Today, masses are flocking to social media platforms for literally everything – fun, shopping, connecting with brands, seeking jobs… you name it!
Since businesses are after the masses, it is not a wonder that social media has since become a crucial marketing tool for businesses. In fact, 83% of marketers reported using social media for their digital campaigns.
No wonder social media careers are becoming a lucrative choice. Social media has opened up media and marketing positions as well as opportunities for professional development.
What does this mean for you? It translates to exciting career options and an opportunity to put your love for social media to expert use.
Do You Want to Find out More?
Let’s dive in to discover why you should take a career in social media, how to get started, and different social media jobs that you can consider, including the skills needed and where to find such jobs.
Why Pursue a Career in Social Media?
Deciding on a career path isn’t always easy. You want to make a few considerations to determine if a certain path fits you best. So, if you are still indecisive about pursuing a career in social media, here are a few reasons why you should.
Job Security
What’s exciting is that social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon!
As said earlier, social media marketing is a necessity for businesses that want to cut through the noise in a saturated market. Thus, having social media presence to connect with potential audiences and build strong communities is no longer an option.
What’s more, digital marketing will continue to be a necessity for businesses if they are to stay afloat. This translates to a continuous and growing demand for social media practitioners.
Social Media Trends Are Always Changing
Any successful digital marketing strategy has to keep up with the ever-changing trends. This means adopting new tactics and tools every now and then. There will always be something new to learn and challenges to overcome. This, coupled with the fact that you are dealing with diverse client bases and needs, makes each day exciting.
Exercises Your Creative Side
No matter what your job profile is in the field of social media, be assured creativity will be a big staple of it. It takes creativity to create unique content that is sharable and appeals to your brand’s target audiences. This calls for a combination of video, photography, text, marketing and advertising techniques, communication, and more.
Allow Hybrid or Remote Work
Social media careers allow you to work from anywhere. This means that you are not confined to an office full time. You can choose to work remotely entirely or check in the office some days of the week.
How to Get Started in Social Media Careers
So, you have finally decided that a career in social media is the way to go, but how do you get started?
The truth is that social media careers are an emerging field, so employers will rarely be looking for individuals with proven track records.
However, a background in marketing and showcasing the passion, enthusiasm, and potential to succeed in social media roles are important. Here are some tips for you:
Learn How Different Platforms Work
Social media platforms come with different characteristics.
A social networking platform would look different from a professional networking platform. Familiarize yourself with different social media terms and platforms to learn how they work, what tickles the masses there, and what language is preferred.
This will help you gain knowledge on how to use different social media platforms to help your employer achieve the set digital marketing goals.
See how Nike uses different social media platforms differently to connect with the audiences and market its products and enhance brand awareness.
The brand uses Twitter successfully to drive engagement and build new connections using emotional storytelling to invoke the right emotions. Nike’s strategy on Twitter is to build a sense of community and create a lifestyle.
Nike leverages Linkedin to create brand awareness and connect to other professionals and businesses. The brand uses the platform for marketing itself as an ideal employer by posting awards and recognitions such as the latest Forbes’ World’s Best Employers of 2023.
Learn How to Use Social Media Tools
When working as a social media professional, your work is likely to entail managing different social media accounts with millions of followers. Social media management tools make work easier for you.
Social media scheduling tools like SocialPilot, for instance, enable users to schedule social media posts for multiple social accounts to align with the active time of the target audiences. This ensures maximum reach, which is essential for successful campaigns.
Get Formal Education
Working as a social media professional will take more than just understanding the platforms.
You will need communication and marketing skills to create content that appeals to different demographics, among other skills that can be acquired formally.
A social media career is writing-related. Post-secondary education will be an asset. You need to have creative copywriting skills.
Taking a course in digital marketing and gaining knowledge in different applications such as CMS, HTML, social media management tools, and the like can help you gain the skills required to succeed.
Learn From Others
You can build your expertise by learning from others. For instance, look at successful marketing campaigns that you like with a digital marketer’s eye. Study them in detail, including the graphics and tone used.
Ask yourself who the target audience would be and what the campaign goals are. What did the marketer miss, or what could you have done differently? This unlocks valuable insights into how successful campaigns are put together.
Demonstrate Your Expertise With Your Own Social Media Accounts
Apply tactics learned to engage with your followers and grow your presence and following.
Make use of LinkedIn, which is the best platform to show your professional work achievements and make networking connections with people with similar roles.
The experience that you gain growing your social media following and marketing your skills will come in handy for the position that you are targeting.
“It can be a red flag to see no social presence for some industries that require a vast knowledge of the digital space.” Sara Skirboll, VP of Communications at CareerBuilder
Volunteer
Volunteering your skills can help grow your expertise and prove your proficiency. You can choose small businesses in your field that can benefit from your expertise but don’t have the budget.
Another great idea is to help a friend’s business. If you are employed, be part of social media initiatives in your marketing department.
Jobs to Consider on Social Media
Different social media jobs exist with varying skills and expertise. Your success in finding the one that suits you the most lies in understanding the options that you have.
However, keep in mind that small companies without the budget for a large social media team often bundle all the roles into a single position. It is important to position yourself as a generalist.
In addition, please note that tasks and roles vary from organization to organization. We have rounded some common titles that you are likely to come across.
Learn about the skills needed for each of them as well as where to look.
Social Media Intern
Starting as an intern is a good way to usher you into the social media career space while learning from the experts. As a social media intern, your duties will be to provide assistance to the digital marketing team.
Responsibilities:
- Writing captions for social media posts
- Creating schedules for social media posts
- Assist in designing and executing social media campaigns
- Creating, editing, and distributing social media content
- Conduct social media research
- Ensuring consistency in brand message
Skills:
- Knowledge of digital marketing
- Impeccable oral and written communication skills
- Good internet research capability
- Knowledge of social media analytics
Social Media Consultant
Working as a consultant allows you to work independently, helping different clients develop and implement social media marketing strategies.
The beauty of this job is that you can choose to niche your focus to a particular area, thus becoming a thought-leader in that area.
Responsibilities:
- Developing social media marketing strategies for clients
- Monitoring clients’ social media pages and websites
- Creating and managing social media accounts
- Creating and editing content for social media posts
- Tracking social media and website performance using analytics software
Skills:
- A creative mind
- Excellent research and analytical skills
- Great time management skills
- Effective communication skills
- Industry-specific knowledge
- Deep understanding of different social media platforms
Social Media SEO Specialist
SEO is all about helping brands rank higher in search engines.
As a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist, you will be required to use popular keywords and other techniques to ensure that your content gets a chance to rank on the first page of SERPs for increased visibility.
In addition, you will have a task to ensure site compliance and SEO best practices on all social media posts.
Responsibilities:
- Working with content creators to publish high-quality, easily shareable, and optimized content with strategic use of keywords and calls to action to increase visibility and engagement.
- Conduct SEO and keyword research to optimize social media pages, content, images, and videos.
- Analyzing search query behaviors on search engines to help create the right content to attract the right audience to the website.
- Analyzing data and web metrics for insights such as user intent, traffic mix, conversion rates, visits, page views per visit, time on site, and more.
- Organizing and planning online marketing initiatives such as campaigns and paid ad placements on social media.
Skills:
- Have an understanding of ranking methods and search engine and social media algorithms
- Be a critical thinker and have an analytical mind
- Possess impeccable data, speaking, and writing skills
- Have basic technical and programming skills
- Be a lifelong learner, as there will always be something new to learn
Social Media Content Strategist
Social media content needs to align with business goals. Thus, as a content strategist, your main work is to create relevant content that receives views and swings audiences into the desired action.
This involves doing a lot of analysis to understand the latest content trends. As Tyra Banks says, “The future is in photos for social media. More and more people are not reading, so I try to attach a photo to most Tweets.”
Responsibilities:
- Creating content – blog posts, social media posts, photos, videos, and press releases that are engaging and resonate with the target audience
- Ensuring that content is properly distributed across all the brand’s social media platforms and websites
- Creating and managing social media campaigns
- Monitoring engagement and brand mentions
- Collaborating with SEO specialists to ensure SEO best practices
- Analyzing data to determine the content length and form that appeal to the target audience
Skills:
- Storytelling prowess
- Impeccable writing and copywriting skills
- Understanding of different social media platforms
- Knowledge of programming languages and analytics
- Ability to tailor content to different digital programs
- Strong collaboration skills
Social Media Ad Specialist
Also referred to as paid social media specialist, a social media Ad specialist is tasked with PPC ad campaigns on social media. This includes planning, designing, and implementing digital campaigns and social media ad strategies. An ad specialist will also be responsible for optimizing all digital campaigns while ensuring brand image consistency across all platforms.
Responsibilities:
- Managing social media paid ads and PPC campaigns on different social platforms
- Developing ad campaign strategy based on the client’s budget and goals
- Writing and approving ad copies
- Reporting campaign performance to relevant stakeholders
- Tracking cost per click, conversions, and other analytics to determine ROI
- Monitoring social media trends to enhance ad experience for users
Skills:
- Creativity skills for designing and writing compelling ads
- Analytical skills and knowledge of analytical tools and techniques such as Google Analytics
- Impeccable communication and organization skills
- Advertising and marketing skills
- Strong research skills
Social Media Strategist
Social media strategists’ job entails focusing on the day-to-day activities on social media while thinking long term.
Your day as a social media strategist will revolve around watching popular trends. After monitoring, you will have a task to determine which trends appeal to your organization’s target audience. You will then be required to brainstorm on how to implement them in the marketing strategy. This means collaborating with the social media manager and content strategist.
Responsibilities:
- Developing, managing, and implementing social media strategies
- Defining important KPIs to track campaign success
- Building social media communities
- Monitoring brand mentions to stay on top of the brand’s image
- Managing social media content
- Keeping updated on social media trends and technologies, among others
- Developing ways to incorporate popular trends into the business strategy
Skills:
- Strong people, collaboration, and communication skills.
- Creative skills
- Analytic skills
- Copywriting
- Video production,
- Customer care
- Graphic design skills
Social Media Analyst
A social media analyst is a key player in any social media strategy. They help brands organize and understand information about demographics that show interest in their products in a bid to determine how best to reach them.
- Analyze and report how users interact with brands across different social media platforms
- Use the collected data and social media trends to create compelling marketing strategies
- Research emerging trends on social media
- Use social media knowledge to create a social media company policy
Skills:
- Be good at research and have impeccable analytic skills
- Strong organizational skills to help you make sense of data collected from different platforms
- Communication, marketing, and project management skills as the job entail working with different departments to create strategies.
Social Media Community Manager
Community management is crucial for brand management and keeping social media discussions on topic. With great community management, customers can be taken through the journey from prospects to advocates successfully.
Responsibilities:
- Building communities by planning engaging activities to attract target audiences.
- Managing social media communities, such as approving membership applications and removing individuals who act out of the code of conduct.
- Engaging and interacting with audiences regularly.
- Monitoring social media mentions.
- Protecting community members by filtering offensive words, spammers, and trolls.
- Ensuring quality social media posts by performing quality checks.
Skills:
- Strong people skills to be able to handle different situations
- Strategic thinking
- Great communication abilities
- Customer care skills
- Good writing skills
Social Media Manager
A social media manager’s job is to oversee, monitor, and moderate a social media team. If you choose this path, you will be tasked to provide direction and support while collaborating with your team to attain set goals.
- Creating, publishing & scheduling content on social media
- Managing social media partnerships
- Responding to comments, and analyzing data to determine the best strategy.
Skills:
- An understanding of various social media platforms
- Industry-specific knowledge
- Communication and people skills
- Project management
- Data analytics
- Basic SEO
- Editing
- Copywriting skills
- Online community management skills
Where to Find Social Media Career Related Jobs?
Social media careers are quite exciting, so they attract a huge number of prospects. Understanding where to start looking for open positions can give you a leg up in your job search. Here are different places to find different social media jobs.
Company Websites
As a social media professional, you will probably work in a digital marketing agency or in-house marketing department. Organizations usually post their open positions on their career page on the website. If you are interested in working for a particular organization, keep checking their websites for job postings.
Job Boards and Communities
These platforms have become the go-to places for job seekers. Employees leverage such platforms to advertise their open positions to a larger number of potential hires.
Visit popular sites such as Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. A quick search on social media job titles will give you results on different job openings.
Likewise, online communities where digital marketers converge can provide insights into potential employers. You may not find job postings there, but you can find job leads from members.
Social Networks
Like job boards, social media has become an important hiring tool for most organizations. You can start following brands that you would like to work for on their social pages so that you are among the first to see when they advertise for vacancies.
Organizations also focus on social media communities to reach a wider pool. Ensure that you join relevant communities in popular social media platforms to take advantage of this.
Usually, you can find them posted as the example below:
Conclusion
Social media presence has become a necessity for businesses that are focused on remaining in business. However, creating and implementing a social media strategy is something that requires expertise and professional knowledge to get results. Thus, this emerging trend has created various jobs that are stable and well-paying. If you are interested in a career in social media, there you have it! – valuable insights to guide you through it.
