So you want to be a social media manager? Find out what it really takes
The Social media industry is still rapidly growing and as a result, over the last couple of years there has been an explosion in demand. Now widely accepted as a highly effective communications tool, the growth trend shows no signs of stopping any time soon.
Get paid to post on Facebook – what could be easier right?
Whilst awareness is at an all time high, many businesses wrongly regard social media as ‘easy’ to do, after all, what skill does it take to make a status update? When businesses try and fail to execute social media activities effectively however, they begin to appreciate the fact that there is actually much more to it.
The ‘anyone can do it’ approach is being perpetuated by a slew of get-rich-quick websites, reporting social media management as being the easy way ordinary people with no related training or experience can get rich doing.
This positive can-do approach is something i’m all for – whilst I have an academic background in Management and Marketing, everything I know relating to social media is self taught or has been learned over many years of working with a vast number of different clients. This ‘anyone can do it’ ethos is meant to empower people, encouraging them to get into social media management, usually after they part with sums of money for a webinair claiming to teach them all the secrets they need in just half an hour. This approach however devalues the social media industry and leads to unskilled individuals being put in charge of marketing activities they are ill equipped to carry out.
Whilst no one is infallible and we all make mistakes, doing a job you don’t fully understand and have no past experience of can be a recipe for disaster. Any mistakes a social media manager makes are highly public and often can’t be ignored or swept under the carpet. In this industry where an individuals name is their reputation; make costly mistakes early on and you may find it hard to distance yourself from them. Don’t kid yourself that just because you have a Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr account that you have the skills necessary to run activities for a business.
Businesses also need to understand that they get what they pay for. If they are only offering intern money, that’s what they will get and the results are very likely to reflect that. Chasing Likes and community growth is all well and good but if you are considering social media management as a career choice you really shouldn’t be pitching your services until you understand that Likes don’t mean squat.
Managing and growing a community is senseless if it’s done interdependently of other marketing activity and isn’t strategically driven
Clients consistently underestimate just what it takes to deliver social media activities successfully. Once educated or once they try it for themselves and fail, most soon realise that they simply don’t have the time or expertise to handle activities in-house and look to outsource instead. There is no denying there is a market for social media managers and whilst i’m always happy to knowledge share, discuss best practice, techniques and encourage those wanting to work in this area, I am increasingly unnerved by the gung-ho ‘anyone can do it it’ mentality which stands to devalue this incredibly important, diverse and often misunderstood role.
I don’t agree that ‘anyone’ can be a social media manager, I think it is a complex role that demands a lot of different skills and experience to carry out.
If you aren’t already a prolific user of social media, how can you hope to use a social network effectively for a business? Without a strong grounding in marketing communications, how can you effectively engage people and fulfill business objectives that are more diverse and challenging than simply growing fans or followers? If you don’t know your CTR from ROI how can you analyse and understand the data that is critical in gauging the effectiveness of your activities? If you don’t have customer facing skills or don’t have the ability to resolve problems, how will you deal with irate customers posting on a clients Facebook wall? If you’re written communications aren’t great, how will you create compelling content and great headlines? I’m sure you get my point.
Just some of the skills a social media manager needs to have
Strong interpersonal and networking skills
A good understanding of planning and strategy
Customer-centric approach
Clear understanding of Google Analytics (or similar) and the ability to set up effective campaign tracking
The ability to interpret data and gain insights
Lots of creativity and personality (even the stuffiest brand needs to show some personality to succeed on social media)
Up to date knowledge of guidelines for all the platforms you are active on
Excellent copy writing skills, in particularly the ability to write good headlines
A good understanding of business objectives and the ability to craft effective calls to action
The ability to create custom graphics to accompany posts
Excellent time management skills and high level of focus
If you don’t have all of the above, of course there are things that you can pick up or learn along the way, but personally, I wouldn’t trust something as important as my businesses social media activity to an inexperienced trainee.
The fact remains that social media is the current, hip thing to be involved in and for very obvious reasons, has massive appeal as a career. Get paid to surf the net and post on Facebook all day? What could be easier! My advice however is not to be blinded by all of the companies making money off your naivety, offering training that will turn you pretty much over-night, into a wealthy social media professional. If you don’t have the experience to back up your claims, knowing a bit of marketing theory isn’t enough and before you’ve even got properly started, you may find your reputation damaged.
Theory means nothing, you’ll build a repuation based on the results you get and the knowledge and insights that you share
Spend all of your time and efforts into branding yourself as a social media expert now and what happens in a few years time when social media has come of age? Demand won’t always remain as high as it currently is – how appealing will your CV look in a few years time when all you can boast is social media management when it is no longer quite so shiny and new a skill to have?
To survive and prosper in this industry you will need many more strings to your bow than simply being able to use any given social network. Social media is just one part of the marketing mix and just one of the communication methods open to businesses. Invent yourself as a specialist in social media and in a very short time you might find that as the industry matures and moves on, you get left behind with narrowly defined, outdated skills.
An individual who can grow a Facebook community is valuable right now and yes, many people are making careers out of doing just that. Keep in mind though that it won’t be long before businesses realise they need to turn not to social media managers, but to marketing strategists who understand the bigger picture and will be the real driving force behind successful, sustainable social media activities. Don’t risk staking your career on social media alone, which when taken in isolation will become obsolete faster than you can say “Friendster”.
How to write great website content
In previous posts I’ve looked at why paying attention to your content makes sense, so this time i’m going to discuss all of the basics you will need to be aware of in order to write effective website content.
Don’t just write, lay your foundations and plan
Before you can write your content you need to plan it. Start by thinking about each of the individual content pages you want to have on your website and list them all, a basic bullet pointed list is generally sufficient for this if you don’t already have a fancy site map. If you are re-writing content for an existing website you just need to make a list of the pages you already have.
Plan key messaging and write around that
Next, you need to think about the information that people will need to enable them to make an informed decision about buying your services or products. As well as deciding what key information you need to get across, you’ll need to start thinking about the best way to present this information.
Nothing is quite as dull or off-putting as paragraph after paragraph of text
Hard facts and technical data are often entirely necessary but to present your service or products in a compelling way, it takes more than dry facts and text and this can be a tough one to get right. Too informal and familiar and you risk sounding unprofessional, too formal and factual and you risk boring your readers and losing potential leads.
Ooh pictures, we love a good picture!
Pictures are good, use them frequently to break up text and add interest, but keep them relevant. The pictures that you use need to add and not detract from your core messaging. Read more about the importance of images in web design here.
Quotes are a great way of highlighting key information and breaking up text; tables and graphs are a good way to display complex or comparison data and headlines are essential to the structure of your page. Using a mixture of content will ensure your content is fresh meaning that website visitors stay engaged, buying you more time to win them over.
Be clever, be intriguing and invite curiosity
Not only do headlines break up vast blocks of text, but they offer readers a quick, at-a-glance clue to what the following content is all about. A good headline is informative, relevant and entices a website visitor to continue reading, so it is critical to get this part right as strong headlines will help to elevate your copy, impacting on everything from your websites search engine ranking through to your conversion rates.
Information and facts are all well and good, but great copy needs to be engaging
The art of website copy writing rests upon the ability to present important information in a way that is interesting and engaging. Personality counts for a lot but that doesn’t mean you need to lapse into informal speech or become a hipster. You can still be entirely human, likeable and interesting whilst maintaining professional credibility.
Copy writing tips you can take away
- Highlight all of the benefits and/or problems your service or products can solve
- Include information on how to use your service or products
- Be sure to highlight your USPs, this will help give people a reason to choose you over your competitors
- Mix up your content so that you use pictures, graphics, text, quotes and headlines
- Include strong calls to action e.g. ‘contact us now for a free quote’
- Include detailed service and/or delivery information
- The point of all your copy is to inform, persuade and convert so keep those goals in mind
- Use attractive, high quality pictures wherever possible or video content which is even better
For more information on content marketing and how to produce strong content, see the blog post 10 crucial content marketing questions.
Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.
If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!
Are they insane?! Companies step away from providing customer service via social
I’ve just read an article from marketingpilgrim.com that you can see in full here, The article discusses the fact that some US companies are moving away from providing customer service via social media. An excerpt from the article is reads:
The biggest problem with social media for customer service is that there’s really only one response to a problem – “we’ll look into it.”
Companies can’t do much more than that in public. They can’t solve your outage, refund your money or track a missing package unless the consumer forwards more information through a private channel.
Isn’t a direct response from a company saying “we’ll look into it” better than no response at all? Why do companies have to limit themselves to such a bland platitude? Even if you have very clearly defined customer service channels, customers will still contact you via social media! That’s the beauty of social, you can hold real-time conversations with your customers, obtaining real-time insights into what is working and what isn’t working. Ignoring a customer who Tweets about a missed delivery, service outage or order discrepancy, or a post on Facebook asking for pre-sales advice, just doesn’t make sense.
Always respond to customers no matter what, even if it’s just to apologise and explain you can’t deal with the issue and give them further advice on what to do or how to get the information they need to resolve whatever issue they might have – being helpful, understanding and courteous really isn’t difficult to do.
Simply responding positively to a customer and pointing them in the direction of your official support forum or whatever you might have, is often all it takes to nurture a good customer experience.
It’s true, it may not be possible to resolve Issues there and then, but the difference between good customer service and bad, is that you allow your customers to contact you in a way that suits them. If you aren’t equipped to deal directly with customer service issues via social, it doesn’t matter! Simply responding positively to a customer and pointing them in the direction of your official support forum or whatever you might have, is often all it takes to nurture a good customer experience.
As i’ve previously stated in the article Keep track to avoid social media fail, the key lies in monitoring your social media channels. Get into the habit of checking once in the morning, at lunch time, in the afternoon and in the evening. It takes just a few seconds to check your Facebook wall or you Twitter feed and can mean the difference between a happy customer and an unhappy customer.
Many businesses are scared that customers contacting them to resolve issues via social is a bad reflection of their brand – rubbish! Resolving customer service problems publicly is a very smart move indeed and something I explore in detail in my article Real-time responses via social media are worth the investment!.
Not only do you have the chance to turn a negative experience around for the individual concerned, but you are actively demonstrating to all of your followers/fans that you provide high levels of customer service, which will amplify and drive trust in a way that far exceeds the narrow reach of your usual customer service channels.
Don’t make the mistake of turning your back on providing customer service via social, if anything it’s an area you should be investing in and when putting your social team together, don’t just have someone from marketing do it all, you need someone trained in customer service as part of the team too.
In 2013 content is king, but just how good is your content?
In case you hadn’t already noticed, 2013 is all about content. Google’s ever evolving ranking algorithm has finally come of age and is sophisticated enough to be able to rank sites based on the quality and relevance of their content like never before. No longer is content generation a matter of writing for SEO purposes OR for human visitors (or finding a balance of the 2 which was the case for many years). Finally, we have reached a point where the content that search engines like is largely the same as content that your human visitors will like.
The lines between writing good SEO copy for search engines and engaging copy for humans have all but disappeared
The days of keyword stuffing, or writing meaningless content that would only impress search engines are thankfully, a distant memory. Producing great content that engages your visitors is well and truly in. Yup, content is king!
If SEO is at the top of your list of priorities (and lets face it for any business, SEO has got to be up there) then focusing on improving your content should be right at the top of your to-do list, because good content is more important than ever in determining how a website is ranked by Google.
What exactly is content marketing?
Put simply, content marketing is the ability of a business to communicate effectively with existing and potential customers in a meaningful way. Content marketing drives trust in a brand and creates a connection. Having trust and feeling connected to a brand makes a customer more receptive to any subsequent marketing messages, making them more likely to react positively.
A traditional customer encounter might go something like this:
We sell boxes > They are brilliant boxes > Come and buy them from us!
An alternative, more content-focused encounter may go more like this:
Here is a lot of helpful information on boxes > We know a lot about boxes > We understand why you want to buy boxes > We sell brilliant boxes that fit your needs > Come and buy from us!
The second content-focused approach will ultimately convert more customers and builds trust more successfully. This content-focus will prove more successful in the long-run, making it an effective strategic approach to use.
“The single most significant trend is the continued emergence of content marketing as a standalone discipline. Content, in all its shapes and forms, is core to everything we do as marketers.” Econsultancy, Digital Trends for 2013.
Many consumer focused businesses, in particular retailers, will find it relatively easy to strengthen existing content, or to create new content. For others, in particular B2B companies who may not have particularly sexy or interesting products or services, this can be more difficult. As in the example above, just how do you make content interesting for a company who makes boxes?
If you are just getting started, my advice is to start by going over what you currently have. There is no point writing brilliant new content if it will join a whole bunch of mediocre or mis-matched content. Look at what you already have and optimise this before you go any further.
Just how good is your content? Ask yourself the following questions.
- How useful is your existing content – are you giving your customers the information they are looking for?
- Does your content tell a potential new customer everything they need to know in order to make an informed decision?
- Is your content all sales focused and full of blatant marketing?
- Are benefits clearly laid out and are they compelling enough?
- Is the content interesting enough to warrant return visits, bookmarking or sharing?
- Is your content sticky enough to capture and hold peoples attention, increasing their dwell time?
- Is all of your content professionally written?
- Is your content on-brand?
The bottom line is, focusing on the quality of your content will help to ensure that you are able to maintain your online visibility throughout 2013 and It will have a big influence on your ability to gain the competitive edge, especially in terms of keeping existing customers engaged and in reaching new ones.
I’d love to hear from others on this subject; do you agree that the focus should be so heavily on content? Perhaps you are a business owner who can’t see the value and would prefer to invest in other areas instead? How do you approach your content strategy?
Shell Robshaw-Bryan on Google+
ubershell
