In the last decade, the need for social media managers has boomed. According to the U.S. Department of Labor statistics, this trend is not slowing down any time soon. The role of a social media manager or specialist is categorized within the “Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Manager” sector of the labor force, which is projected to grow by 10% before 2026.
Although more companies are hiring social media community managers, the role hasn’t evolved much towards goal-oriented, metrics-driven marketing. This could be because many companies haven’t figured out the right way to measure the ROI of their efforts. Because of this, they don’t know how to hire someone who can help them drive real business results.
Download a ready-made job description for the social media manager role here.
With little focus on bottom-line social media efforts, companies relegate the social media role to people with little experience. Once hired, those social media specialists aren’t ready to lead successful goal-oriented efforts.
While a social media job might center around posting strategies, companies should broaden their search and look for experts who are also creative or strategic. Here’s an example of what a strong job description for a social media role might look like:
A strong social media manager should have versatile skills that span from copywriting to design, but each type of social role usually requires a primary focus or expertise.
If you’re a manager trying to hire your next social media maven, it’s important to identify how your company needs to grow first. For example, if you want to expand your brand on visual platforms, you will want to hire a social media expert with knowledge and experience related to multimedia production.
If you’re an aspiring social media manager, it’s also important to know which skills you should hone in on to become in expert in your field.
To help businesses managers and young social media specialists, we’ve crafted a list of eight social media job roles that could help a company grow.
Social Community Manager Jobs
1. Copywriter
Content is a key component in any marketing strategy, especially when social media is involved. Even if you have dedicated bloggers or ebook writers, text-based content still needs to be adapted to each social network. For example, a strong social media manager might write Instagram captions with a relaxed and relatable voice, but might write in a more business-oriented voice for LinkedIn
This role is typically responsible for the creation and adaptation of written content for specific social media networks. This person should be comfortable writing social posts that are as short as 140 characters or blogs over 200 words.
Skills Necessary
Copywriting
Understanding of Brand Voice
Adaptability
Positioning
Creativity
How This Drives Results
Writing generic posts for all platforms might make your brand seem out of touch, so it’s important to have a social media manager who can maintain a brand voice while still adapting it to different platforms. A great caption or piece of written content that speaks directly to your audience could lead to more engagement.
2. Digital or Multimedia Producer
In 2018, 80% of marketers used visual assets as part of their social media strategy, and 63% were regularly using video.
With the growth of visual platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, and the launch of Story and Live Video features on most major social media sites, there is now a greater need for social media managers with multimedia skills.
This type of social media manager might focus on creating images or graphics to accompany Facebook posts, taking and curating photos or videos for Instagram, producing mobile-optimized stories for Snapchat, and creating other content from scratch that helps to grow your following.
Skills Needed
Experience with Design Software
Basic Photography and Videography
Adaptability
Creativity
How This Drives Results
Adapting visual content specifically for each social network yields more clicks and leads. For example, in an A/B test, we found that tweets including both a link and an image optimized for the platform yielded 55% more leads than tweets with just a link. Adapting and creating content for each specific network is critical to driving results.
3. Social Media Metrics Analyst
As all marketing roles become more and more data-driven, a social media community manager needs to be able to dig into the data, analyze that data, and draw actionable insights.
That includes macro data, such as overall reach and leads generated, and micro data like individual experiments around content positioning. This person should also be able to set goals that are just out of reach — and find a way to hit them.
A successful social media community manager enjoys looking at data and knows how to use it to make informed decisions. At the same time, this person shouldn’t be so stuck in the data that it prevents experimentation and risk-taking.
It’s important for a social media community manager to constantly test new strategies, new content, and new campaigns. This person will be skilled at running experiments, such as post frequency tests, and refining their social strategy based on the results.
Skills Necessary
Data Analysis
Curiosity
Experience with Running Scientific Experiments
Strong Presentation Skills
How This Drives Results
Constantly testing and analyzing results helps social media community managers build more effective standards in their routines. For example, that Twitter image test discussed above was designed, implemented, and measured by one social media manager. That experiment’s results have had a serious impact on our social media efforts.
4. News Commentator and Curator
A successful social media community manager will be able to find new opportunities for the company by keeping track of their industry, news, and social media trends. They need to know where to look for the news and what people are saying about it. They also need to know what’s changing on social networks and in the industry. When shifts or new trends occur, they must be able to react and respond accordingly.
They should be skilled at “tactful newsjacking,” meaning the ability to (tactfully) capitalize on a news story, trend, or hashtag. And if something goes awry, they need to be able to mitigate the issue calmly and diplomatically.
Recently, Netflix capitalized on the news that IHOP was changing its name to IHOB. The Netflix US Twitter account simply tweeted, “brb changing my name to Netflib.” See this list for a few other great examples.
The social media community manager can act as an extension of the PR team, connecting your team directly with journalists and reporters, which can result in increased coverage for the company. For global brands, it will also be important for the social media community manager to be able to think outside their own region.
Skills Necessary
Content Curation
Hungry for Information
Effective Monitoring
Quick Decision-making
Good Judgment
Can Think Globally
How This Drives Results
Staying on top of trends as they rise allows your social media community manager to newsjack. Posts relating to news or trends can boost social media traffic, encourage more engagement from followers who might re-share or retweet your content, and could even gain attention from journalists looking for story fodder.
5. Customer Service Representative
When someone runs social media, they are perceived as the voice of the company. They’ll constantly get questions and comments about their company’s products, services, and content which might not always be positive.
The social media community manager needs to be able to communicate with people in different buying stages and mood dispositions. They’re the “traffic director.” They must be able to understand where a follower’s question or comment is coming from, address it appropriately, and provide a course of action or solution.
To successfully communicate with followers, they should be intimately familiar with their company’s brand, products, and services.
Skills Necessary
Strong Communication
Adaptability
Calmness
Desire to Solve Others’ Problems
Ability to Troubleshoot
Knows @here to Pass Complex Questions,
Knowledge of the Company, Products, and Services
How This Drives Results
Having a link to customer service on social media allows you to respond to customer issues on your audience’s preferred platform. Responding to someone’s concerns on social media, rather than over a phone call, can also save your company time, money, and other resources.
Because social media is a public forum, your community manager can use these opportunities to showcase your company’s quality of customer service. For example, if a company is happy with your product or tweets about a positive experience, you can retweet or share the post.
6. Community Manager and Facilitator
Part of building a following on social media is helping that following connect with each other and become a community.
True communities don’t simply engage with the company or moderator; they engage with each other — which actually scales the social media community much better, too. But community management takes work, including asking questions to seed discussions and kicking out people who spam or otherwise detract from the community.
A good facilitator asks relevant and thought-provoking questions in an engaging way. Another part is setting the tone for the community, being present, enforcing community guidelines, and sometimes even removing members or deleting posts when appropriate.
Skills Necessary
Resourcefulness,
Ability to Connect People
Can Stimulate Discussion
Firm but Empathetic
How This Drives Results
If your followers like your community, they’ll recommend it to others — either on purpose or inadvertently by commenting and having it show up on their timeline. This leads to more exposure, which leads to more reach.
To grow a social following, the social media community manager needs to help the company’s community get value from each other.
7. Funnel Marketing Manager
Social media is a powerful tool that can help the whole funnel, not just the top. It expands the reach of your content, attracts visitors to your website, generates leads, and nurtures those prospects into becoming customers. That means a social media manager needs to be able to pick and share content in a way that will accomplish each of those goals.
At the top of the funnel, they need to share social content that generates leads. As they get further down the funnel, the social media expert needs to engage one-on-one with potential customers who are considering a product or service.
Social media is also particularly effective as a lead nurturing tool because prospects use multiple media to consume information. Because social channels are more fast-paced than traditional media, like email, you can engage with leads in a more timely manner.
Social media community managers need to have a strong understanding of the sales and marketing funnel. Then, they must understand which content is appropriate for each level of the funnel.
To be effective, this manager will need to keep in touch with multiple teams in their company. For example, they’ll need to pass appropriate leads to the sales team or product feedback to customer service.
Skills Necessary
Funnel Understanding
Knowledge of Content for Each Funnel Stage
Basic Sales Skills
Strong Communication
How This Drives Results
Sharing conversion-oriented content on social media can attract more visitors to your site and convert them into leads for your sales team. According to a 2018 GlobalWebIndex Study, 40% of digital consumers use social media as a tool when researching products. With the right person at the helm of your company’s social media accounts, your posts could catch the eye of these users.
8. Project Manager and Campaign Coordinator
Many people across a company may want certain things posted, responded to, favorited or “liked.” It’s up to the social media manager to decide which requests to honor and when to honor them. This means they need to be highly organized and able to manage multiple requests.
They need to be able to quickly assess whether a request would resonate with the company’s followers, or whether it’s too niche or too narrow. For example, a location-specific post might be too narrow to send to a company’s entire Twitter following.
Social media community managers also need to effectively coordinate with different departments to organize campaign launches, while still pushing launches and growth initiatives of their own.
Skills Necessary
Strong Organization
Strong Communication
Ability to Negotiate
Data-Based Decision-Making
How This Drives Results
Social media plays a big role in promoting initiatives from different departments and teams across a company. When a social media community manager effectively balances these promotions with other engaging and relevant content, they’ll be able to win the hearts and minds of their followers and internal stakeholders.
How to Think About Social Media Management
With this diverse and highly visible role, it’s hard to believe that the social media community manager position is often still considered entry-level.
These eight jobs should be in the back of any hiring manager’s mind as they interview potential social media managers. If we can change the perception of the role, we’ll have a good chance of mastering the ability to measure and value social media’s ROI.
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