average of 5,134,000,000 searches on Google every day. If you think SEO doesn’t matter to your social activities, think again.Traditional MarketingEven though you generally won’t be involved in traditional marketing practises while undertaking a social media management role, you should understand how both forms of marketing affect each other and how each can be best leveraged to complement the other.Video EditingThis will probably be the least used of your wider skills, but nevertheless it can assist you in your social marketing positions. I’ve had a few clients that required presentations or demonstration videos to be edited before being used within their social media campaigns. I’m for sure no expert, but having a reasonable level of knowledge in using Windows Movie Maker (or similar video editing software) can turn that video file straight from the camera into a beautiful, YouTube-ready video.Even if you possess all the necessary skills to become a social media manager, there is still scope to improve your services by using different social tools and software. I’ll quickly recap on two different pieces of software I use that may help you in becoming a great social media manager:
Hootsuite: I wrote an in-depth review of Hootsuite on my blog that also includes a video tutorial which should provide all the information you will need to know about Hootsuite.
BuzzBundle: This is my favourite and most valued piece of software I’ve ever used. I use it mainly to find keywords around my content subject from across a huge range of blogs, forums and social sites and stream all this information back to me in one interface. I can then see who is discussing my topic and jump straight into the conversations to add my two cents. What You’ll Be Expected To Do… So, what does a social media manager actually do? As you can probably tell by now, the role of a social media manager is diverse. It’s not a case of “Well, I post updates to Facebook.” Here are a few general activities that social media managers will be expected to execute:StrategyYou will be required to formulate campaign and platform specific strategies that meet the business objectives. You will create actions plans, content calendars, set metrics and KPIs, undertake various research activities and perform different types of analysis.Content CreationContent creates the foundations of any marketing campaign. How you decide to execute your campaigns will depend on the different forms of content you produce. As you would have no doubt already heard from someone, content is king. Believe them.Community ManagementManaging accounts also means managing communities. You should be the go-to person when representing brands in social domains and continually reach out and engage with your audiences. You will need to constantly strengthen social relationships in order to develop long-lasting followers.Audience BuildingMarketing to the same people over and over will not widen your scope and social reach. You should be increasing readership and your level of influence within your target audiences.Customer ServiceMany companies use social media as an instant channel for customer service. You will have to be responsive and helpful in your social activities, regularly being the first point of contact. You will be representing the brand and managing their customer perceptions.MeasurementEvery effort that consumes investment will need to be measured and analysed. I’vve previously written tutorials that demonstrate how you can set up your Google Analytics account on my blog.ReportingOnce your efforts have been measured and analysed, your clients will want to understand how their investment has performed. This can take the form of visual aids for meetings or digital reports. Reporting is a key ingredient of any social media manager in order to prove your worth and demonstrate the value you have added to the business.How I Became A Social Media ManagerI’ve been active in social media since July 2007. This was before the time of all the latest social marketing tools and software that nowadays are ingrained into all social marketers everyday life. Resources or tutorials weren’t as widely available that could help speed up the learning curve.I did find an online course that looked pretty good in teaching me how to turn my social skills that I had been practising on my own accounts into a fully fledged business. I invested £600 on this online course to learn the basics and now that some years have passed, I can look back and say the value wasn’t all that great, but the ideas were there. It pushed me to think outside the box and motivated me to start my trajectory towards becoming a social media manager.So before I had decided to turn my love for social media and networking into a freelance opportunity, I attended Brunel University where I completed my BSc and MSc in Business Management. It was at this time when I jumped on board with the poker boom and started playing online cash games and tournaments. Poker really helped me to develop my own time management, money management and analysis skills. I always knew I wanted to start my own business so this was a good platform to get my feet wet. Throughout my time playing poker, I was always engaged in online social discussions and even wrote a few guest posts for poker sites.Before I knew it, I was a fully-fledged freelance social media manager…So to kick-start my freelance social media work, I joined a bunch of freelance sites like Elance, oDesk and Freelancer. I still use some of them today.After a few years of freelancing on small one-off projects and developing my social marketing acumen, I was hired by an online business services company to run their social media campaigns, as well as handle all their own clients social marketing campaigns. I still work with them today, which just shows the power of forging good working relationships.I managed to attract clients in most months for the next few years and each project ended up being pretty diverse from the next. This allowed me to develop wider skills that I have since found almost a necessity in order to provide a well-rounded social media marketing service. I mentioned some of these wider skills required to become a great social media manager towards the middle of this article.I also kept maintaining and building my own social media profiles. It’s important to practise what you preach and showcase your expertise on your own domains. My social profiles have regularly attracted clients, which keeps work coming in and builds up my networking potential.I have been writing on my blog for a few years, but only recently updated my site. My own social activities also serve to build traffic to my sites, where I generate passive income. I like to “listen” to the social environment and engage with people who are already looking for my content. This serves well in building and strengthening connections, as well as attracting targeted traffic.I have also been a keen guest blogger. I believe that writing articles for other relevant blogs only serves to increase your scope and exposure. Once or twice, I have had my articles featured by online magazines and publications, which was always nice.Keeping my ears to the ground and getting myself ‘out there’ was one of the things I promised myself I would do, even though I knew the vast majority of my time would be spent in my home office. I tried to regularly meet up with business connections and clients to make sure they could match an online persona to a real life face. The vast majority of the time, I even managed to remember my business cards!A strategy I’ve always tried to employ while freelancing is to try and turn one client into three. What I mean by that is word of mouth is the most powerful advertising there is. People do act on solid recommendations that their friends make. I found that taking as basic an approach as asking clients at the end of projects if they knew anyone who could benefit from social media marketing, worked out surprisingly well.As social media is such a dynamic environment with start-ups booming and busting every few months, I knew that it was essential to keep up to date with social developments. Every so often, a client would ask me to set up profiles or campaigns on sites that some social media managers would have never heard of. Keeping tuned in enabled me to have at least some knowledge and experience in using these platforms, which dramatically lowered my learning curve and ultimately lead to better performing campaigns.Around a year and a half ago, I decided to broaden by service offerings and set up a web design company with my business partner. “Thinking Forwards” was born in the summer of 2012. Websites and social media go hand-in-hand, so this enabled me to up-sell my services both ways.So that brings me loosely to where I am now. Just to be clear; I have never used paid advertising or SEO for my own benefit while being a social media manager. My progression came solely through content marketing and guerrilla marketing tactics.To Summarise On How I Became A Social Media Manager:
Joined freelance sites
Practised what I preached and actively maintained my own social media profiles and blogs
Kept consistently networking and building my contact lists
Continually created my own content on my own sites
Took my content straight to prospects
Proactively kept asking if people needed my assistance
Guest blogging and featured articles
Attended networking events and met up with clients and business contacts
Tried to turn one client into three
Kept up to date with new social networks and developments
Started other initiatives where social media services were complementary
Never turned down any work or networking opportunities
Worked long hours, sometimes for small rewards, to build reputation, authority and presenceI thought I would leave you with some final advice from things I have learnt from my own experiences being a social media manager.Remember that…
Sometimes you won’t be right for a project, even if you think you are
It’s OK to work for less than your desired amount, if the benefits warrant it
You won’t win every contract, so don’t beat yourself up if you get turned down
Things change really quickly in social media, so you will have to continually adapt
You never know as much as you think you do!Starting a career in anything takes time and effort. If you think it’s easy to become a great social media manager, then think again…I wish you all the best in your future endeavours!
Healthy Body and Mind Detox – Get a Colon Cleansing and Take a Trip To The Spa and Come Back Strong!
Have you lost your energy and your spunk that you used to rely on to get you going? Instead, do you often feel down and out like you just don’t feel like doing anything? Well there are two likely culprits. You could be mildly (or even more) depressed or down and out because you are not happy with how your life is going or where you are at in your life right now. This could even be causing you to get less exercise which contributes to the “not feeling like doing anything” issue.The second likely cause is that your physical body is getting clogged and filled with toxins accumulated over the years. This can cause the body’s organs to have to overwork trying to get the intended vitamins and nutrients from the food you eat or in trying to filter the toxins. The solution is simple, yet not widely known. ‘Body detoxifications’ or ‘colon cleansings’ are ways to cleanse you body and system and to renew yourself and your body. This can make you feel better and can help get you out of the “funk” you might be feeling. Make a conscious decision to improve the health of your body and your mind. Take a little time to focus on “you.” Focusing on renewing your body and your spirit are ways to get back that energetic and happy feeling again!There are many ways you can detoxify and cleanse the body. You can begin the process by increasing your normal intake of healthful liquids – like water, fruit juice and tea combined with reducing and limiting your intake of certain foods that are not as healthy for you. Oh, and make sure it is filtered and pure water you drink or that you use to make your tea or mix with juice. Our bodies are made up of over 70% water – so simple logic tells you how important it is to our health and wellness. Just the drinking of more water on a regular basis will help your body cleanse harmful toxins from your body more regularly. How much should you drink? The answer really depends on each person. A person’s size and weight is important in determining the amount of water to be consumed. A heavier person should definitely drink proportionately more water.Fruit juices and tea can also be helpful – juice provides your body with needed vitamins and nutrients – and both help in cleansing your system. There are many varieties of teas readily available in the supermarket and tea is very rich in antioxidants which can help your body eliminate free radicals that may cause cancer in the body. For teas lovers, a nice cup or glass of tea is a form of relaxation and a way of detoxifying your body all rolled into one.Another critical part of the best body detoxification processes is a good colon cleansing. Once the colon has been cleansed properly, the body will begin to absorb more easily the vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. It is also important during your body detoxification and colon cleansing to avoid consuming processed foods with lots of manufactured additives and preservatives. Eating as much nutrient rich, fiber filled food as possible and eliminating or reducing the consumption of foods that are made with preservatives or are high in fat and sugar is important in the cleansing process. You should always eat food in as close to its natural form as possible. It will do wonders for the body and allow your system to better absorb and use the nutrients in the food – and the food will contain more of their original natural vitamins and minerals when they are closer to their natural form.To further boost your detoxification and rejuvenation experience, eat more brown rice. Brown rice contains a lot of B vitamins. Did you know that these vitamins are known to be stress reducers? Brown rice is also very rich in fiber which is very beneficial to the digestive system and can also help you eat less of other foods by making you feel full from the fiber.Not only should you watch what you are eating but you should also watch what you are thinking, saying and focusing your attention on. Your mind and your body are all part of the same system. Changing your thoughts will change how you feel. Replace any negative thoughts with positive thoughts. Think about what you do want, not what you don’t want. Other ideas: Go on a weekend getaway or trip, reward yourself with a trip to a spa – even a day spa, or enjoy getting a massage which will help relax your mind along with your muscles. Anything you like to do to pamper yourself. Clear your mind of the clutter of thinking of things that might be bothering or troubling to you. This will help reduce stress as well as help you relax. Anything you do to help your spirit will in turn help your body.So you can see that to get a true full “healthy body detoxification” you must focus on treating not just you physical body, but your mind and soul as well. Your physical body is affected negatively by high stress in your mind, so ignoring your mind and spirit will leave you without the full positive effects that you could experience.Begin to enjoy a more relaxed and healthy lifestyle. By following these simple ideas and recommendations you can not only help your body to heal but also your soul!
Music Therapy for Body, Mind and Spirit
Music therapy is one of several healing art forms that is progressively gaining prominence and a place among complementary mind, body, spirit therapies offered in hospitals in the United States. Music as a healing art has been around for eons and now there are research reports that document its effectiveness and benefits.Music has been a part of cultures and societies throughout history. It may have been in the form of drumming, chanting, toning and musical instruments of the time. Shamans, medicine woman and man, tribal sweat lodge singings, initiation ceremonies and funerals used music to promote healing and a smooth transition after life.BenefitsIt is, without a doubt, a beautiful, melodic form of therapy that can reduce stress and anxiety, relieve pain, lift depression and produce feelings of happiness. Music is energy and produces a flowing of inappropriate (negative effect) energy within the body, outward from the body (positive) resulting in restoration of balance and harmony.Sound waves are produced by music and they are processed in many areas of the brain which then influences the condition of the body. Thereby, bringing harmony to the body, mind, spirit and the emotions. Research has demonstrated the beneficial effects on a person’s blood pressure, muscle tension and respiratory rate.Categories of music include:1. Big Band-Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman
2. Jazz-John Coltrane, Miles Davis
3. Blues-B. B. King, John L. Hooker
4. Ambient/New Age-Brian Eno, Halpern
5. Baroque-Bach, Handel
6. Classical-Beethoven, MozartListening to music one hour a day can improve learning, promote clarity of values, personal intent and creativity.Harp music (harp therapy) has been used to reduce pain, anxiety and promote relaxation.Music has the ability, according to various studies and lived experiences, to increase dopamine levels. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, is released when there are rewards and pleasures such as music, food, sex and drugs. It is a ‘feel good’ substance, a motivator. Music for healing is pleasurable experience. The pleasure of music can distract a person from feelings of pain, lower blood pressure and reduce depression.