Almost half of global net users (44.8%) used social media to search for make data in 2020. Given its prevalence, businesses now recognize why information technology's then important to hire a social media director to manage their online presence.

Working equally a social media manager can be challenging. One thing that all social media professionals share in common is the need to wear many hats. From content creation to customer service to PR to sales, businesses often rely on their social media managers to "do it all" when it comes to managing and executing their social media strategy.

Whether you lot're an aspiring social media director, or an Hr manager looking to hire one, we've outlined the key aspects and requirements of the chore below.

Plus, watch this if you want to learn more than nigh what information technology's like being a social media manager at Hootsuite:

Bonus: Customize our gratis, professionally designed resume templates to land your dream social media chore today. Download them now.

A social media manager's responsibilities vary widely depending on the size of an system.

Within smaller companies, a social media manager may have to also act as a one-man content cosmos team, including doing graphic design, copywriting, and photo and video editing. Within larger organizations, social media managers may piece of work with agencies and/or the teams and specialists with those skills.

No matter how big their team and resources, social media managers have many duties to juggle.

A typical social media job clarification includes the following responsibilities:

  • Edifice content calendars and scheduling/publishing content
  • Customs direction (replying to comments and messages, flagging bug to other teams)
  • Acting as a channel owner for all social media accounts (including knowing each channel's best practices, deciding which content goes out where and when, and adapting content beyond channels)
  • Creating campaign plans for business and marketing priorities (eastward.g. product launches, rebrands, awareness campaigns, contests, etc.)
  • Writing artistic briefs (to give direction to agencies and/or internal designers, video editors, and copywriters)
  • Supporting influencer marketing efforts (such as identifying and selecting influencers, reposting content, and engaging with influencer posts)
  • Creating weekly/monthly reports (and ad-hoc reports for major marketing campaigns, sponsorships, etc.)
  • Social listening (including monitoring hashtags and branded keywords, detecting brand prophylactic issues, managing social media crises, and identifying real-time marketing opportunities)
  • Overseeing content, providing feedback to creative/content teams (acting as the subject matter practiced for all content destined for publishing on social media)
  • Guiding best practices for social media (staying up-to-date on new social networks and features)
  • Creating and/or curating content (taking photos, writing re-create, designing or modifying graphics, editing videos, finding UGC content, and contributing to editorial content)

A typical solar day of a social media marketing manager involves lots of content creation, meetings, and ensuring comments and messages are addressed to continue customers happy. While social media is fast-paced and no 2 days are the same, here is what a day-in-the-life oft looks like for a social media director:

ix-10am: Checking emails and replying to mentions and messages (or assigning them to other teams)

10am-noon: Focused work (such as writing creative briefs, providing feedback, or edifice content calendars)

Noon-1pm: Lunch break – go outside, meditate, take a screen pause

1-3pm: Meetings with other teams and departments (social media marketing managers oftentimes piece of work on cross-functional teams, managing approvals from multiple stakeholders)

3-three:30pm: Analyzing results, creating reports

3:30-4pm: Reading newsletters, blogs, watching webinars

four:30-5pm: Replying to mentions and messages

v-five:30pm: Scheduling content for next twenty-four hour period

There isn't ane best instruction path or piece of work history for social media managers. Great social media managers can come up from a diverseness of backgrounds due to the variety of skills used in the role.

Hither are x skills that are key for being a strong social media manager:

ane. Writing

Virtually every social media post needs a caption, then good writing is a not-negotiable skill for all social media managers.

Fifty-fifty more than writing, social media managers should be practiced at editing and writing curt-grade copy to adhere to grapheme limits and best caption lengths. It's a skill in itself to exist able to convey a brand bulletin, a CTA, and be snappy and engaging within 280 characters.

2. Editing

If there's anything that should offend a social pro, it'due south typos. Having repeated typos or poor grammar is a sure way to hurt a make'south reputation online, and social media users are quick to bound on mistakes. Having expert attending to detail means that social media managers will spot spelling or grammer errors before hitting "send" on a mail.

3. Design

Given that visuals play such an important office in social media (particularly on platforms like Instagram), social media managers demand the ability to judge betwixt good and bad design.

They don't have to exist graphic designers themselves, but having a discerning eye and existence aware of photo editing trends makes it much easier when working with designers and giving constructive feedback.

4. Awareness of popular civilization and electric current events

From memes to trends, social media is congenital upon pop culture and electric current events. This is especially true for platforms like TikTok.

Social pros always take their finger on the pulse of what'southward happening, not but to jump on brand-relevant real-time opportunities, just besides to know when to pause social media posts due to major world events.

Having potent global sensation helps social media managers to be aware of cultural sensitivities and spot potentially off-color jokes that could impairment a business' reputation.

5. Organisation

When information technology comes to managing a content calendar, there are a lot of pieces that are subject to modify. Posting daily means working at a fast pace, with lots of pieces of which to keep rail. This is why postal service scheduling is a time-saving feature for many social pros.

Social media managers need to be highly organized in society to ensure assets are delivered on time, on brand, and approved by all stakeholders. People who enjoy making systems and can handle context switching brand excellent social media managers.

6. Good business sense and objective-oriented

While social media managers don't need business degrees to be successful, it's important to have a good sense of how business organization works. It is a social media director'south responsibility to ensure that the social media marketing strategy ladders up to the business concern' overall objectives.

The all-time social media managers take strategic minds, and are e'er thinking near the bigger motion-picture show and how posts can back up higher-level marketing and business priorities.

7. Data analysis

While many social media pros excel at being artistic, they also need to exist unafraid of working with numbers. Social media platforms provide tons of information (sometimes too much), and then it's important to be able to wade through lots of data and detect the nigh meaningful points that lead to actionable insights.

Knowing basic Excel skills allows social media managers to extract and manipulate data without needing to rely on others. This is valuable when needing to analyze per-post performance or drill down into very specific social analyses.

Having a robust social media analytics tool also helps social media managers to hands spot trends and extract insights—without the hassle of spreadsheets.

8. Can work under pressure

Managing a business' social media channels oftentimes means beingness the voice of a brand. This is a big responsibility to take on, no matter how big or small the brand. Therefore, social media managers need to exist cool nether pressure.

There is oftentimes lots of scrutiny on everything a social media manager posts, both from followers and employees. Thoughts and prayers to every social media managing director who has had to explain a tweet (or why not to tweet something) to the CEO.

9. Resilience

When interim every bit the make voice, it's too easy for social media managers to experience that negative replies and messages directed at the brand are also directed at them personally.

This can actually article of clothing down on a social media director's mental health. It'due south important for social media managers to remind themselves to detach their personal worth from the brand and, if necessary, stop reading comments.

Note: Ideally social media managers also have bosses who are understanding of the cost that working on the frontlines of digital engagement tin have, and who are respecting of piece of work life rest.

10. Able to ready boundaries and unplug

Related to the previous trait, social media marketing managers should know how to set personal boundaries. Whether it's silencing notifications, taking screen breaks, or taking a vacation to a wifi-optional motel in the middle of nowhere, these habits are important for preventing burnout (the rates of which are quite high in the social media industry).

Thanks to the e'er-on nature of social media, social pros have the tendency to always be checking mentions. The best thing a social media director can do for themselves and the concern is to create well-documented guidelines (such as tone of vocalism, style guides, and platform playbooks) so that they tin manus off the social reins to someone else and not exist tempted to cheque in while on holiday.

There are lots of ways to larn the social media skills and concepts needed to become a social media manager, with no one ready path being favored over others by hiring managers.

Here are a few different ways to get a social media managing director:

  • Online courses: Acquire the fundamentals of social media marketing online and at your own pace. Here are 15 courses and resource to acquire social media, and when yous're fix to deep-dive into each platform, here are 9 Instagram courses.
  • Certifications: Certificate-based courses normally provide more in-depth training compared to normal courses and test your social media skills to ensure you're job-set. Hootsuite Academy offers a comprehensive Social Marketing Certification Course to get started, equally well equally avant-garde certificate programs.
  • Bootcamps/training programs: Bootcamps offer immersive versions of courses (both online and in-person) that provide a fast runway to getting trained equally a social media managing director, often in 6-9 weeks. Consider these options from Brainstation and Full general Assembly.
  • Internships: Internships, ideally paid, are a bang-up way to gain experience when starting from scratch. In addition to social media internships, also consider internships in digital marketing, communications, PR, and advertising agencies, which all tin can give exposure to social media tasks.
  • Shadowing and mentorship: If you're already working in a company or have a connection to an established social media pro, consider asking them if you can shadow them in their job. Shadowing allows you to observe and larn the day-to-twenty-four hour period responsibilities, and also evaluate if working in social media is right for you.

If you're interested in working in social media, jump start your job hunt with our social media manager resume templates. The templates are designed to highlight how your experience lines up with the most important skills for social media jobs.

Utilise the templates to update your existing resume or build a new ane from scratch.

Here's how to use them:

Stride i. Download the fonts

To utilize our social media manager resume templates, you will need to have these fonts downloaded on your computer.

Click on each link to get started.

  • https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rubik
  • https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway
  • https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Playfair+Display

Click Select this font in the top correct corner.

Google font page for Rubik - editing a custom social media manager resume

Click the download pointer in the acme right corner.

downloading a Google fontk - editing a custom social media manager resume

Once the font package has downloaded onto your reckoner, open the folder. Double click each font file to install every variation individually. Click Install Font.

installing Google font on your desktop - editing a custom social media manager resume

installing Google font on your desktop - editing a custom social media manager resume

Step ii. Download the templates

Bonus: Customize our complimentary, professionally designed resume templates to land your dream social media job today. Download them now.

social media manager resume template with red font social media manager resume template with black font

Right-click on the zip file to download from Google Bulldoze.

Don't forget to "unzip" the file on your computer!

Footstep 3. Commencement editing

Open your called file, Chan or Leopold, in Microsoft Word. Click anywhere to get-go customizing the file for your own experience. You lot tin change or remove any text, icons, or colors.

Make sure to salve often and rename the edited file with your own name.

Now that you know what a social media manager does and the top skills needed to become 1, you're one step closer to launching your career in social media.

Adjacent step: learn the tools used past successful social media managers. Y'all tin can use Hootsuite to easily manage all your social channels, collect real-time data, and engage with your audience across social networks. Try it free today.

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