Social Media Manager job description

Sobhan Mohmand, Career Expert          1 Dec 2019

A Social Media Manager is in charge of all the social media sites of the organisation such as Facebook and Twitter. Their main responsibility is to look after these channels by implementing proactive marketing campaigns and strategies to improve the organisation’s online presence and visibility.

Day-to-day activities / duties and responsibilities

• Managing the organisation’s website, blog and social media channels
• Developing and implementing a clear social media strategy
• Designing and executing social media campaigns on time and within budget
• Designing and creating online competitions and promotions
• Writing creative content to be published online
• Scheduling day-to-day content that needs to be published
• Analysing and reporting web traffic for content reception and growth
• Producing and presenting marketing return on investment (ROI) reports
• Responding to people’s emails, comments, tweets, etc. on a daily basis
• Managing the workloads and work flow within the team
• Supervise marketing trainees, assistants and apprentices
• Monitor the latest trends in the industry and ensuring that everyone in the team is up to date with the latest knowledge technology to do their job effectively
• Managing the social media budget (part of the broader marketing budget)
• Sending out emails to newsletters subscribers and customers
• Developing strategies to increase Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter ‘follows’
• Assisting with minor web design changes
• Editing images and photographs using Adobe Photoshop and/or Illustrator
• Ensuring the relevance and accuracy of online content across all media channels
• Working with PR, Marketing and Sales teams to achieve common objectives

Workplace and working hours

The typical working hours for a Social Media Manager is from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. You may be expected to work some evenings or weekends in order to attend meetings, events or for training purposes.

Your workplace will be in an office environment typically within the Marketing Department and you will be working from a laptop or computer most of the time.

Salary

Salary for a Social Media Manager at an entry-level will normally start at about £16,000 per annum and increase to £30,000 depending on the organisation, location and relevant work experience.

Figures are intended as a guideline only.

Qualifications and entry requirements

There are no specific qualifications required to be accepted for this role, however, employers do expect to see excellent GCSEs and A-Levels at the minimum.

Any of the following would support a strong application:

• A degree in marketing, business or a related field
• Relevant work experience
• Qualifications or certificates in online / digital marketing

Skills and personal attributes

• Superb language and interpersonal skills to engage with a wide range of audiences
• Excellent writing skills to create content to be published online
• Confident and being able to lead a small team effectively
• Highly motivated individual and wanting to reach goals and meet objectives
• Ability to build relationships with customers and the general public
• Having a passion for the marketing field and being a critical part of it
• Good technical knowledge in order to make small changes to the website’s design, editing pictures or video and changing HTML and CSS elements on web pages

Job likes and benefits

• Experience: Gain essential knowledge and skills to enable you to progress to a variety of roles within the marketing, business or media sectors.
• Working with a variety of people: You will have the opportunity to work with a range of people (in your team), as well as building professional relationships with third-party companies, stakeholders, the press and the general public.
• Leadership: Being a leader is one of the things that can increase your self-esteem and make you feel like an important asset to the organisation; this role allows you to make use of the leadership skills you possess to achieve outstanding results.
• Working from home: Because this role requires you to do the vast majority of your work from behind your computer; many employers are sympathetic to employees wanting to do some of their work at home such as updating the website, publishing a blog post or sending out tweets on Twitter.

Job challenges and disadvantages

• Overwhelming: You may find it challenging to keep track of all the social media channels, updating the website, meet deadlines at short notice, answering emails and at the same time ensuring that both the customers and the senior management are completely satisfied.

  This is probably the biggest challenge you will face, especially as you will be working in a fast-paced sector such as this one. It is therefore essential that you possess excellent time-management and multitasking skills in order to do this job properly.

Opportunity, career prospects and job progression

With the specialist knowledge and experience you gain from your role you can go to many different directions depending on what you want to do in your career.

There is always the option to stay at your current job and only increase in seniority and responsibility. Another option is to progress to other job positions within the marketing department such as becoming a Marketing Director responsible for the whole team, instead of the social media part of it. You may also wish to start your own business and use your current knowledge of social media to drive your business.

The opportunities are really endless!

More information

The Chartered Institute of Marketing
www.cim.co.uk