Nearly one-half of global internet users (44.eight%) used social media to search for brand data in 2020. Given its prevalence, businesses now recognize why it's and so important to rent a social media director to manage their online presence.

Working as a social media director tin be challenging. One matter that all social media professionals share in common is the need to habiliment many hats. From content cosmos to customer service to PR to sales, businesses often rely on their social media managers to "exercise it all" when it comes to managing and executing their social media strategy.

Whether you're an aspiring social media managing director, or an 60 minutes manager looking to rent one, we've outlined the key aspects and requirements of the job beneath.

Plus, picket this if you want to larn more than about what it's like being a social media manager at Hootsuite:

Bonus: Customize our gratis, professionally designed resume templates to country your dream social media job today. Download them now.

A social media director's responsibilities vary widely depending on the size of an system.

Within smaller companies, a social media manager may have to likewise act equally a one-human being content creation team, including doing graphic design, copywriting, and photo and video editing. Inside larger organizations, social media managers may work with agencies and/or the teams and specialists with those skills.

No matter how big their team and resources, social media managers take many duties to juggle.

A typical social media task description includes the following responsibilities:

  • Building content calendars and scheduling/publishing content
  • Customs direction (replying to comments and messages, flagging issues to other teams)
  • Acting as a aqueduct possessor for all social media accounts (including knowing each channel'south best practices, deciding which content goes out where and when, and adapting content across channels)
  • Creating entrada plans for business organization and marketing priorities (east.g. product launches, rebrands, sensation campaigns, contests, etc.)
  • Writing creative briefs (to requite direction to agencies and/or internal designers, video editors, and copywriters)
  • Supporting influencer marketing efforts (such every bit identifying and selecting influencers, reposting content, and engaging with influencer posts)
  • Creating weekly/monthly reports (and ad-hoc reports for major marketing campaigns, sponsorships, etc.)
  • Social listening (including monitoring hashtags and branded keywords, detecting brand safety issues, managing social media crises, and identifying real-time marketing opportunities)
  • Overseeing content, providing feedback to artistic/content teams (interim as the subject affair expert for all content destined for publishing on social media)
  • Guiding all-time practices for social media (staying up-to-date on new social networks and features)
  • Creating and/or curating content (taking photos, writing copy, designing or modifying graphics, editing videos, finding UGC content, and contributing to editorial content)

A typical day of a social media marketing managing director involves lots of content cosmos, meetings, and ensuring comments and letters are addressed to keep customers happy. While social media is fast-paced and no 2 days are the same, hither is what a day-in-the-life oftentimes looks like for a social media manager:

9-10am: Checking emails and replying to mentions and letters (or assigning them to other teams)

10am-noon: Focused work (such as writing creative briefs, providing feedback, or edifice content calendars)

Noon-1pm: Lunch break – go exterior, meditate, take a screen break

ane-3pm: Meetings with other teams and departments (social media marketing managers oft work on cross-functional teams, managing approvals from multiple stakeholders)

3-3:30pm: Analyzing results, creating reports

3:30-4pm: Reading newsletters, blogs, watching webinars

four:30-5pm: Replying to mentions and messages

v-5:30pm: Scheduling content for next solar day

There isn't one best education path or work history for social media managers. Great social media managers can come from a variety of backgrounds due to the variety of skills used in the role.

Here are ten skills that are key for being a strong social media director:

1. Writing

Near every social media mail service needs a caption, so adept writing is a non-negotiable skill for all social media managers.

Fifty-fifty more than writing, social media managers should be adept at editing and writing short-grade copy to adhere to character limits and best explanation lengths. It'southward a skill in itself to be able to convey a brand message, a CTA, and be snappy and engaging within 280 characters.

2. Editing

If there'southward anything that should offend a social pro, information technology's typos. Having repeated typos or poor grammer is a certain way to hurt a brand's reputation online, and social media users are quick to jump on mistakes. Having good attention to detail means that social media managers will spot spelling or grammar errors earlier hitting "transport" on a mail.

3. Pattern

Given that visuals play such an important office in social media (specially on platforms like Instagram), social media managers need the ability to judge between good and bad design.

They don't have to be graphic designers themselves, but having a discerning eye and beingness enlightened of photograph editing trends makes it much easier when working with designers and giving constructive feedback.

4. Awareness of pop culture and current events

From memes to trends, social media is built upon pop civilisation and current events. This is especially truthful for platforms like TikTok.

Social pros e'er have their finger on the pulse of what's happening, not only to spring on brand-relevant real-time opportunities, but besides to know when to pause social media posts due to major earth events.

Having strong global awareness helps social media managers to be enlightened of cultural sensitivities and spot potentially off-color jokes that could damage a business' reputation.

five. Organization

When it comes to managing a content calendar, there are a lot of pieces that are subject to modify. Posting daily means working at a fast pace, with lots of pieces of which to keep track. This is why post scheduling is a time-saving feature for many social pros.

Social media managers need to be highly organized in order to ensure assets are delivered on time, on make, and approved by all stakeholders. People who enjoy making systems and tin handle context switching make excellent social media managers.

6. Adept business concern sense and objective-oriented

While social media managers don't demand business degrees to be successful, it'southward of import to have a practiced sense of how business works. It is a social media manager'due south responsibleness to ensure that the social media marketing strategy ladders upwardly to the business organization' overall objectives.

The best social media managers accept strategic minds, and are e'er thinking nearly the bigger motion picture and how posts tin can support higher-level marketing and business priorities.

vii. Data analysis

While many social media pros excel at being artistic, they also need to exist unafraid of working with numbers. Social media platforms provide tons of data (sometimes too much), so it's important to be able to wade through lots of data and discover the most meaningful points that lead to actionable insights.

Knowing basic Excel skills allows social media managers to excerpt and manipulate data without needing to rely on others. This is valuable when needing to analyze per-post performance or drill down into very specific social analyses.

Having a robust social media analytics tool also helps social media managers to hands spot trends and extract insights—without the hassle of spreadsheets.

viii. Tin work under pressure

Managing a business' social media channels often ways being the voice of a brand. This is a big responsibleness to accept on, no thing how big or small the brand. Therefore, social media managers need to be cool under pressure.

There is often lots of scrutiny on everything a social media director posts, both from followers and employees. Thoughts and prayers to every social media manager who has had to explain a tweet (or why non to tweet something) to the CEO.

9. Resilience

When interim as the brand vocalisation, information technology's too piece of cake for social media managers to feel that negative replies and messages directed at the brand are also directed at them personally.

This can really wear down on a social media manager's mental wellness. It's important for social media managers to remind themselves to detach their personal worth from the brand and, if necessary, stop reading comments.

Annotation: Ideally social media managers also accept bosses who are understanding of the toll that working on the frontlines of digital engagement can have, and who are respecting of piece of work life rest.

x. Able to set boundaries and unplug

Related to the previous trait, social media marketing managers should know how to set personal boundaries. Whether information technology'southward silencing notifications, taking screen breaks, or taking a holiday to a wifi-optional cabin in the middle of nowhere, these habits are important for preventing exhaustion (the rates of which are quite high in the social media industry).

Cheers to the e'er-on nature of social media, social pros have the trend to always exist checking mentions. The best thing a social media managing director can do for themselves and the business is to create well-documented guidelines (such every bit tone of vocalisation, manner guides, and platform playbooks) so that they tin can hand off the social reins to someone else and not exist tempted to check in while on holiday.

There are lots of ways to learn the social media skills and concepts needed to get a social media director, with no one fix path being favored over others by hiring managers.

Here are a few different ways to become a social media manager:

  • Online courses: Learn the fundamentals of social media marketing online and at your ain pace. Hither are xv courses and resources to learn social media, and when yous're gear up to deep-dive into each platform, hither are 9 Instagram courses.
  • Certifications: Document-based courses usually provide more in-depth training compared to normal courses and examination your social media skills to ensure you're job-ready. Hootsuite University offers a comprehensive Social Marketing Certification Course to get started, as well as advanced certificate programs.
  • Bootcamps/training programs: Bootcamps offering immersive versions of courses (both online and in-person) that provide a fast rail to getting trained as a social media manager, frequently in 6-9 weeks. Consider these options from Brainstation and Full general Assembly.
  • Internships: Internships, ideally paid, are a bang-up way to gain feel when starting from scratch. In addition to social media internships, likewise consider internships in digital marketing, communications, PR, and advertising agencies, which all can give exposure to social media tasks.
  • Shadowing and mentorship: If you're already working in a company or have a connection to an established social media pro, consider asking them if you can shadow them in their job. Shadowing allows y'all to discover and larn the day-to-solar day responsibilities, and likewise evaluate if working in social media is correct for you.

If you're interested in working in social media, jump start your job chase with our social media manager resume templates. The templates are designed to highlight how your feel lines up with the most important skills for social media jobs.

Apply the templates to update your existing resume or build a new i from scratch.

Here's how to employ them:

Step 1. Download the fonts

To use our social media manager resume templates, you will demand to have these fonts downloaded on your estimator.

Click on each link to get started.

  • https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rubik
  • https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway
  • https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Playfair+Brandish

Click Select this font in the tiptop right corner.

Google font page for Rubik - editing a custom social media manager resume

Click the download arrow in the top right corner.

downloading a Google fontk - editing a custom social media manager resume

Once the font package has downloaded onto your computer, open up the folder. Double click each font file to install every variation individually. Click Install Font.

installing Google font on your desktop - editing a custom social media manager resume

installing Google font on your desktop - editing a custom social media manager resume

Stride 2. Download the templates

Bonus: Customize our gratis, professionally designed resume templates to country your dream social media job today. Download them now.

social media manager resume template with red font social media manager resume template with black font

Right-click on the zip file to download from Google Drive.

Don't forget to "unzip" the file on your estimator!

Footstep iii. Showtime editing

Open up your chosen file, Chan or Leopold, in Microsoft Word. Click anywhere to start customizing the file for your ain experience. You can alter or remove any text, icons, or colors.

Brand sure to save often and rename the edited file with your own proper name.

Now that you know what a social media managing director does and the top skills needed to become one, you're i step closer to launching your career in social media.

Next step: learn the tools used by successful social media managers. You can use Hootsuite to hands manage all your social channels, collect existent-time information, and engage with your audience beyond social networks. Try information technology gratis today.

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