Social Media Manager: Job Profile and Role

What started as a digital experiment to stay in touch with friends has rapidly turned into something hardly any of us can live without: social media, be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok. By now, these platforms are used for way more than staying in touch. They are also used for promoting businesses, for increasing their sales and for attracting new customers.

Due to the sheer mass of responsibilities that come with social media, most companies employ social media managers. In the following blog, we will take a close look at a social media manager’s job description and responsibilities. We will also look into the annual salaries and potential employers. If social media management is the right career choice for you, you will also be interested in finding out what a day in the life of a social media manager looks like. You will also get important tips for thriving as a social media manager.

Short Summary

• As a social media manager, you are responsible for coming up with creative and innovative design strategies for social media platforms.
• As a social media manager, you need to stay in touch with your customers. You need to reply to their comments on the various social media platforms to ensure better customer relations and to promote better engagement.
• As a social media manager, you are required to work with so-called promotional and engagement techniques. These include SEO rankings, paid advertising and influencer endorsements.

Job description

Social media managers are responsible for creating and posting social media content. A social media manager is also responsible for overseeing the interaction between a company and its target audience. A social media manager should also know how to read the relevant data and rankings and how to analyse them. Based on his or her findings, a social media manager then comes up with ways to improve a company’s social media presence and with new and innovative new social media campaigns.

Responsibilities

• Collaboration
• Paid Advertising
• Content Promotion
• Strategy Development
• Audience Engagement
• Content Creation/Curation
• Social Media Management
• Monitoring Trends/Competitors
• Content Calendar Management
• Analytics/Performance Tracking

Different types of Social Media Managers

• Community Manager
• Social Media Strategist
• Analytics/Insights Manager
• Brand Reputation Manager
• Influencer Relations Manager

Salary

Social media managers in the UK are typically paid between £32,600 and £36,800 annually. The level of work experience can influence how much a social media manager will earn per year. Employers and company size can also influence the annual salary. Moreover, the location is an important factor that decides the annual salary of a social media manager. Currently, the highest wages are being paid in the Greater London Area, whereas the lowest annual salaries can be expected in the North of England.

Working hours

Your weekly working hours as a social media manager depend on your employment. Full-time social media managers typically work 40-hour weeks, whereas part-time social media managers are more flexible and work fewer hours.

Interestingly, a social media manager’s job often is a classic 9 to 5 job. This is due to the fact that most of the relevant content needs to be posted at these times to reach the various target audiences.

However, you should also take on board that being a social media manager can involve work in the evenings and on the weekends. Again, your company’s target audience is to thank for this. Depending on their preferred social media times, content may need to be posted later in the day or week to generate optimal traffic.

Employers

Typical employers of social media managers are medium-sized or large companies. They can be found in the private, public or non-profit sector. In these companies, social media managers are usually employed as in-house social media managers. After you have completed your education, you can also find employment with a relevant outside agency, for example, a public relations agency or a digital marketing agency.

Qualifications

The first qualification that is required to become a social media manager is a certain number of relevant GCSEs. These will then enable you to pursue your chosen education. Here, you can choose between acquiring an academic degree, for example in journalism, business management or advertising. Or you can do an advanced, degree or higher apprenticeship. Relevant fields can be digital marketer or digital community manager.

Skills

Being tech-savvy and having a brilliant eye for the latest trends are only two skills a social media manager should have or should definitely develop. A social media manager should also have strong communication and conflict management skills. Let’s take a look at what other skills are required of a social media manager.

Writing Skills

Posting social media content does not only focus on uploading reels and videos. A great deal of social media posts is still in written form. As a social media manager, you therefore need to have excellent writing skills. These enable you to come up with the perfect content that will always strike the right tone with your target audience.

Customer Skills

Speaking of your target audience: you do not only need to win it over with brilliant, appropriate and witty content. You also need to communicate with them by replying to their comments and feedback. Therefore, you need to have above-average customer skills that ideally go hand-in-hand with excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Organisational Skills

Creating social media posts and communicating with your customers is part of your daily job as a social media manager. These two tasks alone require a high level of organisational skills. They will also help you to stay on top of all the other tasks you are expected to perform as a social media manager.

Career Path

Your career as a social media manager starts at the entry level. Depending on your first employer and your work experience, you can then move into social media management in either a higher position or at a larger company. With even more work experience, you can become a senior social media manager or head of social media management. Depending on your interests and expertise, you might want to explore the career of a digital community manager. Here, you are the link between an online business and its customers.

Educational Background

You do not need an academic degree to become a social media manager. But a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree can improve your chances when applying for jobs. Relevant fields of study can be digital and social media marketing, journalism or marketing and public relations.

Alternatively, you can complete an apprenticeship. Possible options are a digital marketer advanced or degree apprenticeship or a digital community manager higher apprenticeship.

Entry Level

Entry-level positions as a social media assistant or a junior social media manager will help you gain your first work experience. You will get valuable insights into social media management. With this, you can build both your application resume and your portfolio. This experience can then help you to apply for more senior social media management positions.

Continuous Learning

If you stop learning as a social media manager, you may as well stop working in this job. Depending on your personal point of view, you have unfortunately picked a field that is prone to rapid and drastic changes. These naturally mean that you have to learn new things, methods and techniques related to social media. By continuously learning these things, you will stay on top of the social media game. Continuous learning will also help you move into more senior positions.

A Day in the Life of a Social Media Manager

You just love spending all day on social media and staying on top of the latest trends and gossip? Perfect! Why? Because being on Instagram and co. is a very vital part of your working day as a social media manager. But you do a lot more than just look at posts and reels. What else you will need to do as a social media manager? You will find out the answers in this section, where we have a close look at the day in the life of a social media manager.

Creating Content and Social Media Posts

You have started your social media manager’s working day by having a thorough look at all the relevant social media platforms? Brilliant, this will set you up for the next task on your social media manager’s to-do list: creating content and social posts. By scrolling through both your competition’s and your company’s social media, you now know what this content and these social media posts must look like. This important task can take up to 3 hours of your working day.

Analysing the Campaign Performances

After you have created new social media posts, you need to take a look at older posts and campaigns. How have they performed, how many likes and clicks have they received? Are they still performing well or do they need adjustments or should they even be stopped? You will get to the bottom of the relevant numbers by using different analytical tools, such as IZEA, Google Analytics and Sprout Social.

Look at the Community Management

Only by communicating with your target audience can you ensure a successful social media presence. In fact, most social media users and consumers are more likely to buy from you when you interact with them regularly. This includes replying to their comments and feedback within the shortest possible time frame and is nothing other than a digital form of customer service.

Social Media is every Business’s Hot Ticket

Studies have shown that on average, every adult with a mobile device spends about 71 percent of his or her time online on social media. This equals about 2.7 hours per day browsing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, meaning that every business worth its salt should have a social media presence – and a social media manager to supervise said online presence.

Tips for Thriving as a Social Media Manager

Anything connected to the digital world has one defining feature: everything changes. And everything changes with lightning speed and on an almost daily basis. This is why it is so important to thrive as a social media manager. It is the only way to stay at the top of your job. And we are sure that you will thrive – with the following three tips that are essential for a successful social media manager:

• Improve your social media knowledge
• Improve your creativity levels
• Do a postgraduate qualification

Improve your Social Media Knowledge

Long gone are the days when Facebook was the only social media platform. Over the years, the number of social media platforms has risen. And with it, the respective users and target audiences. This comes with various social media behavioural patterns which you will need to know inside out when you want to be successful at your job. In order to thrive, you need to know everything there is to know about typical times spent on social media and how people generally interact on Instagram and co. This will help you to create bespoke content and will also help you thrive as a social media manager.

Improve your Creativity Levels

Being creative is vital for you if you want to succeed as a social media manager. Ideally, you already are a very creative person who always comes up with new and brilliant ideas. If you are creative but want to be even more so, improving your creativity levels can be an important tip for thriving as a social media manager. You can achieve this by taking part in workshops, in webinars, or by reading up on becoming more creative in your spare time.

Do a Postgraduate Qualification

Even though an academic degree is not mandatory to become a social media manager, it may improve your job chances. Quite a few potential employers prefer social media managers who have earned an academic degree. Doing a postgraduate degree like a Master’s or even a PhD, for example in Social Media Management or Media Management, can be a very good tip for thriving as a social media manager.

Frequently Asked Questions