A Domain Or Social Media: What Builds Consumer Trust? (A Market Research Study Conducted by the DNA) - CircleID

A Domain Or Social Media: What Builds Consumer Trust? (A Market Research Study Conducted by the DNA)  CircleID

* This article was originally published here

7 Steps to Become Social in Social Media

I like to compare social media marketing to one big party and recently my friend Perry Belcher gave a great example on this very topic.Here are the' 7 Steps to Become Social in Social Media' 1) Pick a Party to JoinThere are 3,000 social media parties (social sites) all over the Internet with over 700 million people partying (socializing) everyday and it's up to you to decide which party you want to attend. It's always best to go to the parties where you'll be able to meet people who share similar interests with you and you're business. Now let's be honest how many parties do you think you can attend on a regular basis?In social media most people can manage 3-4 parties so don't go crazy and think you have to be a party animal like Perry and attend 20. Once you decide what parties you want to attend on a regular basis then you're ready for the next step. First, check out this party directory and decide where you want to party.2) Make sure you RSVP Once you decide what parties you want to attend now you need to RSVP. In other words register yourself with these sites. Now I know there may be some of you that are party animals so you can always reserve your spot at all of the A-list parties too. 3) Dress to killWhen you go to a party you dress at your best right? Same thing applies when you attend a social media party. Now when I mean dress to kill I'm really referring to dressing your social profiles so they make a great impression when you come to the party (social site). Add a nice, clear, and friendly picture and be sure to complete your profile information entirely.4) Show UpSimply finding a party and sending out your RSVP and then dressing to kill is one thing but it all means nothing unless you show up to the party! You show up by sending tweets, posting updates, making comments, sharing links, @replies, retweets, or wall posts.5) Bring some goodiesIt's customary to bring chips, snacks, or some goodies with you when you come to a party. When it comes to social media you bring value. Value can come in all sorts of ways from personal value, professional value, or promotional value. 6) Be the Light of the PartyDon't drink too much, behave all crazy or start fights in other people's parties. You might not be invited to the next party ever again. OK, I know that doesn't apply to social media but being offensive, mean spirited, or downright rude will make others run in the other direction. Be fun, encourage others, engage in conversations, and most importantly socialize. If you go to a party and just walk around and never talk with anyone how can you expect to make any meaningful connections. Remember a connection leads to a conversation but it's up to you to participate. 7) Don't Leave EarlyDon't be the first one to leave the party. In social media this means to be the last one to leave the conversation. When you post an update or tweet and someone @replies you or makes a comment it's important to respond or acknowledge the person who is engaging in a conversation with you. Don't leave them hanging! It's like meeting someone at a party and they ask you a question and you walk away without saying anything. Social media marketing is all about making connections with others on a personal and professional level and this is accomplished though various means of social media outlets. Until you treat social media like one big party and begin to dress to kill, show up to party, bring some goodies, and be the light of the party you will end up missing out on what social media marketing can really do for you and your business.What are some of the ways you're making connections on a personal, professional, or promotional level?Remember - To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. ~ Anthony RobbinsMake it a great day! MarcoPresidentNational Entrepreneur ClubMarco Carbajo is a business credit and social media marketing coach. His blogs and articles are featured in Alltop, Scotsman Guide, and Entrepreneur Connect. He is the founder of the National Entrepreneur Club, an online membership community that helps entrepreneurs obtain the cash credit and financing their businesses need and increase profits with social media marketing. You can follow him on Twitter or visit his Social Media Marketing Tips Blog.Copyrighted and published by Marco Carbajo of UCan2, Inc.All rights reserved.

* This article was originally published here

AI in Social Media Market Pegged for Robust Expansion by 2027 – The Courier - The Courier

AI in Social Media Market Pegged for Robust Expansion by 2027 – The Courier  The Courier

* This article was originally published here

How to Create Social Media Monthly Reports for Your Clients (+Free Templates)

Creating monthly or yearly social media reports for your clients can be overwhelming without a proper plan or the right tools.

It requires in-depth knowledge of data and interpreting what the numbers tell you, insights into the dynamics of the social networks, and sometimes even a lot of manual work.

In fact, in a recent social media survey, 31% of marketers spend up to 10 hours on reports, compared to the 4 hours outlined as industry normal.

In this article, I'll dive into what you should follow if you want to create a monthly social media report for your clients.

I've also included a social media report template (no gated content, free of use) to help you save time and a lot of energy.

Let's take a look at what I'm talking about.

How to build a social media report

1. Seven steps to build a social report for your clients

• Define social media KPIs
• Set a timeframe for your social media reports
• Get cross-platform insights
• Define the most relevant information
• See how your clients rank against top competitors on social media
• Use data to tell a story
• Build an actionable plan

2. How to create social media reports

• Manual reporting
• Automated reporting

3. Top metrics to include in social media marketing reports

• Followers or fans growth
• Engagement and engagement rates
• Posts' and Stories' reach and impressions
• Brand hashtags' performance
• Story retention rate
• Post types
• Top posts

4. Download free social media report templates

5. Social media reporting tools

1. Seven steps to build a social media report for your clients

Whether you’re preparing reports for your own company or for your clients, it’s not enough to simply go through heaps of data without a clear goal in mind.

All reports need to follow a strategy focused on how you can make the most out of the information you find, how to select the right information, and how you can extract insights from all those numbers.

But don’t worry, we’ve created a checklist to get you through it.

• Define social media KPIs
• Set a timeframe for your social media reports
• Get cross-platform insights
• Define the most relevant information
• See how your clients rank against top competitors on social media
• Use data to tell a story
• Build an actionable plan

• Define social media KPIs

What do I need from this report?

It’s as simple as asking this key question. Before you even start collecting data, ask yourself why these stats should be on this report. What do you want from your social media reports?

SocialMediaToday classified the reports in three categories:

• Regular reports - Use the specific metrics to show your progress on social. Make sure you include competitive social media benchmarks too.
• One-off reports - showcase qualitative reports and campaigns performance.
• Research reports - add insights on a particular topic or trend.

Depending on the social media report format you choose, make sure you do not focus on managing data solely. You have to extract the insights and trends that can drive outcomes for your clients or managers.

Simply put, keep the information in the report limited to your KPIs and use your expertise and social media landscape knowledge to analyze the data.

Identify the social media metrics that are in line with your goals and with wider business strategies.

Most smart business organizations insist on using KPIs because they want to amplify the potential acquisition and retention value that social media brings to their business.

Make sure your KPIs are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-Limited

• Set a timeframe for your social media reports

How far back is it really necessary to go?

This is strongly connected to your goals. Are you planning an annual report, or do you simply feel the past month could have brought in better results? Perhaps you’re actually just interested in your campaign performance.

Here’re the most frequent report timelines:

• Weekly reports
• Monthly reports
• Quarterly reports
• Yearly reports
• From campaign start to end

• Get cross-platform insights

To fully understand how your brand is performing on social media, you need to dive into all social networks.

But instead of creating separate reports for each platform, it’s best to gather cross-platform insights side-by-side, to get an overview of where you have the biggest following or which audience is more engaged.

This will tell you if you’ve divided your content efforts across social channels correctly.

If, for example, most of your content goes on Twitter, but your Instagram audience engages with your posts the most, it might be time to switch strategies. This will definitely give value to any social media marketing report.

• Define the most relevant information

Nowadays, there’s a lot of data and insights at the disposal of social media marketers.

So it’s important to not get overwhelmed and fight the impulse to include information about any and all stats that had a slight increase. Not all of them matter.

Think of your social media analytics report as a whole consisting of a few mini-reports that fit together like a puzzle.

The stats you choose to include need to be connected and paint a consistent picture.

Typically, a social media report contains information on:

• Followers growth: this shows you if your social channel is growing and if you’re gathering new potential leads
• Content monitoring reports: number of posts, type of content, top posts, user-generated content
• Engagement reports: are your followers liking, commenting, or sharing your posts?
• Conversion stats: do your followers click on your links?
• Reach and impressions: how far do your messages go?
• Audience stats and demographics reports: this shows where your public comes from, what language they speak, what time-zones they live in, etc.
  

• See how your clients rank against top competitors on social media

To maximize the performance of your social media, you need to keep an open eye on the competitors' actions on social media.

Benchmarking allows you to measure your performance and compare it with your competitors or the overall industry performance.

Running a benchmark across your industries, you'll get:

• a better & improved content strategy
• your competitors' actions on social media
• the latest industry trends
• better budgeting planning

• Use data to tell a story

Gather all of your stats and piece the information into a cohesive story about your social media performance.

While the idea might not be a revelation in the business's strategic management process, ensure that you will be able to paint clear pictures of what is working and what is not working on your marketing strategies when using social media.

Take our latest study on Instagram stories for example.

We looked at multiple metrics such as retention, exit rates across multiple stories, tap forward rates, reach, types of stories, to understand how many stories should you post, when people lose interest in your stories, or if your audience prefers image or video stories.

We learned that brands only post on average 7-8 stories per month, however, there is room for improvement.

Data strongly suggest that posting up to 5 stories per day ensures a retention rate of over 70%.

In case you're wondering, Instagram is the king of social media engagement. This is the story that engagement metrics tell us.

• Build an actionable plan to act on your report insights

As a social media manager, you'll need to come up with actionable insights for your clients that are based on studying both your data, as well as competitive analysis results.

Before sending your monthly social media reports make sure you write down actionable insights for your industry.

One you’ve piece together all the data and reveal the story behind it, you need to draw clear conclusions and steps that will improve your clients’ content performance.

2. How to create social media reports

Depending on how picky your clients are about the information you include in your reports, you can prepare them manually or automatically.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but it’s ultimately up to you to prioritize what matters most to you when creating reports.

• Manual reporting

The main advantage of a manual social media report is that you have the option to personalize and brand it as much as you’d like. However, the big downfall is that it’s extremely time-consuming to go through each platform one by one and piece so much data together

Facebook Analytics

In the “Insights” section from your left bar, you’ll have access to all of your performance metrics for your page, posts, followers, ads, stories. And you can download that data as an Excel or CVS report.

Instagram Analytics

Going to the “Insights” button of your profile page will give you a glimpse into your reach, interactions, followers, posts or Stories.

Read about all the Instagram metrics you need to follow

There’s tons of data at your fingertips. However, Instagram analytics are only available on your phone. The desktop app does not provide that information.

This means that when creating a report you need to manually write down every insight you need.

Twitter Analytics

In the Analytics section, Twitter will offer information on engagement, impressions, your top posts, your top mentions, as well as the top people who mention your brand.

However, you cannot download the data, and you’ll have to copy-paste it into your own report directly from the app.

LinkedIn Analytics

Moving your business to LinkedIn offers amazing opportunity, especially if your company offers business to business services or products.

You can tie your business page to your personal account and watch how many unique visitors, new followers or post impression you receive.

You’ll also be able to feature products and get information on your posts, as well as how your followers respond to your content

YouTube Analytics

YouTube Studio will offer all the information on your views, watch time, impressions CTRs, subscribers or top posts.

When accessing Channel Analytics, you’ll get in-depth information on Reach, Engagement and Audience.

Just like with Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you cannot download the data directly from the app and will need to manually fill in the information you need in your report.

• Automated reporting

The main advantage of automatically downloading your social media reports from a social media analytics tool is time.

Firstly, there’s the time you gain by not filing in information manually, and secondly there’s the time it would take to put all the data together, instead of accessing everything in one dashboard.

Another advantage is that you ca download complete reports or reports regarding a single section.

Let’s say you wanted to know how your brand is doing across all social networks. You can start using Socialinsider and the Brands report feature.

All you need to do is utilize the “Brands” feature and have a quick understanding of how performance is doing. Download this report directly and add it to your presentation.

Need more data? Go to your profile and download all platform stats in one click.

Most third party tools also offer the option to download your reports in different formats: Excel, PDF, PowerPoint.

Another way is to import your data to Google Data Studio and combine data from multiple sources.

To get a general idea, here are the main advantages of social media analytics tools:

• More data, organized according to your needs.
• An overview of social media performance across platforms.
• Direct, presentation-ready downloadable reports.
• A clear overview of your top content across platforms.
• Data on hashtags and Stories.
  

3. Top metrics to include in social media marketing reports

There are valuable clarity metrics, and then there are vanity metrics.

Sometimes it can be tough to manage a lot of data, which can result in getting lost in a plethora of information.

That’s why it’s imperative to know what metrics really talk to social media performance.

Be wise.

Measure numerous metrics on your social media platforms, but make sure you choose the metrics that drive value for your clients and don't follow the vanity metrics.

Here are a few metrics you should consider:

• Followers or fans growth
• Engagement and engagement rates
• Posts' and Stories' reach and impressions
• Brand hashtags' performance
• Story retention rate
• Post types
• Top posts

• Followers or fans growth

This stat will offer you an overview of how your page is growing or shrinking. You can watch how many followers per month you gain or lose, and which months have had a noticeable increase or decrease.

You can then go back to the content you’ve posted those months to better understand what makes you successful and what has performed below expectations.

If you’re losing following, that’s a clear sign that your page needs a make-over content-wise.

• Engagement and engagement rates

Engagement is one of the most powerful metrics you have at your disposal.

There’s a few ways to look at engagement:

• The overall engagement shows how much people have liked, commented and, depending on the platform, shared the entirety of your content.
• The engagement rate per post shows how people interact, on average, with one of your posts
• The engagement rate per profile - shows the percentage of your followers who engage with everything on your profile.

In other words, engagement tells you how interesting your posts are, and if they manage to spark an action from your audience.

• Posts’ and Stories’ reach and impressions

These two metrics are crucial in understanding how far your messages can go. Engagement might mean nothing if your posts don’t really reach a wide audience.

These two metrics tell you how many times your post has been viewed and how many unique views it has had.

You can access that information both the total amount, as well as percentage-wise, to fully understand your posts or stories’ ability to reach your followers.

• Brand hashtags’ performance

You can see how your brand’s hashtags are used and the engagement they might bring.

Below you can see the most used hashtags by H&M.

This information helps you keep track of the brand hashtags you use in your posts and how your audience engages with posts that include them.

By adding these metrics, you will create a social media analytics report that’s going to be worth the hype.

• Story retention rate

When it comes to Stories, there’s another key metric besides engagement: retention rates.

This metric shows you if your audience is interested in your stories enough to watch every last one of them.

The retention rate is calculated as the impressions from the last story divided by impressions of the first story.

But tools also show you the retention rates by the number of stories published per day, which will help you understand where your biggest drop-offs happen.

• Post types

It’s also important to understand what type of content your followers are expecting from you: images, videos or carousels.

Not only is it important to analyze how you divide your content between images, videos and carousels, but you must also look at what type of post results in higher engagement.

• Top posts

A lot of insights can be gained just by looking at your top-performing posts, and understanding what are your social account’s strengths.

You’ll be able to see:

• what type of content you’ve used
• how long the captions were
• what were the main topics of interest
• what hashtags you’ve used
• engagement metrics
• impression metrics
• likes
• comments

Find out more metrics in this complete list you should follow

4. Download free social media report templates

Depending on your clients preferences, or even your own company style, you may choose to create your social performance in PDF, PowerPoint, or Excel.

It’s all a matter of what is more important to you: data flexibility or design.

So we’re sharing Socialinsider’s report templates as a starting point for your own reporting.

Download free excel template

Download free PowerPoint template

5. Social media reporting tools

Depending on whether you prefer doing your reports manually or automatically, there are a number of great tools out there that can offer you all the data you need.

While native analytics will offer in-depth information on your main metrics, third party tools like Socialinsider will put those metrics into context and add competitive analysis to your reports.

Some of your options include:

• Socialinsider
• Socialbakers
• Buffer
• SproutSocial

Socialinsider knows that report automation can improve your work. So you can enable automated reports in order to create and share business reports at a specific time interval.

So, are you ready to download your social media reports?

Socialinsider will help you automate your social media reporting process. Have your data delivered straight to your or your client’s inbox on a monthly or quarterly basis.

More than that, as we previously mentioned, we can assure you that Socialinsider offers Google Data Studio integration as well.

In other words, you can now connect your Socialinsider data to Google Data Studio and dig into your metrics.

If you're not very familiar with it, don't worry about it! We're here to help. So, this is how you can bring your social media data to Google Data Studio as quickly as possible.

Get ready to create in-depth and visually beautiful reports with Google Data Studio and Socialinsider.

Take a closer look at your options for reporting tools.

Final thought

Social media reporting should not overwhelm you anymore. You just need to monitor all the metrics that matter to your business and select a reporting tool that can provide you with helpful data from your social media channel.

Present the insights clearly and in a context-driven way. Include your top campaigns, top followers, content and anything that worked or didn't work in your social media campaigns during the year.

Report and analyze social media performance for multiple business profiles and create social media benchmarks for your clients.

Related articles:

1. 21 Best Social Media Analytics Tools
2. Complete Guide on How to Use Facebook Stories for Pages in 2021
3. How To Use LinkedIn Hashtags To Better Engage With Your Audience

* This article was originally published here

This Is Why Teenagers Are the Affiliate-Marketing Experts

Teens have some inherent advantages when it comes to affiliate marketing, but adult affiliate marketers can learn a lot from their success.

* This article was originally published here

10 Important Skills for Social Media Managers (Free Resume Template!)

Almost half of global internet users (44.8%) used social media to search for brand information in 2020. Given its prevalence, businesses now recognize why it’s so important to hire a social media manager to manage their online presence.

Working as 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’re an aspiring social media manager, or an HR manager looking to hire one, we’ve outlined the key aspects and requirements of the job below.

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

What does a social media manager do?

A social media manager’s responsibilities vary widely depending on the size of an organization.

Within smaller companies, a social media manager may have to also act as a one-man content creation team, including doing graphic design, copywriting, and photo and video editing. Within larger organizations, social media managers may 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.

When the job ad said social media manager but what they really meant was content creator, digital strategist, crisis comms coordinator, graphic designer, customer support exec, video editor, gen z translator, general scapegoat and occasional IT trainer pic.twitter.com/QuyA2ab6qa

— workinsocialtheysaid (@workinsociaI) February 18, 2021

A typical social media job description includes the following responsibilities:

• Building content calendars and scheduling/publishing content
• Community management (replying to comments and messages, flagging issues 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 across channels)
• Creating campaign plans for business and marketing priorities (e.g. product launches, rebrands, awareness campaigns, contests, etc.)
• Writing creative briefs (to give direction to agencies and/or internal designers, video editors, and copywriters)
• Supporting influencer marketing initiatives (such as identifying and selecting influencers, reposting content, and engaging with influencer posts)
• Creating weekly/monthly reports (and ad-hoc reports for major campaigns, sponsorships, etc.)
• Social listening (including monitoring hashtags and branded keywords, detecting brand safety issues, managing social media crises, and identifying real-time marketing opportunities)
• Overseeing content, providing feedback to creative/content teams (acting as the subject matter expert for all content destined for publishing on social media)
• Guiding best practices for social media (staying up-to-date on new platforms and features)
• Creating and/or curating content (taking photos, writing copy, designing or modifying graphics, editing videos, finding UGC content, and contributing to editorial content)

A day in the life of a social media manager

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

9-10am: 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 building content calendars)

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

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

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

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

4:30-5pm: Replying to mentions and messages

5-5:30pm: Scheduling content for next day

At the campfire. While away camping. https://t.co/0HPq91Uqat

— Nick (@AtNickMartin) May 18, 2021

10 important social media manager skills

There isn’t one best education path or work history for social media managers. Great social media managers can come from a variety of backgrounds due to the variety of skills used in the role.

Here are ten skills that are key for being a strong social media manager:

1. Writing

Almost every social media post needs a caption, so good writing is a non-negotiable skill for all social media managers.

Even more than writing, social media managers should be good at editing and writing short-form copy to adhere to character limits and best caption lengths. It’s a skill in itself to be able to convey a brand message, a CTA, and be snappy and engaging within 280 characters.

2. Editing

If there’s anything that should offend a social pro, it’s typos. Having repeated typos or poor grammar is a sure way to hurt a brand’s reputation online, and social media users are quick to jump on mistakes. Having good attention to detail means that social mea managers will spot spelling or grammar errors before hitting “send” on a post.

this ones for my fellow social media managers pic.twitter.com/G5lIZoVFFr

— Stein (@steinekin) April 28, 2021

3. Design

Given that visuals play such an important part in social media (especially on platforms like Instagram), social media managers need the ability to judge between good and bad design.

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

4. Awareness of pop culture and current events

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

Social pros always have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening, not only to jump on brand-relevant real-time opportunities, but also to know when to pause social media posts due to major world events.

Having strong global awareness helps social media managers to be aware of cultural sensitivities and spot potentially off-color jokes that could damage a business’ reputation.

5. Organization

When it comes to managing a content calendar, there are a lot of pieces that are subject to change. Posting daily means working at a fast pace, with lots of pieces of which to keep track. This is why post scheduling is a time-saving feature for many social pros.

Constantly between the states of “Did I schedule that thing?” or “Did that thing already post?"

— Social Media Tea (@SippinSocialTea) June 21, 2021

Social media managers need to be highly organized in order to ensure assets are delivered on time, on brand, and approved by all stakeholders. People who enjoy making systems and can handle context switching make 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 works. It is a social media manager’s responsibility to ensure that the social media strategy ladders up to the business’ overall objectives.

The best social media managers have strategic minds, and are always thinking about the bigger picture and how posts can support higher-level marketing and business priorities.

7. Data analysis

While many social media pros excel at being creative, they also need to be unafraid of working with numbers. Social media platforms provide tons of data (sometimes too much), so it’s important to be able to wade through lots of data and find the most 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 easily spot trends and extract insights—without the hassle of spreadsheets.

8. Can work under pressure

Managing a business’ social media channels often means being 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 be cool under pressure.

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

This. A thousand times this. https://t.co/gq91bYz2Sw

— Jon-Stephen Stansel (@jsstansel) June 23, 2021

9. Resilience

When acting as the voice of a brand, it’s too easy for social media managers to feel that negative replies and messages directed at the brand are also directed at them personally. This can really wear down on a social media manager’s mental health. It’s 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 toll that working on the frontlines of digital engagement can take, and who are respecting of work life balance.

10. Able to set boundaries and unplug

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

that’s it, i’m ready to enjoy my weekend

– social media managers at 6pm on a sunday

— workinsocialtheysaid (@workinsociaI) June 22, 2021

Thanks to the always-on nature of social media, social pros have the tendency to always be checking mentions. The best thing a social media manager can do for themselves and the business is to create well-documented guidelines (such as tone of voice, style guides, and platform playbooks) so that they can hand off the social reins to someone else and not be tempted to check in while on vacation.

How to become a social media manager

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

Here are a few different ways to become a social media manager:

• Online courses: Learn the fundamentals of social media marketing online and at your own pace. Here are 15 courses and resources to learn social media, and when you’re ready to deep-dive into each platform, here are 9 Instagram courses.
• Certifications: Certificate-based courses usually provide more in-depth training compared to normal courses and test your skills to ensure you’re job-ready. Hootsuite Academy offers a comprehensive Social Marketing Certification Course to get started, as well as advanced certificate programs.
• Bootcamps/training programs: Bootcamps offer immersive versions of courses (both online and in-person) that provide a fast track to getting trained as a social media manager, often in 6-9 weeks. Consider these options from Brainstation and General Assembly.
• Internships: Internships, ideally paid, are a great 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 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 learn the day-to-day responsibilities, and also evaluate if working in social media is right for you.

Free social media manager resume template

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.

Use the templates to update your existing resume or build a new one from scratch.

Here’s how to use them:

Step 1. Download the fonts

To use 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 right corner.

Click the download arrow in the top right corner.

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

Step 2. Download the templates

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

Right click on the zip file to download from Google Drive.

Don’t forget to “unzip” the file on your computer!

Step 3. Start editing

Open your chosen file, Chan or Leopold, in Microsoft Word. Click anywhere to start customizing the file for your own experience. You can change or remove any text, icons, or colors.

Make sure to save 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 one, you’re one step closer to launching your career in social media.

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

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The post 10 Important Skills for Social Media Managers (Free Resume Template!) appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

* This article was originally published here

4 Social Media Marketing Trends to Implement in Your 2021 Strategy

Social media and marketing trends are constantly evolving. Here are four social media marketing trends that I believe every business online needs to implement and prioritize in 2021.

* This article was originally published here