6 Tips To Excel In Your Role As A Social Media Manager

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The combination of the most popular social media platforms is where a great deal of the world's communication and culture is transmitted and generated, and for that reason, companies can leverage these utilities for bigger and better promotion over time.

As such, social media managers and content creators have become a vibrant part of the marketing tapestry, helping to identify key trends, publish the right post at the right time, and to maximize engagement and not just impressions.

If you're considering a job in social media management or are about to start work as one, it's important to know some essential tips for success. After all, social media is a vibrant tool, but it can also serve as a shifting sea, where the tides of public opinion are as fickle as they are ever-present.

With that in mind, let's consider how to perform well in your new operational capacity:

Take Time To Understand Your Audience
A social media profile or strategy is nothing without the audience you hope to curate for it. For this reason, it's important to research your audience and what they expect from the kind of brand you're part of. For example, the social media underpinnings of a golfing store are going to be much different from a legal firm. The former may focus on entertainment, competition, fun, celebrations about sporting events, and the latest innovations in the equipment space. The legal firm will be better off educating and positioning itself as an authority in the space. 

But how might this define your strategy? Well, the golfing store might think nothing of posting “Have a great golfing weekend!” as a scheduled post for Saturday morning. But the legal firm is hardly going to congratulate people for having pending lawsuits or wish them luck in general. Your posture and tone all depend on the audience you serve, and it's good to recognize that.

Develop A Content Strategy & Calendar
Sure, social media management should be flexible, but that doesn't mean it's ad hoc. In other words, understanding your parameters is key, and working with the wider marketing team to make sure you align with the overall strategy is key.

A content strategy is how you define this. Perhaps there's a new product launch coming up, and so drip-feeding teasers, engagement drives (such as polls), or covering events is key for you. You can work from a shared calendar to make sure all posts are well-planned and approved by your higher-ups before you move on.

Create A Format For Visual Content
Posts are no longer solely limited to text, but video, images with robust graphic design, video thumbnails, and more. For this reason, providing a helpful format for visual content is key. This might involve creating templates on apps like Canva and then porting those with perfect aspect ratios and resolutions to your social media apps for the best outcome.

A social media manager might not be the only individual contributing creative input to the visual profile of a brand, but they are certainly one of the endpoints of how this is delivered. As such, you might give feedback about off-centred text, improper cropping, or updates to a social media feed which cause the old practice to remain redundant. In the long run, that can cause a great deal of value.

Make Sure You Publish Correctly
A social media manager will utilize tools that allow them to manage several different platforms at once, as opposed to penning every single post manually from place to place. Learning the vital underpinnings of how this works can help you assess issues or better curate posts for maximum reliability.

This article that asks ‘what is a webhook?' will enable you to see how these various platforms operate, and also how to cultivate them to your own standards as opposed to relying on a one-and-done utility, which can lack nuance in the constantly flowing pace of the social media world.

It's also essential to proofread all copy or content posted on social media platforms, ensuring that syntax, grammar, and spelling are perfect and that the overall message cannot be misconstrued. Also remember that brevity is king, as it not only conveys a message with fewer words but delivers it more quickly, allowing your audience to respond in kind.

Monitor & Respond To Audience Engagement
It's also highly important to engage within the parameters of your marketing goals and your targets for inspiring return visitors. Social media platforms tend to reward profiles that encourage engagement and views because it means you're keeping their users online and on the platform for longer.

This is why many platforms will initiate polls to encourage discussion (which also serves as a quasi-survey), ask questions in their content, or design content with the express intent to bring people in and help them contribute to the wider message. Taking time to consider your own approach to responses, from courteous to continuing on a joke, from laughing at your own content in good humor to apologizing for those having an issue with your service, you'll soon come to understand how to get the best out of each perspective post, and how to moderate toxic or unhelpful comments where appropriate.

Cultivate Relationships With Influencers & Partners
Of course, social media should be just that, social. That's why it's healthy to connect to influencers or other partners, such as local businesses, you can run campaigns in conjunction with. Not only does this provide you with more methods of providing content, but it helps you combine audiences and offer them parallel to one another.

It might be you use an influencer for social media marketing combine a product launch with one of your local competitors, or celebrate an event with a sponsor. This way, you keep your feed fresh, active, and most of all, networking continually. That's the point of social media, after all.

With this advice, you're certain to excel in your role from top to bottom as a social media manager, and provide real value to the company you work for.