Will The Real Social Media Managers Please Stand Up

Over the span of my digital career, I've met many a social media manager and I've come to realise how few really can fully hold that title by merit alone. It seems to be a bastardised term in digital marketing and term that should be earned while those who can hold the title should be valued. The current crop of social media managers is split into 3 distinct subsets.

Type of social media managers

• The community manager - What do they do?

• Post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
• Mainly deal with complaints and spend most of their day replying to comments and inbox messages
• Never or don't know how to pull a report
• Not held responsible for sales
• Has a rough social media calendar at most a week in advanced
• Doesn't know Pinterest, Google+ or Linkedin exist

• The advertising social media manager - What do they do?

• Hardly posts organically perhaps once or twice a week
• Only deals with Facebook, Twitter and to a small extent Instagram
• Lives on a budget
• Needs a designer and is forever moaning about banners
• First task at new job gets dev to install remarketing tags
• Reporting is top notch
• Doesn't care about trends
• Doesn't care about content
• Doesn't care about Pinterest, Google+ or Linkedin exist

• The social butterfly media manager - What do they do?

• Constantly hash-tagging
• Loves all social media platforms
• Shares and likes everything from personal accounts
• Doesn't like dealing with complaints
• Reporting is somewhat sketchy
• Many times cannot justify ad spend
• Loves to build social calendars
• Constantly sneaking in memes into posts
• Sales is kind of an afterthought

A holistic social media manager has the characteristics of all 3 mentioned above and has an innate digital ability. A social media manager is able to take the platform and the brand they work with along with their own creativity to make it their own. A social media manager should be:

• SEO minded
• Can Generate quality content
• Write engaging ad copy
• A dash of photo editing
• Comfortable on all platforms
• Analytical

Having all the above and of course a great work ethic by going the extra mile definitely shows on these platforms. While a social media manager will always be taken for granted, questioned on what they do and why they make so few sales. It's about more than that, trust me a real social media manager is actually doing the job of a collective. So when you do find someone who fits the role, cherish that person and hold onto them for as long as possible.

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Tags: Social Media