Jobs in Social Media Marketing

Basically, social networks are used for sales by small and medium-sized businesses. Large businesses and corporations rarely sell directly - for them, social networks become a tool of influence. But most importantly, a business owner must understand how it works.

Social media marketting job as a separate direction in marketing is still not taught at universities, so there is no standard in knowledge. Only experience and skills become important. A certificate of completion of a course in an online school is, of course, good, but an SMM-specialist is not characterized by a crust, but by his cases, recommendations and personal abilities.

New tools are constantly being released, trends are changing and social networks appear (for example, the explosive growth in popularity of TikTok). A social media marketing specialist should be aware of and at least in his field. Therefore, for example, a targetologist with certification from Facebook is forced to retake his diploma every year - the principles of the target are constantly changing and you need to be able to work with them.

True, we must pay tribute that, as in any new profession, there are also many prejudices and misconceptions regarding the social media marketing jobs. First of all, there is an opinion that an Social Media Marketing specialist is the one who posts beautiful pictures and memes in the company's account and is responsible for their selection or creation. However, it is not. This is a very serious profession with clear indicators of the effectiveness of its work.

Social Media Marketing specialist, story maker, targetologist, community manager: an overview of the most popular digital professions

The world has changed beyond recognition. The last decade has become a period of creation of a completely new reality. If someone asked me personally to name the main phenomenon of these 10 years, I would definitely say - Instagram. To argue with how much the "picture" social network has changed reality, perhaps only ... yes, of course, a pandemic.

Instagram is a new format for perceiving life and a new economy. Yes, this is the very case when you can safely say a worn out phrase - the world will never be the same again. Everything is online today, and that changes everything.

A number of new professions have been formed in the labor market in an extremely short period of several years. Even six or seven years ago, we did not know that every company, like air, needed an SMM manager and a targetologist. This is the minimum required set, which is required even before the start of the business itself, and without which it seems as if there is no point in starting at all. It is the social media specialists who now decide how exactly to launch and promote your business/brand. Today we figure out who is who, and who - for what.

What does an SMM specialist do?

Social Media Manager deals with the promotion of the brand / business in social networks. In advanced (usually large) companies, where entire teams work on online promotion, an SMM specialist is engaged in strategic work, thinks over the concept of how the brand will be presented on different sites, develops and implements the Tone of voice of the company (the tone in which the communication with the consumer), manages a team of various specialists: copywriters, designers, targetologists, etc. At the same time, as often happens in our country, employers seek to save money and require maximum versatility from an Social Media Marketing manager, as well as from an ordinary marketer. Responsibilities often include a huge range of work: from competitor analysis, developing a social media presence strategy and drawing up content plans, to directly posting publications, writing texts, communicating with subscribers, and even producing photo content. In this “ideal” version for the employer, the same person launches advertising and collaborates with bloggers.

Thus, in the opinion of a typical employer, a social media specialist completely closes the maintenance of social media accounts from taking photos to writing texts, launching advertising campaigns, interacting with subscribers and cooperating with influencers. The result of work in all areas should be an increase in the coverage of publications, the creation of the desired image / image of the company and, in the end, an increase in sales.

To evaluate the work of an Social Media Marketing specialist, a certain set of KPIs is usually used - key performance indicators.

Features of the profession of an Social Media Marketing specialist

Of course, there is no single idea about this new, but already super-demanded type of Social Media Marketing job. I always say that the specific functionality depends on the needs of the company and tasks. We know for certain that being present on social networks today is mandatory for any business in general. At the same time, we are well aware that if for some businesses social networks are sales, then for others they are exclusively image issues: “visiting card”, forming an expert image, etc. Therefore, the tasks for an Social Media Marketing manager and the goals of marketing in networks will be different.

Another point is that there are a lot of newcomers in the profession today. Every online learning platform offers courses on Social Media Marketing, and their popularity is unbelievable. Every day, dozens of those wishing to work remotely graduate from the virtual walls of online universities. At the same time, in fact, learning Social Media Marketing in courses and trainings, in my opinion, is very difficult.

Here, all the tools are learned precisely in practice, and in each case, with each specific client, these tools will be different. At the same time, there are not so many cool specialists who started working in networks and understand everything at least 6-7 years ago. And it often turns out that it is the specialist who decides exactly how the Social Media Marketing strategy will work.

Understanding that an Social Media Marketing manager job is primarily a job of a strategist, ideologist, producer, led to the fact that others gradually separated from this profession. Let's call them specializations. Today, the number of tasks in the field of promotion in networks is growing, and one person can very rarely do everything on all fronts.

Storymaker

So, a separate story - in fact, stories, or stories. Stories originally appeared on Instagram, and soon a similar format for posting content (short videos that are automatically deleted after a day) appeared on many other sites.

The Instagram platform itself actively promoted this format, placing stories above the main feed with publications and giving the videos that disappear over time the greatest coverage. Gradually, the popularity of stories began to exceed the visibility of posts. Today, it is stories that are mostly watched on social networks: they have more “life”, relevance, sincerity.

Stories today have become a separate format, an independent promotion tool. They require the development of their own strategy and content plans, and promotion methods here are different from what we do in publications.

So, for example, long reads are again relevant for the main feed today, and the posts themselves, which were previously recommended to be posted at least once a day, are now becoming more and more rare and deliberate.

In stories, the opposite is true: there are trends of their own. The live format gives more freedom, there are their own "chips", challenges, interesting finds. To keep track of all this, you need to constantly cook in these processes, track influencers, catch ideas.

What does a storymaker do

In some companies, the position of a storymaker involves non-remote work, when the specialist is more “attached” to the client. This is required if the promotion strategy involves content in the "here and now" format: the company's life in the moment, operational information, etc.

For example, you sell cosmetics and are about to launch a new unique product. In this case, in the account stories, you can show the process of creating goods at the factory, releasing the first batch from the assembly line, entering stores, and unpacking. All this can be done by being directly present where the product is located.

Another important point in the functionality of the story maker is tracking trends and chips. Stories are the most “live” and mobile format on social networks, and it is here that various challenges, games involving a series of videos constantly appear. To be on the crest of the wave, the story maker monitors the situation in the vastness of social networks, monitors the accounts of trendsetters, the most popular bloggers and influencers, and then figures out how to fit this or that trend into the format and image of the company in the profile.

So, a story maker develops a strategy for stories, creates a content plan and heading, monitors trends in networks, generates lively and interesting content in a business format, taking into account trends. Using all the promotion tools in stories, this specialist also performs the tasks of increasing the reach and engagement of the audience.

Another factor that influenced the formation of a separate profession of a storymaker is the emergence of a large number of bloggers and the rapid growth of their popularity. Often, well-known online influencers simply begin to “sew up”, topics are exhausted, there is not enough time for high-quality creatives. At the same time, today interesting and involving stories are one of the main engines in the development of the blog. Therefore, such persons hire assistants who take on the job of creating quality content. In this case, the task of the story maker is to create live, "life" stories, operational work with relevant video content.

In conclusion, it should be noted that despite the seeming abundance of candidates on the market for the Social Media Marketing job, companies do not have much choice. Employers are in demand for those specialists who can not just post, even if interesting content, but use the entire resource of social networks to generate demand for the goods and services offered and thus increase targeted traffic to commercial Internet sites, where users can purchase the promoted brand.