Your guide to social media management

What does a social media manager do?

You understand what social media management is, but exactly what does a social media manager do? Well, a social media manager is responsible for all social media management. They are the person in charge of building a social media marketing strategy, putting it into action, and measuring its results on behalf of a person or organization. People in this role are brand builders who are constantly adjusting the strategies and tactics they use to better connect with their target audience, based on what’s trending in their industry and what their customer base responds to most.

On a day-to-day basis, a social media manager does the following:

• Plans, creates, and schedules social media posts
• Builds budgets for ad campaigns
• Responds to comments and direct messages on company social channel
• Tracks and analyzes key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Identifies and researches new trends and competition

Though some social media managers also function as community managers in small businesses, these roles are distinct in more mature businesses. Whereas social media managers work behind the scenes, community managers tend to work on the front lines of engagement to represent and build relationships on behalf of a brand. Community managers connect the company and its audience, while social media managers strategize around how the brand should show up on social channels.

What is social media management?

Great social media management makes it easier for a brand to meet its broader business goals. When building a social media strategy, your social media manager will select the tactics that allow your company to achieve the brand awareness, recognition, and loyalty you need to grow your customer base and improve your bottom line.

Social media specialists work in conjunction with your marketing team to ensure they can help meet KPIs, including:

• Impressions: How many times a post appears in a users’ feed and timeline.
• Follower count: Number of followers your channel has and how this changes over time.
• Likes: Number of likes or upvotes on a post.
• Comments: How much your audience engages in the comments.
• Link clicks: Audience engagement with CTAs or other shared URLs.
• Engagement rates: Collective measurement of interaction with social media including likes, comments, shares, saves, direct messages, mentions, etc..
• Share of voice: Measurement of how much online conversation ins attributable to your brand versus your competitors.

Once they’ve created a strategy, social media managers are also the ones who make it happen. They create, launch, and manage social media campaigns so your team can focus on their roles and function more efficiently. Social media managers should diligently track KPIs and provide reports and strategic feedback on how to improve social strategy.

Choosing the best social media tools

As with pretty much all branches of digital marketing, strong social media marketing relies on the help of a number of online tools and resources. Managing a brand across social media channels can be hard work, but with the help of these tools, strategists are able to streamline their planning and execution for greater productivity. Here are some of the best social media management tools for the job.

1. How to pick a content calendar

A social media content calendar is a posting schedule that tells you exactly what you’re publishing — including captions, images, hashtags, and more — on each social media platform. In addition to helping managers post consistently from week to week, it’s also the ultimate plan-ahead tool that turns content creation into a step-by-step process that can easily be replicated over time.

A typical content calendar will include details on:

• Which platform you’re posting on (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.).
• What type of post you’re creating (i.e., carousel posts, Reels, or Instagram Stories).
• When to publish your post.
• Caption copy.
• A link to your visual elements.

To stay organized and consistent, social media managers often think of their content in terms of category. Content should fall into a bucket — such as “promotion,” “contest,” “for fun”, “how-to”, or “education”. Categorizing your content ensures that every post aligns with your social media goals.

Content calendars can be as simple as an excel spreadsheet, but if you really want to make life easier, it’s worth using a content calendar tool such as Content Scheduler within Adobe Express where you can draft your social media content and set it to auto-publish to your social media channels when you’re ready.

2. What to look for in graphic design tools

Visual content is key to driving engagement on pretty much every social network. Social media managers may not be graphic designers by trade, but part of the role is getting familiar with the basic principles of design and your brand’s design aesthetic, so they can ensure your social media accounts fully reflect your brand identity.

You don’t have to use the graphic design tools that the pros use to create eye-catching designs. Tools like Adobe Express offer thousands of beautiful templates for anything from Instagram posts to Snapchat geofilters. Social media managers can customize templates for your brand in as little as a tap.

3. Pick photos from stock sites

Whether you need photos for your graphics or want to curate an image-heavy Instagram grid, stock photos are essential for social media managers to continue blasting out high-quality new content from week to week. When you create social media graphics on Adobe Express, you’ll be instantly connected to hundreds of thousands of stock photos from Adobe Stock, Unsplash, Pixabay, and other resources. Just tap “Add,” select “Photo,” and search for the type of image you want. Then you can drag and drop professional photos straight into your template.

4. Save time with scheduling tools

When it comes to social media management tools, a scheduling tool will be a huge time-saver. Scheduling tools allow you to automate the process of publishing your social media content to individual platforms. This means that you can arrange for your content to hit each social network at optimized times without needing to manually publish the content. Check out the Adobe Express Scheduler where you can draft your content for each channel and then schedule it to publish at the time and date that suits you best.

5. Track KPIs with social media analytics tools

Your social media strategy may be extremely effective, but without the metrics you’ll never be able to prove it. In order to ensure the tactics you’re using are actually working — or to know when you need to re-strategize — social media managers always need to keep an eye on brand performance across social media channels.

Most platforms have built-in metrics trackers, but social media experts typically use third-party tools like Klear that collect more detailed insight into your KPIs, all in one place. Plenty also use rich analytics features that are built into their scheduling platforms (usually available with pro plans or upgrades).

There’s a lot to keep in mind when it comes to social media management, no doubt, from carrying out research, to discovering the best social media management tools for you.

Rest assured, the most important lesson we can teach you is not to get overwhelmed, and simply make a start! The quicker you begin posting to social media, the quicker you will have something to learn from.