You are probably reading this article because you want to know how to become a Social Media Manager without any experience on it. So, I want to say that if you are an expert on Facebook, if you like using Instagram, you know how to use Tiktok or you like using Twitter and other social media. If you know even just one then you can be a Social Media Manager.
So, if you want that and you wanna learn how, please keep on reading.
I will share with you the five steps I created on how to become a Social Media Manager even if you don’t have any experience at all.
Before I dive into the five steps on how to become a Social Media Manager, I want you to know what is a Social Media Manager and how does it differ from an Engager and Marketer.
Difference Between Engager, Manager, and Marketer
Social Media Engager
Social Media Engager is just engaging with people. Here’s what Social Media Engager does:
- Reply to private Messages
- Reply to comments, tweets or queries.
- Engage with fans and respond to their queries.
- Build rapport with the followers.
Social Media Manager
While the Social Media Manager is one level higher than an Engager. Because being a Social Media Manager, it consists of a lot of tasks like creating and scheduling content. Here is the thing Social Media Managers does:
- Create and schedule contents.
So, it means, you will be the one to write the caption, do the graphics and you’ll create the video. If the client wants a video. SMM also engages.
- Reply to private Messages
- Reply to comments
- Create analytics reports.
What is Analytics Report?
These are the numbers or metrics that show the growth of the client’s social media account. Those are the couple of things that a Social Media Manager does. But it’s not just those tasks.
Social Media Marketer
These are just the overall difference between an Engager, Manager, and Marketer. The third thing is the level-up version of the Social Media Manager. So, that’s Marketer.
Here is the role of a Social Media Marketer:
- Publish content that aims to convert to a sale or revenue.
- Create and manage paid ads
- Reach to influencer
- The role of a Marketer is to make sales and push products or services or events.
The purpose of Marketers is to sell something. There should be a conversion.
The Manager is just for brand awareness. Just to introduce you to the brand. They don’t really sell or there’s no conversion. Their focus is not to convert, just for brand awareness.
Where A Marketer’s focus is to sell, their focus is to convert, to have sales.
The usual task of a Social Media Marketer is to handle Facebook Ads, reach out to influencers. Handle different social media platforms. All the possible ways to market or to have sales. That is the purpose of a Marketer.
Small businesses, hire only one person to do everything. You will be the Engager, the Manager and the Marketer. But for big businesses or big entrepreneurs they hire different people. The Engager, Manager, and Marketer isn’t one person only. So, it depends on your client, what they want you to do.
But then, most likely, we land projects with small businesses. So, you’ll have to do everything. Even if you’re just a beginner, you should be familiar with Facebook Ads, Facebook chatbot, and those kinds of things. It isn’t really necessary, just the basics that a Social Media Manager does. So, here are the differences between Engager, Manager, and Marketer.
Five Steps On How To Become A Social Media Manager
So we will now head on to the five steps on how to become a social media manager even if you don’t have any experience.
Identify Your Target Audience and Niche
You should know who are your target clients. For example, you like foods, you like baking, etc. So, it would be much better to get your first client in a niche within your passion, within your hobbies.
For you to create captions and images easily because you know it yourself. It is also easier to make engaging posts and engaging graphics if you, yourself, want those kinds of things.
So, for example, we can target entrepreneurs, small business owners, coaches, or online course creators. You can also target the businesses, if you’re into sports, you can also target business that sells sports products, or coaches in sports. Like a basketball or fitness coach if you’re into fitness kind-of-thing. If you like those, you like to go to the gym or you do yoga, or whatever.
Get target clients that are also within your passion or your hobbies. In that way, you can easily create engaging content. Because that’s the main thing why they hire you, to have engagements on their social media accounts.
So, the more you know and the more familiar you are with their niche or with their products, it would be much easier for you to create engaging content for that specific client. Again, first thing, you should know your target clients and your target niche.
Create your own online business presence
So, what is it? This is where you’ll create your business page account. So, for Facebook, you can create a Facebook page. For Instagram, you can create your business account on Instagram, and for LinkedIn. Those three are what I can recommend you to send to your clients. Your Instagram account, business Instagram page.
As for me, I have my page for my business only, and another one for personal use. Because some of my friends might not want the content that I share in my personal account. So, I made something for business only. And usually, my followers there are my clients and those who are also working from home.
I have a different page for my personal life and that’s where I post contents that are not work-related. So, you can also create a LinkedIn, as I’ve said earlier, it’s also good. And then, Facebook page as well.
Why do we need to have those? Because if I were your client, I will ask for a sample of your work. Your Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn?
So if you build your online presence your client can see your work. It will be your “Instant Portfolio.” I’ll say this if you are a Social Media Manager, you don’t need to have a website. You just need to have a portfolio where you can show your work and the list of social media accounts that you handled before. And one of those accounts that you’ll send is your profile account.
Of course, since your work is like that, you should let your clients feel, “The reason why I’m good at it, take a look at my social media account, it’s good as well, right?”Because that will be your task to your client, they should also have a bigger online brand presence. So, yeah. That’s the second one, create your online brand presence.
Rate Your Service
So, for beginners, you can create a package for your service. For example, let’s say for $200 per month, you will do one month’s worth of content. At least one post per day, for two or three social media accounts of your client. And then, you will schedule that one, you will create the graphics and the caption, and you will also engage. like what I have said earlier on what engagement is. You’re the one to reply to DMs, PMs, comments, and such. And you can also create an Analytic report at least twice a month for all the social media sites that you are handling.
And then, that’s it, $200 per month. You can start from that. Or it’s really up to you. If you think that is too much for a test client, you can adjust your rate based on your preference. You can also provide or rate your service per hour. And mostly, the biddings are just on average $5 per hour. But again, it’s still up to you if you want to bid higher or lower than that since you are still starting.
And that’s mostly the common rate that I can see as their biddings for Social Media Management. But the $200, guys, that is just for test clients. That’s not the appropriate rate, it’s kinda lower, it’s discounted. Because mostly, I see around $350 to up for Social Media Management. That is just for two social media accounts. And then twice or thrice a week of posting. Mostly, that is the rate you can start from if you don’t have any experience.
If you have experience already managing social media accounts, then you can bid higher. Make sure that you can show a sample of your work. At least your client can say, “Ah okay. His/Her worth is like this because she already handled social media accounts successfully.”
So, that’s the third thing. You should rate your service.
Find Your Clients
Since you already know your target clients, you know the niche that you want, and you have already built an online presence, either of the three, it’s up to you. You don’t need to have Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It’s up to you. If you want to focus on Instagram, it would be okay. If you want to focus on the Facebook page only, it’s okay as well.
And then, the third thing is to rate your service. If you’ve already set your rate and if you’re already stick to per hour or package for your service, that’s already good. Now, you can find your clients.
Test clients can be your friends or family that has a business. You can ask them “Hey. Can I manage your Facebook page or your Instagram to practice my social media skills? You can pay me just even a little amount or maybe I can give a discount. I will do it for a full month so that you can see the analytics if it increased or just the same. And if ever you’ve liked how I manage the social media accounts of your business, after a month, we can increase the rates.
And I will continue working on your social media accounts. So, it can go like that. And again, test clients are the discounted-rates clients. This is the part where you will test whether the content that you’re creating is working, if the caption is working, if the engagement is increasing, you’ll have a lot of “Aha moments” with your test clients. You can get test clients on some third-party platforms.
So, after getting your test clients, you’ll have lots of “AHA moments”. You will realize things like x scheduler are easier to use. If I post certain content, I will have a lot of engagements, or if I share it with certain groups, I will have a lot more engagements that I’d get from the page.
You’ll get to build a flow or system on social media management. So, it would be easier for you to onboard clients. It would also be easier for you to know the tools that you are going to use.
Create and Perfect Your own system
What do you mean by system? So, it’s just the flow. It would be easier for you to get clients or to get premium clients. Because you have learned a lot of things from your test clients by now. So, make sure that you’ve already perfected your flow.
Know where are you struggling when it comes to handling the social media accounts of your clients. You should already know how to onboard clients, the questionnaires that you’ll send to your clients, and things that you should know before you start managing their accounts.
So, what do I mean when I say create a system? What is a system? It’s simple. The system is your workflow like
- Onboarding clients
- Your flow to create a one-month content.
- Branding Design
- Analytics Report
- Tools that you’ll use to create content for your clients.
So, maybe you are asking right now, what are those tools that you’re saying? These are just some of the social media content schedulers that you can use to schedule content.
- Buffer
- CoSchedule
- Hootsuite
- Later
- Tailwind
What are the designs or what are the reports that you need to give to your clients? So, for sure, because of those test clients, you will know that. You can now create from those five steps to perfect your system.
In that case, if you laid out all the things that your clients need, it would be a great start to get premium clients or where you can bid a higher rate, correct rate, or further rates. So, yeah. Just always make sure that if you have test clients, always make sure to screenshot the account before you handle it and your weekly progress. You should see from there the top three most engaging posts. Why is it getting a lot of engagements? What could be the reason?
Final Thoughts
In handling social media, I noticed that the funnier it is, the more engagements it gets. And it has a lot of shares. If it is informative, it has a lot of saves. But if it’s entertaining posts, it has both engagements and shares. Motivational quotes has also a lot of engagements and shares. But not that much of shares. The funny posts get a lot of shares.