An SMM manager is a specialist who promotes a brand or product on social networks. From the outside, the profession seems fun and easy: you can work from anywhere in the world, create pictures, publish them in a company account, and then receive a salary that does not depend on the number of visitors or likes. But it is not so.

A true SMM specialist is a strategist: he thinks over a promotion plan, creates content, and knows how to create a successful brand presence in the market. Let’s take a closer look at what functions it performs and what benefits it brings to the company.

What is an SMM manager?

The SMM manager is responsible for such a business development tool as social networks. He draws up accounts, writes texts, and communicates with subscribers.

Requirements for a manager vary depending on the size of the organization, its specifics, and the geography of sales. In some companies, he orders ads from bloggers, in others, he creates content and supervises the work of sales managers.

In a small company, he may be required to run sweepstakes and run targeted ads. In a large company, a team is working on a project: copywriter, designer, targeted advertising
specialist, marketer, content manager, partner manager. They solve a common problem – they create interesting content for a specific target audience and attract new customers.

Basically, an SMM specialist does the following work:

• Analyzes the niche, the position of the company in the market, the interests and needs of the target audience. Studies competitors, their distinctive properties, and unique selling proposition (USP).
• Thinks over a promotion strategy, sets goals, and calculates the budget that is needed to achieve the required indicators.
• Develops a content plan and adjusts it as needed.
  Creates content if the staff does not have a separate position of a copywriter or content writer.
• Sets up targeted advertising in those companies where there is no targeting specialist.
• Places ads with bloggers, holds sweepstakes, contests, and other collaborations.
• Prepares reports for the customer.

Responsibilities of an SMM manager

Social media marketing does not sell and does not directly affect revenue growth. So what is the use of an SMM specialist? To understand this, you need to study his responsibilities. To do this, we will divide the manager’s work into several stages: strategic planning, content generation, promotion, increasing loyalty, and monitoring results.

Strategic planning

Maintaining social networks begins with building a strategy – a step-by-step plan for promoting a company on social networks. The SMM manager analyzes the behavioral characteristics of the target audience and competitors’ pages, conducts an audit of the customer’s accounts.

Then, based on this information, he:

• sets goals and objectives for promotion;
• creates a content plan ;
• prescribes design options and creatives for targeted advertising, as well as a communication strategy and ways to engage the audience;
• agree on KPIs for tracking results. According to it, the customer evaluates the work of a specialist and monitors the dynamics from month to month.

The finished strategy contains the following blocks:

Advantages and disadvantages of a product or brand. The manager analyzes the client’s capabilities in any convenient way, for example, using a SWOT analysis :

• Goals and objectives of online development. Based on the results of the analysis, he forms the goals that he will achieve: increase brand awareness, increase customer loyalty, engage subscribers in a dialogue, stand out from competitors, increase sales, collect leads, ROI.
• Customer analysis. An SMM manager draws up a portrait of a potential buyer: who it is and what it does, what hobbies and pains.
• Competitor monitoring. The specialist analyzes competing companies and their social networks.
• Increased traffic. At the stages of analyzing the company and evaluating competitors, the employee finds out where the traffic comes from. This is necessary to determine in which social network to promote, and in which there are no potential customers.
  Content. Draws up a plan with topics of publications, types of content, and short abstracts.
• Activity. The manager prescribes an approximate budget for competitions and sweepstakes and the mechanics of their holding.
  Promotion. The specialist chooses those channels that will help in achieving the goals: targeted advertising, bloggers, thematic communities selling landing pages, which the user gets after clicking on the advertisement, etc.
• Analytics. At the end of the reporting period, the client receives a document with the results of the work. At the planning stage, the parties agree on the form of the report, its content, and the frequency of preparation.

Without knowing the basics of strategic planning, an SMM manager will not be able to answer: what kind of company it is, what are its difficulties, and what needs to be done for growth. If you have a ready-made SMM strategy, the specialist:

• Shows the client the options for the development of social networks based on market analysis, consumer behavior, and competitors’ actions.
• Sets the direction of the entire company. Employees understand what goals the marketer is pursuing and see ways to solve them.
• Fixes the goals and objectives of the campaign, KPIs of responsible persons.
• Calculates the costs of promotion and achievement of indicators.

Strategic planning helps answer the questions: what and how to do to engage the audience.

When the strategy is ready, the manager draws up a content plan – a schedule for the release of publications in the account. The plan includes texts, pictures, videos, animations, links to goods and services.

Content generation

Content is the main tool of an SMM manager in the fight for audience attention. It can be used to educate, entertain, engage, and even sell. A professional understands how different types of content differ and knows how to create them.

Key responsibilities of an SMM specialist:

• Create texts for publications. It is important to be able to compose posts that involve dialogue. If the manager does not know how to write himself, he organizes the process: he looks for an executor, formulates the task, and agrees on the finished material.
• Design, search and create visuals for publications. It is important to make a variety of content: shoot videos with AR effects, simple photos, collages, and animations. Experienced SMM managers use photo and video editors to create content: InShot, iMovie, Snapseed, VSCO, Pixlr, and others.

The specialist must be able to create all types of content: selling, news, entertainment, and engaging. Observation, constant practice, and continuous learning help to stay in trend.

Promotion

Other responsibilities of an SMM manager are to attract the target audience and stimulate them to take action through targeted advertising, ads in thematic communities, and participation in partner promotions, as well as attract bloggers and influencers and create viral content.

• Targeted advertising is a promotion aimed at a specific audience. It helps shoe sellers find women who prefer high-heeled shoes, and traders sell their signals to top managers and business leaders. To customize advertising, an SMM manager must undergo training, master services for audience scraping (data collection), and constantly practice: create hypotheses, come up with creatives, test different ideas, change formats.
• Advertising in thematic communities is another paid way to attract a target audience. The manager analyzes the subscribers of city publics and thematic groups, agrees on the terms of promotion, prepares advertising content, and monitors the effectiveness.
• Advertising with bloggers and influencers is a form of marketing in which brands postpaid posts to influencers’ accounts. Advertising attracts the attention of a loyal audience interested in the authoritative opinion of the profile owner. Subscribers watch the content, go to the account and perform the targeted action.
• Reciprocal posting is a way of sharing an interesting audience with other accounts. An SMM manager finds a blog of an indirect competitor working with the target audience and enters into an agreement on the mutual publication of content: posts, contests, promotions, sweepstakes, etc.
• Sharing is a free way to promote. An SMM specialist creates viral content that users send to each other, virally increasing their reach.

Loyalty

An SMM specialist partially fulfills the duties of a customer relations manager: communicates with subscribers, maintains and moderates an account, and neutralizes negativity.

• Their interest in the product depends on how quickly the brand answers questions and advises users. The manager must understand what the company offers: types of products, cost of goods, technical characteristics, conditions of purchase and delivery, types of packaging, and other services.
• Maintaining and moderating an account involves publishing content, cleaning the community from unnecessary comments and “dead” subscribers, fighting aggression and spam. A blog is the face of a brand on social media, an SMM manager must keep track of everything that can negatively affect the company’s reputation.
• Disgruntled customers often leave negative comments on the company’s social media pages. An SMM specialist must listen to the client, smooth out negative reactions and help solve the problem or convey its solution to the responsible employee.

Monitoring

The specialist must analyze the input data and the results of his work:

• Evaluate the primary results and, if necessary, adjust the content plan.
• Analyze ads, track results and adjust the promotion plan.
• Submit monthly reports to the client.

An SMM manager must not only develop a strategy, but also track the results at each stage. To do this, you need to know the basics of web analytics, be able to analyze traffic, conversion, reach, and other indicators.

How to become an SMM manager?

You can master the profession on your own through the Internet or from books. There are many articles and videos online to help you understand the basics of SMM. In this case, you will also have to look for and correct mistakes, gain experience, and improve knowledge yourself. This is usually time-consuming and unpredictable.

If you want to become a professional, we advise you to enroll in specialized courses. Experienced teachers not only teach theory but also help create your own projects. They share their best practices, talk about trends and effective promotion tools.

What qualities should a real SMM manager have?

To become a professional, be prepared to work on yourself. An SMM specialist constantly interacts with clients, communicates with other departments and management. The better you improve your communication skills, the easier it will be for you to connect with the audience. A good marketer knows how to deal with negativity and win over people.

Much of a manager’s job involves planning and analyzing the situation. To understand the cause and effect relationships, pump your logic and analytical skills.

Develop creativity. Writing content plans and generating content every day is difficult. Look for inspiration in non-standard things, write down random thoughts, save interesting ideas. This can come in handy at the most unexpected moment.

In addition, be prepared to recycle. SMM manager is a creative profession that has no boundaries and time zones. You will succeed if you give your best.