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Become a Social Media Marketing Manager
Just on LinkedIn there are 10 000 available Social Media Marketing Manager posts. The thing is that although Social Media is something people have used for almost 10 years now, very few companies fail to incorporate Social Media successfully into their company strategies.
There’s several reasons for it. Some main reasons is that Social Media is a long-term strategy that can takes time. Second, Many Social Media marketers don’t know how to fulfill CEO’s expectations as many only focus on user engagement. But the most important is that Social Media has to become part of the Social Media and the company culture. Social Media Marketing is so much more than it looks like!
In this track, we want you to get the right approach by combining Social values with CEO’s expectations in order to become a highly valuable asset.
Every day, our minds get more digitally emerged. Digital Marketing will only becoming more important to drive customers and users. Every year, new Social Media’s appears. Each channel target different user groups, but they all have different rules that are essentially to understand. The only way to understand them are by using the Social Media’s.
Social Media Marketing
Course Overview
This track is like a game. Your goal is to accumulate as many real followers with a solid a solid Social Media strategy. If you manage to find an interesting niche that interests people, you might just create an interesting business for yourself. With this track, you’ll:
- Learn to use the major Social Media’s. That includes the underlying invisible rules.
- Have your personal brand or business brand so that you’ll practice and learn by doing
- Design, manage and create content.
- Analyze your traffic and your performance.
- Set and achieve your personal goals.
- Create landing pages and drive people to sign up to your newsletters.
Our philsophy:
- Do first, and then look at the theory. It’s how you’ll learn the best and the fastest.
- Learn by yourself: be independent and be self-reliant. You’re learning because you want to, not because someone tells you to.
- Gain confidence! You’ll receive no diploma, but you’ll have a nice portfolio of skills to show. The business market doesn’t need diplomas; it needs skills!
Note: This course is not a checklist; it’s a guide. It’s made for beginners but is flexible to be used as you want.
Attitude and personality
A Social Media Manager needs to have many qualities. Above all, you need a passion for marketing, psychology and a good eye for design. A good social media approach should be unique, targeted to the company’s ideal customers, build brand awareness, communicate the core values, beliefs and mission and include the reason people should buy from you.
Social Media is something one feels and understand psychologically. It needs to be part of you and you need to love doing it. To get a little idea, read this post about how to use and understand Twitter.
Social Media is a long term relationship with customers. The person that implements the strategies should be creative, visionary (be able to understand psychological trends), and of course have the ability to manage teams and implement content strategies (videos, testimonial videos, video ads, interactive product demos written content, picture, explainer videos, viral campaigns, interactive product demos…).
You need to be a liked person as you need to get insight and collaborate with many people internally in the company.
Many believe Social Media is about posting stuff regularly onto the different Social Media platforms. It couldn’t be further from the truth. You need so much more as outlined above and as explained in what a social Marketer does.
Salary expectations
According to Payscale, the average salary for a Social Media Marketing Manager is $45,966 per year
Right now, there is 10 000 jobs worldwide demanded in Social Media, but the number is so much higher. And once you have the skills, you don’t need job posts. You can contact companies that you like and that have poor Social Media strategies, and convince them to hire you to because you can improve their business.
With the right skills and the right approach to Social Media marketing, your salary can rise well above the average level.
Social Media Manager is a fulfilling job: You’re creative, you have fun, you’re social and you are constantly stimulated intellectually.
Skills
A good Social Media Marketer requires multiple skill-sets from business and marketing to design and psychology. Some of the skills you need:
- Visual content editing (Video and Image editing)
- Know how to use Social Media (Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more)
- Design
- Landing page optimization design
- Analytical: Metric and business focused
- Goal driven, structured and efficient
- Paid online advertising (Facebook, Google Adwords, Linkedin, Twitter…)
- Content creation blogging and storytelling abilities (Excellent writer)
- A/B testing
- Internal Management and coordination: Coordinate SEO, Content Creation, Newsletter teams
- Outsourcing: For tasks such as multi-media marketing campaigns, testimonial videos, interactive product demos, animated ads, web-friendly product photos…
- CRM ( for user engagement)
- Core concepts of SEO (Social signals is becoming important in SEO)
You can outsource several of these tasks internally and externally. But when you outsource stuff you know very little about, the risk is not knowing the quality of what you paid for.
Social Media Careers
Every company today has more or less some Social Media presence. But most don’t do it well. Just on Linkedin there is 10 000 of companies searching for a Social Media Manager.
It is a creative job, so you should have little problems analyzing companies that do the work poorly. You can quickly explain how you would improve their Social Media strategy and what benefits (financial and none-financial) it would have for the company. With the right skills, you can quickly create your own jobs.
Following this track, we want you to work on your projects. If you manage, you’ll also have the opportunity to become your own boss. Many have started their companies after having grown a big user base of Social Media followers such as this website.
Tools and resources
Reading list and blogs:
- Jab, jab, jab Right hook by Gary Vaynerchuk: Understand Social media and how to connect with customers.
- Trust me I’m lying, Confessions of a Media manipulator: Understand the dynamics of online media
- Growth Hackers: Full of marketing tricks to grow your user base.
- Social Media Examiner: Full of tips and tricks to understand and use Social Media
- Gary Vaynerchuk: Full of tips and insight to understand Social Media + podcasts
Content tools and resources:
- Grammarly: Corrects your English
- Copyblogger: Inspiration for creating good post titles
- SubReddit: Allows you to check for popular topics, as well as ask for feedback
- Quora: Allows you to check for popular topics and ask for feedback
- Buzzsumo: Allows you to check trending topics
- Ali Mese: How to present content
Other tools for Social Media Marketers
- Hootsuite: Social Media Analytics
- Google Analytics: Web page analytics
- Facebook insights: Facebook Analytics
- Tweetdeck: Twitter tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and engagement.
- Eye dropper: Make sure colors match Brand identity and find colors other websites use
- Adobe colors: Check which colors fit together
- Whichtestwon: Learn about A/B testing techniques that worked for other sites.
- Mailchimp: Email marketing service with friendly A/B testing tools
Automation tools for Social Media
- BufferApp: Allows you to schedule your posts across all your social Media networks.
- Zapier: Automation tool for all your application including Social Media
- IFTTT: Automation tool to automate daily tasks including Social Media posting
- Hootsuit: Manage social networks, schedule messages and Analytics to measure ROI
- Thundeclapit: If you reach your supporter goal, Thunderclap will create a massive wave of attention for you.
#1 Find your Market
But before you open up your Social Media accounts, think business. Most important is that you create an identity around a topic that you’re passionate about (fashion, business, marketing, shoes…). Then you have make sure that it’s something that interests enough people.
Therefore do your research and check for stuff that have already worked for others. Go on Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube and other Media’s to search for topics that have already worked.
So you get the idea, Coca-Cola’s main competitor isn’t Pepsi anymore. It is thousands of small soda producers that target very specific niches. And because these small producers focus on very small and local markets, there able to take Coca-Cola’s market value. You want be one of these niches.
Objectives:
- #1 Find and decide your market
- #2 Decide whether to create a personal or business brand
- #3 Buy the domain name so that you have it for later
- #4 Create Social Media accounts: Choose the most relevant among Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook (or other Social platforms) to start your Social identity
- #5 Get a decent logo to start with and some decent Profile Cover Photos for each Media
#2 Goal setting
You also need to be extremely goal driven. There’s a common conflict in companies because the CEO’s don’t see the results of Social Media. Typically the Social Media Managers focus to much on user engagement and forget to focus on stuff that brings enough value to justify one’s salary. Bosses and managers want to see an increase in:
- Growth of likes
- Followers and Reach
- Engagement
- Leads
- Sales
To be successful, you’ll have to combine your creative skills and your creative vision with your business focus. To achieve this, you’ll have to be productive and Goal Driven. If you see this process as a game, you’ll have a great time!
Objectives:
#1 Set your weekly goals and monthly and quarterly goals. Within 3 months, aim for:
- 15000 followers on
- 2000 followers on Pinterest
- 2000 on Twitter
- 500 followers on Facebook
#3 Creating visual content
If you don’t know how to use Photoshop, start learning so that you can post great content! Start uploading your videos onto your Youtube channel as well. One popular technique is to download Youtube videos with Clipconverter and then edit, modify the length and combine with other video clips to get original content to your own Youtube Channel. A Youtube channel tends to bring quite some traffic!
Objectives:
- Go through Photoshop course if you don’t know how to use Photoshop
- Find a video editing program that fits you and start using it
- Post two videos a week on Youtube (edited videos)
- Post 3 pictures on Instagram daily ( learn to use hashtags well). Have 240 pictures ready that you post automatically with Latergram at the same time every day.
- Post every weekday on your Facebook page (learn to use hashtags well)
- Interact with Twitter influencers and post daily on Twitter. Check this post to learn more about Twitter.
- Pin daily on Pinterest and (learn to use hashtags well)
- Read Trust me I’m lying, Confessions of a Media manipulator. It’s a fun reading to understand the dynamics of online media
#4 The psychological long term importance of Social Media
The value of a company’s mission (and the ability to execute the mission) is replacing the brand value. For many years now, we’ve been influenced by giants such as Apple and Google that communicate that they want to change the world and that the things they’re doing is “bigger than business”. And they have great mission statement that they live for: “Challenge the status quo and evoke emotions in people with beautiful design” and “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
They communicate a vision, the future, fun and a life purpose. The companies that don’t have a bigger mission will lose out on the brightest talents that are looking to change the world and make a difference. And with underlying statements such as “maximizing shareholder’s value”, it’s no wonder!
Social Media strategy tells a lot about companies. When companies have a good Social Media strategy, you have the feeling that they care about the world and that they see their company in the long term! When companies appear as cold and not inspiring, you have the feeling that these companies’ mission is to make a buck!
The companies that don’t communicate vision, fun, honesty, personality and an identity will lose in the long term. The new generation looks less and less for a job, but for a life purpose!
Take a look at Innocent, they’re visionary. Healthy, fun and the give part of their profits to good causes.
Objectives:
- 1 Get inspired by Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk: People don’t care about what you do but why you do it!
- Read Jab, jab, jab Right hook by Gary Vaynerchuk to understand Social Media, how it works and how to connect with customers.
#5 Learn Design
You’ll often need to make your own design and photo montages. To be qualified, you’ll need to know how to use understand and apply design elements (color, typography, layout and composition), and, of course, be good with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and similar programs.
All this knowledge will also be required to evolve in your job. And once you have strong foundations in Design, you can start to outsource and manage teams.
Objectives:
- Watch Introduction to Graphic Design
- Watch Foundation of Colors
- watch Foundation of Typograpy
- Foundations of Layout and Composition
- Apply the skills
On Lynda, you have access to such a vast amount of videos. Once you’re ready to take it to the next levels, start taking more advanced courses.
#6 Copywriting and Landing Pages
The structure is simple. Launch a website; Create your landing page (designed to get people to sign up for a newsletter); add the url to all your Social Media’s profiles and; redirect traffic to website and convince visitors to sign up for your newsletter.
Objectives:
- You’ve probably already bought yourself a Domain name you want to use, if not, do it!
- Watch landing page basics
- Open up a Mailchimp account, form which you’ll create your newsletters.
- Create a landing page where your goal is to make them sign up for your newsletter. If you want to use WordPress, you can quickly and easily create landing pages with Thrive Themes. Other popular options are Strikingly and Squarespace. If you need to learn WordPress, check it out this WordPress course from Team Treehouse.
- Add Google Analytics script to your page
- Add website address to your Social Media accounts.
- Do a PR stunt so that your followers become aware of your webpage
- Create an account on Medium and create a weekly blog posts on Medium.
- Send out a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter and redirect people to your articles or interesting resources in your niche. Also check out our Email Marketing track for more inspiration.
Landing page Basics
How to create your landing pageCreate a landing page
Learn the basics of landing pagesCreate your own website
Using wordpressCreate your own website
Using WordPress, click to get to a step by step tutorial from team tree house.#7 Analytics
Learn Google Analytics
Through LyndaGoogle Analytics class
Click here and get access to the Lynda course and get 14 day trialAs a Social Media Manager, you might have to know how to :
- Develop benchmarks against competitors.
- Identify and develop tests to measure impact of social media.
- Analyze customer behavior and buying patterns through Social Media.
- Measure impact of PR campaigns, posts and multimedia content.
- Analyze and report social media actions on a monthly basis for successes and new opportunities.
Objectives:
- Take a Google Analytics course to understand how it works
- Start analyzing your traffic from Social Media by using Google Analytics
- Try out Hootsuite. They manage Manage social networks, schedule messages, engage your audiences, and measure ROI right from the dashboard.
#8 Facebook and Google Ads
- A/B test
- Drive traffic to your landing page
- test if you have a market.
As a Social Media marketing manager, you’ll be doing a lot of A/B testing to see what messages and photos are the most popular with your target customers. Facebook Adwords is great to see what photos and messages are the most compelling. Considering that you’ll be responsible for compelling campaigns and promotions, you’ll have to know how to get your point across in a consistent and compelling manner.
While you work on your thing, you want to check if you’re wasting your time by checking if you have a market or not. It has been covered in detail in SEO training. We absolutely recommend you to read it how to test your if you have a market!
Objectives:
- Sign up for your free credits on Facebook (50$) and Google (50$).
- Read Chapter 2 of the SEO track
- Apply exercises of the chapter to check your market
Adwords fundaments
Learn to use AdwordsFacebook advertisement
Learn to use FacebookFacebook ads
Learn to use Facebook ads on LyndaNext steps
If you have worked on it for a while, the future should look bright. With all this competence, you are already highly valued on the labor market!
- Either you’ve found yourself a market and you have your own business. If you’ve managed to get over 50 000 real followers on Instagram, there is a good chance you’ll be able to make a living for yourself.
- Another option is becoming a Freelancer ( Elance, Fiverr)
- Have you worked intensely on your project, you should have for at least 6-12 months, you should now possess the skills to become a qualified Social Media Manager.
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