The social media manager and his role in social media marketing
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is more than a buzzword or a phenomenon. Social Media Marketing is the marketing of the future; where companies, businesses or individuals take advantage of available Internet and communication technologies and use them as tools to deliver customer-centric messages that encourage engagement and outreach, ultimately achieving marketing and brand communication goals.
MarketingSherpa has published research revealing that more companies are shifting much of their marketing efforts from traditional networks to social media. Why? These companies are seeing higher ROI from social media efforts and traditional media is not as effective as it used to be.
This growing interest in SMM has also created opportunities for a position that didn’t exist a short time ago, the Social Media Manager.
Everyone is becoming social; These are not just Fortune 500 companies, but any company or person who has a product or service to offer, such as dentists, mechanics, painters, wedding planners… people who are in dire need but don’t know how to campaign on the streets. social media, and you probably don’t have time to spend on Facebook or Twitter looking for new customers.
Forrester has released statistics showing that 99% of retailers plan to develop an online presence specifically on Facebook by 2011. Now, herein lies the demand for these types of marketers…people who are already SMM experts and will deliver the results. faster. than a business owner putting themselves on an SMM learning curve.
But what do social media managers do? In addition to creating and implementing your social media strategy, they are the executive assistants to your brand, performing tasks such as:
1. Cleaning up your Twitter communications and deleting spam messages, leaving those messages that are important to you… or as in the case of customer/support relations, routing them to the appropriate person or department in a company.
2. Blogging and all tasks related to blogging and functions related to maintaining a blog, such as approving comments and cleaning up; and in some cases for managers with knowledge in search engine optimization (SEO), blog optimization and content development.
They also help ensure that your blog posts/content get the most traction by posting them on other sites at different times of the week, or exposing them to your Twitter followers at different times of the day so more people pick up on it.
3. On social networks, grow your network or followers. On Facebook they can be your profile friends or fans in the case of fan pages, and on Twitter they are your followers.
It’s all about numbers, the more people in your network, the more people see or read your messages. Social media managers will find people who are their target audience, follow or connect with them, and then facilitate engagement to develop relationships.
The three keys to success are network growth, content sharing, and engaging your audience.
These tasks can take anywhere from half an hour to 1 or 2 in a day, so hiring a regular employee might not be profitable. Doing this yourself or training someone within the company to do it may not produce immediate or ideal results for a variety of reasons. That’s why you’d be better off just hiring an expert to do it for you, get results faster, and focus on more important aspects of your business.
Who says no one can make money from social media? Companies and businesses are, as are the people who make social media work for them, of course, the latter probably having more fun… making a good living getting paid to play on Twitter and Facebook all day long! day!