3 Misconceptions About Social Media Managers
Being a Social Media Manager is a great job! You get to create your own campaigns, allocate your budget, be creative and also elevate your brand to success. But, as with any job, the position can also have its downsides and these are often centred around people’s misconceptions about the role and its aims. With that in mind, here are 3 Misconceptions About Social Media Managers that might just drive you crazy!
1. We Play On Facebook
We don’t! Firstly, Facebook forms a very small part of a social media strategy. A Social Media Manager will be focused on other social pages, targeted advertising, Facebook specific campaigns and client engagement. There is no time for chatting to friends, playing games or scrolling through personal news feeds. Today, Social Media Managers are required to provide reports on their targeted activities, especially if those involve budget spend. If you have spent all day playing on Facebook you won’t have a job for long!
TIP- Take screenshots, write reports, study your figures & produce results to silence anyone who assumes you play all day – and of course don’t play all day!
2. Anyone Can Do It
Whilst there are no set qualifications needed to be a Social Media Manager, it is comprised of lots of other skills. For example, to be a successful SMM you will need to be a good writer, understand CPC and lead generation, have experience in B2B or B2C marketing and also have a flair for creativity. You will need to be able to multi task between a variety of networks and duties and move very quickly, sometimes changing direction completely based on trends. If your only experience of social media is Facebook then you might be surprised. You will also have to learn to deal with colleagues and employers who give you advice because they once posted something on Twitter that got a retweet!
TIP- encourage employee advocacy and assign tasks to include your “I could do that” colleagues whilst also getting extra help for yourself.
3. We Can Manage Forums Too
This is one of the worst things about being a SMM … everything digital will fall under your social media umbrella. Whilst forums are technically social, they are a huge project which consumes time and man power. Time you probably don’t have because you are busy managing the big 5 (Facebook, Twitter, G+, Linkedin and YouTube). Managing forums means posting topics, responding to negative feedback and answering questions. Large brands have teams dedicated to their online reputation management and it certainly isn’t something you can do all by yourself. The aim of forum marketing is of course to be visible, active and responsive but this can be tough if you’re all by yourself!
TIP- Start small and don’t sign up for more forums than you can handle. Use monitoring software to help you until you are allowed to hire an extra team member.
What are your misconceptions about social media managers? Tweet me and let me know @charli_says
