If you enjoy posting great content on social media then why not seriously consider being able to work from home as a social media manager, so you can get paid for doing something you like?
This would make your new business fun instead of work.
In this post, I intend on sharing enough details on how you can become a social media manager, in order to help you make your decision easier.
What is a Social Media Manager?
As a social media manager, you would be responsible for other’s social media accounts.
You would be expected to sound similar enough to be like the business you would be posting their content to their accounts for.
This way, their followers would not necessarily notice the difference.
Also, you may even be asked to respond to comments made to, say, any Facebook posts that you share.
You will need to be a highly motivated and creative person with experience in handling both your client’s existing and potential customers.
This is where you will have the opportunity to take your client’s potential customers and turn them into their fans and future customers, while making their existing customers into supporters.
Social Media Manager’s Job
Some social media managers have been known to handle the following list of responsibilities:
- Learning your client’s social media goals.
- Planning and strategizing those goals.
- Development of brand awareness – be able to identify “What’s in it for me” for your client’s potential customer.
- Increasing online reputation / reputation management.
- Increasing inbound traffic to your client’s website.
- Creating potential leads and eventually sales
Though others may limit their responsibilities to the following duties:
- Schedule and promote a customer’s content (images, video, audio, posts, etc.) through social media and advertising.
- Managing all social advertising campaigns by listening and responding to the social media followers in a way as to encourage your client’s potential customers.
- Help by developing pertinent topics for content that would help your client reach their potential customers.
Example: supervise the design of any social media graphics, profile images, thumbnails, adds, landing pages, profiles, blogs, etc.
- Use the best tools to manage posting your client’s content. Example: Post Planner and Buffer.
- Setup an editorial calendar so that you can manage your client’s content and plan detailed, appropriate promotional campaigns.
- Monitor and manage any online reviews, being sure to respond to every review in a timely manner. And yes, especially the negative review, being sure to be nice.
- Create reports showing your results so that your client can understand the value of your services.
A social media manager is literally the voice of the business that hires your services and therefore needs to be kept up to date in all matters when dealing with their potential customers.
Tracking the progress on a regular basis helps prove the worth of your services… and helps to serve your online reputation and future business too.
Social Media Manager Courses
There are a number of websites available that are offering free social media and marketing courses and those may provide you with enough information to help you decide whether to sign up for an accredited course so that you can be a certified social media manager.
Or… you could take a social media management bootcamp course with Udemy for $27.99 (CDN), to help you become a freelance social media manager.
And, this course comes highly rated.
What you can learn with Udemy is as follows:
- Setup your own freelance business
- Setup your website, pricing, payment terms, contracts and find clients.
- Help your client setup their social media goals
- Gain in-depth knowledge on business social media and marketing tactics.
- Learn how to set social media goals and how to achieve them.
- Identify which social media platforms are best to use for your client.
- Professionally create blog content, images and videos that gets results.
- Create those vital monthly in-depth reports to show your clients how you are helping them with their social media goals.
Then, of course, you could use websites like Course Compare to find a course more to your liking.
Social Media Manager Salary
In searching to provide you with this information, I discovered that the entry level managers are starting at anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 yearly (depending on who you ask), while the more experienced managers tend to make anywhere from as low as $55,000 to as high as $100,000 a year.
While independent freelancers are reportedly making as low as $17.63 per hour as a social media manager.
With that wide of a range in incomes, you have quite a spread of prices you could set for your potential clients in helping you to get started with your new business as their social media manager.
It would also depend on how many tasks you are trained in and prepared to handle for the prices you set.
Providing, let’s say, 3 different packages with 3 different prices for your potential clients to choose from might help you help your potential clients best.
This way you will learn quickly which package tends to be preferred and will help you know where to hone your skills so that you get better and better results for your clients, and thus you can increase your prices as your skills improve over time.
Social Media Manager Apps
Hootsuite, Post Planner, and Buffer are tools that will help you manage posting your client’s content.
Lifewire has tested and provided a full listing of the best social media management Apps for 2020, including their discoveries on what’s good and bad about each of the Apps.
After reading through Lifewire’s extensive list of these Apps, not one seemed able to handle all of the different social media platforms. Sooo…
Now I have another one for you to give serious consideration in using, and that is AgoraPulse.
This is an App that was created out of a need that Jeff Bullas had.
He wanted a tool to help him manage all of the different social media platforms and channels his viewers were visiting.
And most times, this is how great tools end up being created. So, I figured it would be wise to also provide you with this option.
AgoraPulse certainly does appear to be all-inclusive, to say the least.
Social Media Manager Resume
If you are not ready to run your very own business, but you still love to do the work of a social media manager, then why not give serious consideration for submitting a resume to the businesses that are presently offering these services.
With your certification in hand, an energetic, ambitious newbie should be able to land a job with a business that is providing social media management to businesses.
Working from home may even be an option, though you would need to check the job requirements to be certain.
When applying for a position, be sure to READ the requirements and take the necessary time to study thoroughly as to what the person doing the hiring is looking for.
You would be surprised to learn how many candidates refuse to READ and fulfill the proper requirements asked of those submitting a resume.
Keep your resume short, to the point and professional in appearance. If you need help, then search online for free resumes for Social Media Managers.
Also, keep your cover letter (if required) short and to the point.
A great test that many of those doing the hiring use is to provide an instruction about two thirds the way down the requirements for those who truly want the job, to follow.
It could be as simple as using a specific wording in your subject line of your email with your resume attached.
This is a GREAT way for those hiring to eliminate applicants who refuse to READ instructions.
No business wants to hire a Social Media Manager who refuses to READ and FOLLOW instructions, right? So, don’t you be that applicant, okay.
Conclusion
Whether you want to start your very own business or work for a company/business as a social media manager, if you love social media and sharing great content then why not give this idea serious consideration.
Working at something you love means never having to work!
I do hope this article has provided you with enough information for you to make a decision.
Should you have any question regarding your option to work from home as a social media manager, please leave them in a comment below. I would enjoy discussing this further with you.
Feel free to share this post with others.
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