The world is surrounded by social media and, consequently, everyone feels confident in their ability to manage a social media account. So what is a Social Media Manager? Why should you be hiring a Social Media Manager (SMM)? And for those Social Media Managers out there, are you really getting the recognition that you deserve? Or are you the marketing jack-of-all-trades?

I’m going to pull the curtains on my six years in the role, both in-house and as a freelancer for various companies, to examine what a social media manager is, what does a social media manager do, what a social media manager does not do, and considerations you need to make to either hire for the role or to pursue the role.

What is a Social Media Manager?

Let’s tackle the most important question first of all: what is a Social Media Manager? Put simply, the Social Media Manager is responsible for most, if not all aspects of a company’s myriad social media channels. A good Social Media Manager can be demonstrated through consistent, regular content uploads that demonstrate both a strong, consistent brand and a commitment to hitting social media KPIs.

Common evidence of a poor SMM is inconsistent content of a low brand quality that does not contribute to the wider business goals.

The problem is, what specific aspect of social media is the Social Media Manager responsible for: community management? Social media strategy? Content creation? Influencer partnerships on social media? Social media monitoring and social media listening? Staff enablement and brand ambassador programme development roll outs? Data analysis?

What does a Social Media Manager do daily?

Here are the key responsibilities that all SMM should perform, regardless of sector, vertical or industry:

• Analyse and report on social media channel performance, presented either through automated email notifications from reporting tools or through a manual regular analytics presentation
• Create a Social Media Strategy
• Review competitor social media profiles
• Develop an internal Social Media Policy
• Manage the channel mix; what posts, how many and at what time per channel
• Compiling content
• Leverage Social Media Monitoring to identify and report on content engagement, comments and brand health
• Leverage Social Media Listening to identify and report on critical industry trends and developments
• Ensure that content aligns with brand guidelines, brand tone of voice and themes to ensure brand integrity (often referred to as the ‘brand guardians’)
• Maintain and update a dedicated social media content calendar
• Recommend content, themes and topics for the wider marketing or communications editorial calendar
• Communicate social media challenges and successes internally to key stakeholders
• Support and advise internal stakeholders on how to optimise their social presence to align with business objectives

In summary, a social media manager should be chiefly responsible for orchestrating the overall strategy, implementation and analysis of social media content. At its core, an SMM role should be strategic, data-driven and informed by both internal and external trends.

What does a Social Media Manager not *need* to do?

You may have already noticed some omissions from the list of SMM responsibilities that may initially seem like an oversight, particularly when it comes to content, so let me get something clear: one of the most common reasons that I’ve seen for SMM burnout is the blight of being ‘a jack of all trades’, feeling responsible for creating all elements in the social media production process.

I’ve seen the memes, you’ve seen the memes: a SMM should apparently be a copywriter, a graphic designer, a PPC specialist, a customer service representative, a PR executive, a videographer, an audio mixer, a podcast host, a photographer, a CRM manager, an individually outspoken brand advocate, a campaign manager. Oh, and they need to be online all the time.

This drives SMMs crazy. We cannot do all of these things, all of the time and to a consistently high standard. Some of you can — I thought so too, and then I got depressed, quit my job and still had requests coming through from my previous employer and various employees. I can assure you, it is simply not sustainable to deliver what is essentially the work of an entire content team.

So, here is my list of tasks that a Social Media Manager does not *need* to do (and even if you can, I would strongly recommend that you delegate):

• Creating graphics
• Creating animations
• Recording and editing videos
• Capturing and editing photos
• Recording and editing podcasts or audio bites
• Drafting social copy
• Responding to every comment
• Plan and execute paid social media campaigns
• Writing website articles for associated social posts

Should a Social Media Manager create content?

The short answer is: maybe. A Social Media Manager is responsible for executing on their social media strategy, in the same way that a restaurant manager ensures that a restaurant is running smoothly and may not necessarily be in the kitchen preparing the food for hungry customers. It’s usually best to have someone in the SMM role that has experience in creating the content, as this will aid with their ability to make content recommendations, but the best situation is for the SMM to be a part of a wider content team that comprises content writers and designers.

However, your SMM could in fact be one of your first hires on the content team — this was true for me in two of my three Social Media Manager positions — or you could simply be a very small content team. In these cases, an SMM might be creating content so I would recommend that your social media strategy takes this into account and has a minimal content mix that enables you to post regularly, consistently while also providing freedom to perform the more critical, strategic aspects of the role.

Should a Social Media Manager run paid ads?

No, a traditional Social Media Manager is typically responsible for organic social growth and should not be expected by default to manage paid social channels due to vastly different skillsets. Despite the obvious label overlap of ‘social’, paid social requires a drastically different strategy and implementation to organic social media and necessitates skills that will simply not be picked up naturally by the day-to-day responsibilities of organic social posting.

For example, your first paid social campaign will require the technical implementation of various tracking pixels onto your website by adding tracking scripts to the header tag on every page, and you must ensure that various conversion events — which you will need to determine — are firing correctly. This requires some knowledge of HTML, or an understanding of Google Tag Manager. Additionally, this will require reasonable knowledge of Google Analytics Events and how to setup Goals in GA as a minimum.

Secondly, the ‘paid’ nature of the ads inherently requires an understanding of budgets, revenue targets, ROI calculations and forecasting; I have seem countless SMMs in forums that have launched their first paid campaigns only to realise (or not, unfortunately) they were reporting business revenue as net profits when in fact their campaigns had a net loss.

Check out my video here on how to measure ROI on your paid social campaigns.

This is not to say that a SMM should have no involvement in paid social but, rather, they should work in collaboration with a PPC Manager or Performance Marketer to consult on branding and tone of voice or make recommendations to the paid specialists on content that has performed well organically, which could benefit from being sponsored. Similarly, a SMM may call on paid if a high-value post has been underperforming and could benefit from some targeted traffic.

Why do I need a Social Media Manager?

Whether you are just starting out with social media or you have an established presence, a Social Media Manager is vital for ensuring that your social media profiles are optimised, consistent, engaging and tailored to suit your evolving business needs.

As a reference, here are just a few of the many business benefits to hiring a social media manager:

• An informative and tailored social media strategy, which can increase stakeholder buy-in
• A clear and deliverable social media content calendar
• Clear and actionable insights on how your social content is driving business goals
• Critical feedback from customers and potential clients on your brand, which can help to identify customer pain points or high-value clients for sales to pursue
• Critical insights about trends and conversation topics around your industry, which can inform business directions, such as new industry regulation
• Establish a dialogue through social channels that can encourage new customers
• Raising the profile of potential internal thought leaders and brand advocates

Not every business can hire a SMM but I would strongly consider hiring one for the above business benefits, or up-skilling a content writer or content marketer in order to best leverage one of the biggest traffic drivers on the internet.

Summary

Social Media Managers are arguably some of the most versatile colleagues in the digital marketing industry; they’re strategic, they’re highly creative, they’re data-driven and they’re inherently collaborative.

A good social media manager can be the difference between your brand being lost in a sea of online voices, or being the recognisable champion of your industry. They create memories, they can inspire colleagues, they can forge strong relationships with new customers, they can strengthen partnerships with other brands.

But just remember: there’s often only one of them. As much as they want to and can do the content team’s roles, help them out by delegating the work load and establishing keen internal supports that can provide and assist with the content creation; the content will improve, the volume will grow and your SMM will feel valued.