Master Ad Campaigns and Become a Rockstar Social Media Manager

Many companies know the power of social media and marketing their brands through platforms like Facebook can provide quality traffic, leads and sales. If you’re a pro when it comes to social media, you’ve had successful Google ad campaigns in the past and you’re interested in a career change, becoming a home-based, social media manager can be an interesting position for you.

Should You Consider a Job as a Social Media Manager?

Like most jobs, a social media manager position requires special skills that not just anyone can perform. While millennials were born into the social media world, this doesn’t automatically make them the ideal candidates.

Social Media is an Exciting and New World

If you love the challenge of exploring new things from the ground up, social media is the best space for you since it’s still a young ‘industry’ with plenty of potential for growth.

You’re a Social Creature

Not everyone has a knack for talking to people. If you have that trait and you’re confident that you can speak to anyone no matter the age, gender, or affiliation. The job entails a different kind of customer service, since social media makes communication quicker, so you should have what it takes to handle inquiries, orders, or complaints with grace, even while under the pressure.

Use Your Marketing Background

Digital marketers would be perfect for this role, since they’re already in the know about how the internet works in terms of selling a product or service to a specific type of audience.

What you’d find ironic about this job is that although you’d have to be an exceptionally social being online, you’d be working alone in real-life since home-based positions are usually a one-man’s job. However, if you’re planning to apply to an office-based company, you’ll be leading a team of social media experts.

What Do Social Media Managers Do?

A social media manager designs, implements and monitors social media ad campaigns. He/she is responsible for creating objectives, providing visual content (image posts, ad design, etc.), and ensuring the brand voice is reflected on every content published.

The social media manager also handles long-term content and promotion strategy, which means he/she will be keeping a calendar for all the necessary marketing posts, sale announcement, and more.

Ensuring engagement is also a key role, since those social media accounts are made to build relationships of existing and would-be customers. Beyond engagement, the social media manager must also have a conversion strategy in place, so that Facebook, Instagram or Twitter followers can turn into buying customers.

Day-to-day tasks of a social media manager include:

• Craft content for publishing
• Save to Hootsuite (or similar social media management tools) and schedule posts for future publishing
• Conduct surveys, promos and other engaging gimmicks throughout the company’s social media networks
• Ensure the brand’s online presence is healthy
• Oversee design-related content (for profile pictures, ads, thumbnails, Facebook cover, and more)
• Answer messages and posts from customers across the board
• Plan, implement and monitor ad campaigns
• Monitor trends in social media apps, tools, strategies, etc.
• Analyze ad campaign data and analytics
• Create and review marketing reports
• Track and measure benchmarks of all marketing efforts, such as funnels, ads, social media posts, and more
• Coordinate with other social media team members (video, graphic designer, writers) in crafting content

Are You Qualified?

Ideally, a social media manager should have extensive digital marketing experience, superb written communication skills, excellent time management skills, and analytical skills. You would have to be results-driven and keep up-to-date about current marketing trends, social media and everything about monetizing digital content.

When it comes to experience and technical skills, you should have:

• Social media marketing experience
• Content marketing experience
• Experience in leading high-ROI ad campaigns on Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
• Advanced knowledge in sales funnel marketing
• Expert in testing practices (such as A/B, etc.)
• Facebook Ads Manager certification
• Facebook Power Editor mastery
• Advanced knowledge of interpreting data and analytics

A bachelor’s degree isn’t a major requirement with this position, but you’ll have an edge over your competition if you have a degree in marketing.

The Bottom Line

The social media manager position is relatively new, but thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms that continue to affect our daily lives, this job is here to stay.

The demand for a social media expert remains high, but those with proven experience in creating and implementing ad campaigns on these platforms have a better future in this field because that’s where the money is. If you’re results-driven and up for a challenging position, the social media manager is a perfect job with a great job outlook.