What Social Media Managers Do

A social media manager is one who is in charge of your social media accounts. Whether you are a business, politician, artist, religious or charitable organization, and so forth, having a social media manager will help you reach your goals.

In this post, I will discuss the roles and responsibilities of a social media manager. In case you are still not sure whether you need a social media manager, kindly read this article Social Media Manager: 8 Signs That You Need One. If that is not your situation, then let’s dive in.

What Do Social Media Managers Do?

Social media managers basically do four things. They find, plan, create, publish, and evaluate the content on your social media platforms. Let me say this emphatically, don’t just give your social media accounts to anyone to handle. That person should have a system in place with which he or she works. 

At Ghana Yellow Pages we have two digital marketing services: Coaching and Outsourcing. Coaching is when we guide you or your team to do it for you. Outsourcing is when we do everything for you. Irrespective of the plan you choose, we have forms and monthly dashboards which address each component of the four activities listed above. Now let me explain each action further.

Finding Content

On social media, just like any other aspect of digital marketing, consistency is key. If you post today and come back weeks later to post again, it will not make your social media strategy effective. But the issue here is finding quality and relevant content to post constantly.

The job of the social media manager is to find content that he or she will post frequently on your social media channels. He or she should have a system for generating content. The hint we will give you is that your content should do three things: educate your audience, inspire them, and promote your goods or services.

Planning Content

After the social media manager finds the content to post, he or she has to identify when to post them and on what social media platforms. For example, let’s say she is a social media manager working for a bakery. She will post motivational messages on Monday, tips about the health benefits of bread ingredients on Tuesday, how to prepare sandwiches on Wednesday, and the different types of bread the bakery makes on Thursday, and so on. This is a basic overview because it can be more complex than this simple illustration given.

Creating Content

This is where the social media manager creates the content itself. The content can be an Instagram Reel, a Tweet, a Facebook image post, and so forth. It is usually advised that your social media manager produces content in batches. That in one sitting, he or she produces enough content for the week or for the month. Again, this also depends on the type of business you own. Nevertheless, creating in advance is very important and leads us to the next step.

Publishing Content

Publishing content is what we call posting content. Once the week’s or month’s content has been created, the next step is to post them on your various social media accounts. The social media manager will then use a publishing tool to schedule the posts. Scheduling the post is whereby you post something today but you set the time for it to appear on the account to be in the future. 

There are both free and paid publishing tools. Some free ones include Meta Business (for Facebook and Instagram) and TweetDeck for Twitter. Paid ones include Hootsuite, Buffer, and so on. However, some of the paid ones have free plans with limited features.

Evaluating Content

After posting content the next work for the social media to do is to analyze the performance of the post. The work doesn’t end at posting. The social media manager will then observe the metrics or key performance indicators to see whether the posts are doing well or not. Then he or she will report on them. And the next line of action will be taken to improve the situation.

What To Look Out For In a Social Media Manager

In case you are wondering about the key skills a social media manager should possess, here are some of them. 

Writing: The social media manager should be able to write content (even if it is short) that is logical, has no grammatical errors, is engaging, and attracts attention. 

Design: The social media manager should have some basic level of graphic design skills. He or she should be able to design artwork with texts and photos or videos. You are going to use the power of words and images to communicate your brand identity. Therefore you need a manager who knows how to write well and produce nice graphics.

Customer Service: The social media manager will handle customer messages and comments. Some of these can be complaints or negative comments. This requires that the social media manager has good customer service skills. So that he or she doesn’t respond negatively to negative or angry comments.

Learner: The social media manager should be learning.  Apps keep evolving; for instance, Instagram is now more about videos than photos. This demands that the social media manager should be a learner and not be stuck in the way he or she has been doing things. He or she should be able to adapt whenever there is a change in the algorithm of the platform.

If you are looking for certified professionals to help you with your social media marketing, you send us an email at bisa@ghanayellowpages.com or you can DM us on any of the social media platforms (@ghyellowpages). Our Digital Marketing Services Coaching and Outsourcing products are tailored to accelerate your business.