A Day in the Life of a Social Media Manager

Social marketing takes effort, especially if you want to work towards creating an integrated campaign strategy. Therefore, you will want to take resource allocation into account when creating your plan. But how many people do you need to hire and more importantly, WHO do you need to hire?

How many resources you will need to dedicate to social marketing will depend on the following:

• Budget for new headcount or intern availability
• Weekly social time commitments
• Strategic goals
• Number of platforms utilized
• Content strategy
• Current and future community size

If you are small-mid sized company, consider dedicating one full-time headcount to social marketing management. If you are larger, you should probably consider adding 2-3 people to manage your social presence. This person will spend his or her time mostly on community management, social messaging, content creating, and planning.  

How Marketo’s Social Media Manager spends her day:

• Twitter
  • 1 post per hour from 6am-5:30pm
  • 4 influencer re-tweets
• Facebook
  • 3-5 posts per day
• Google+
  • 3-5 posts per day
• Linkedin
  • 2 posts per day
• Pinterest
  • 4-5 pins per week
• Monitor
  • Check Twitter, Facebook, and G+ for mentions or anything that needs a response
  • Respond to comments, customer issues, questions, etc
  • Monitor throughout the day
• Promote and engage
  • Think of creative ways to promote content, events, and engage fans
  • Pictures, infographics, stats, memes, questions
  • Track success of promotions either manually or in a marketing automation tool
• Influencer Outreach
  • Read influencer posts on Twitter and other blogs feeds and comment
• Blog
  • Create blog posts
  • HTML edit blog posts so that they are formatted and ready to be published

Remember, the amount of work you will have for your resource depends on your strategy and company size. You will also want your resource to work alongside your demand generation team to create successful campaigns.  Social media is a huge part of our marketing at Marketo, so we dedicate a lot of time to creating our social presence. If your company is smaller, you may not need to dedicate as much time.

Who do you hire?

When you begin your hiring search for a Social Media Manager, you want to look for a person that is customer service oriented, good at relationship building, is creative, and a strong communicator. This person does not need to be a Subject Matter Expert, but he or she should be a “digital native”—someone who grew up entrenched in the internet and knows the ins and outs of social marketing. He or she doesn’t need to be young, eg. the proverbial 23 year old social media manager, but fluency in online customs is a must. Your Social Media Manager will be on the front lines of your strategy and will be interacting with customers and prospects on a daily basis through your online channels, so make sure you take time to hire the right person.

Think you know social media? You ain’t seen nothing yet! Download our guide and share your thoughts.