A Lazy Person’s Guide To Calling Yourself A Social Media Manager

Mariah Carey once hired her personal assistant’s 14 year old daughter as her social media manager. One of the biggest challenges a social media manager faces is for an agency or their client to value what they do, take it seriously and respect all the hard work that’s going on.

With that in mind, the lazier people and pretty much anyone could bluff their way through some social media roles, provided they know the jargon, have some Googling done, and perhaps their own FB page and even that’s stretching it a bit.

I see some serious degrees and qualifications out there as a credential but the role itself is about 80% experience based. The remainder is down to credentials, internships and broken down into bits and pieces like FB Blueprint and marketing qualifications.

So, make up a CV for social media manager roles, do some light googling, then what? This is what you need to know… in a nutshell.

1. Learn these words and what they mean: Engagement, Impressions, Reach, Assets, Graphics, Canva, Tools, CRM, KPI, Hootsuite, LP’s, Campaigns, Content,  B2B and B2C, Analytics and Reporting, Blueprint (maybe) Influencers, Channels, Platform, Targeting, Leads Gen, Link Clicks, Brand Awareness. That’s the essentials. Learn what each one means, test yourself and quiz yourself on them. Some are basic marketing words, and some are specific to social media. Challenge yourself to sum up each one in one paragraph.
2. Get to know each channel really well. So if you don’t already have them, set them up and play around a bit. Make a FB page, a twitter account, an insta and a LinkedIn. Also a Reddit account, a snapchat, a YouTube channel and a Pinterest. You need to believe you can use them and are an active social media user. Make them a theme. Call yourself a travel blogger or an Etsy expert. Become a gamer guy. Become a Vlogger. Log into each one every day and have them all on your phone and laptop. Become confident in each channel and active with all the features. If you do it every day, I’d say in about 1 month you’re gonna be comfortable with them all.
3. Other skills help. Photoshop (Canva baby), Adobe spark, Feedly, Buzzsumo, Wix, WordPress, Hootsuite, Buffer, Coschedule, AgoraPulse, TweetDeck. You’ll need to name-drop as many as possible to bluff through an interview. Get to know the basic tools and what they are popular for. Hootsuite is a house name. You need to know what it actually is. It’s not a hot sauce. It’s HOOTSUITE. This is important. Tools are a serious thing and you’re going to actually need to learn what they all do. Same goes for Canva and Buffer. Then if you wanna get one step ahead, learn the rest.
4. Get involved. Become an admin of another FB page, or of a FB group. Become an influencer of a niche. Become a trendsetter. Retweet your heart out. Film yourself and start a podcast or a webinar, interact with celebrities on Twitter. Tweet all the trends. Reply to everything. Get a bit more snap happy taking pics and videos when you’re out and about. Check out MeetUp and EventBrite for networking events. Chat more and reply in FB groups. Join a bunch of groups on Facebook to do with social media (there are thousands of them) and in everything, comment or reply as much as you can to see how you compare to the others.
5. Now it’s time to get professional. Makeover your LinkedIn and fluff it up. Get technical and complex and strategic. Look at FB insights and Twitter analytics. What’s there and what’s not there? No engagement? Not enough impressions and reach? More quality AND quantity. No link clicks or traffic? ADD in a link! LinkedIn is where the pros are at. Don’t underestimate it, message other social media managers and offer to be their intern and pick their brain. Make a showcase page and a group and a project page on there too.
6. Time to do some research. Social media bloggers love to blog and rant and rave. Connect and challenge them! Podcasts. Make some time to replace a spotify jam sesh to a podcast. Follow them to the ends of the earth. They’ve got plenty to say. If you have your own passion or area of expertise, focus on that.
7. Forums. Don’t eliminate this. Forums are great. I’m talking about Reddit. Quiz anyone and everyone who has the patience. Don’t forget Quora and Medium too.
8. Remember those profiles and pages you set up? Keep it all going. It’s all about showing face and consistency. Don’t let it sit there gathering dust. You gotta keep it up and running.
9. It’s time for a bit of advertising. You should already be playing around with business manager and power editor and FB ads. Now’s the time to experiment. Watch some YouTube tutorials, go heavy sifting through the ad’s manager and play around with audience set ups. Learn it inside out. Being able to say YES rather than no, when a recruiter says “can you do paid?” is your VIP ticket to the front row shortlisted social media manager.
10. Do steps 1-9 again.  A few other things you might want to add. SEO, PPC, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Photoshop. All these aren’t social media focused but if you know them it will forever work in your favour. Don’t estimate the confidence in knowing technicality and tools. Its a huge ego boost when you’re the one they come to to ask the questions on how something works.

Tell me, what makes you lazy is not that you can’t be bothered putting the effort in. If you’re passionate about it enough, you’ll learn it and you WILL pick it up. But I hate wasting time doing things I don’t enjoy.  “Time that you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

I look for shortcuts in everything. If I can learn something inside out and be the expert in it and share that with others then we all win right? I’ve been doing social media for about 6 years now. I’m  trying to polish up all of it and find my own area of expertise. I’m also doing more freelance. It’s becoming more challenging because before, I used to be Miss Curious and question everything and now I’m supposedly the one with all the answers. It’s a nice feeling that I can share that with everyone.