Working with social media accounts can be a dream come true. Try to imagine this day to day scenario instead of your typical day to day scenario:
You wake up, check your emails and go about your daily mourning routine
- Then, instead of sitting in a traffic jam so that you can make it to work in your dead-end office job, you sit down at your home computer
- After that, you then go to work and you don’t have to leave your home
That probably sounds far better than your typical day job, does it not? Also, what could be better than doing all of that and making more money than you would at a typical job too? The downsides of a normal job include:
- Working for a demanding boss who demands perfection out of you
- The low paying wages
- The rude and demanding customers you have to deal with on a daily basis
What if you could manage social media accounts and make a lot of money doing it? This is a living reality for thousands of people but a lot of people still don’t know that this career field even exists.
The Pros of Managing Social Media Accounts
- You get to set your own hours, you can wake up when you want and you can choose who you want to work with.
- You get to be your own boss and no one is in charge of you but you. You choose who you work with and if you don’t like a client or what they pay, you can simply move onto someone else.
- You get to charge whatever you want too. That’s the beautiful thing as a freelancer, you can set your own price and if people don’t like it, they’re free to find someone who’s willing to work for cheaper.
The Cons of Managing Social Media Accounts
- Sometimes, clients can be a bit rude and demanding but again, you can simply stop working with them if that’s the case.
- Being a freelancer, your taxes will be substantially higher, especially if you’re doing business in the states and you’ll have to make sure you’re putting aside 30% of everything you make.
- Finding work can be difficult if you don’t have an established resume and you’ll be competing with a lot of people trying to do the same thing.
How Do You Work with Social Media Accounts?
There are a few steps you need to do before you can start sending out emails and quotes for people to manage their social media.
Step 1: You need to have a website or a brand established, kind of like an agency group. You need people to know that you’re not just some random person on the internet trying to make some extra money but you’re a professional, even if you’re not. So, this means that starting your own website to market yourself and your services will be vital to your success.
Step 2: You need to have a plan. How do you plan on reaching all of these potential clients and what is your plan for growth in your own company? You need to think ahead of how you’re going to reach potential clients.
Step 3: What do you have to offer? You need to figure out what exactly you have to offer because no one wants to pay a social media manager a lot of money just for logging into their accounts and posting updates. There are a lot of responsibilities that come with social media management, especially when you deal with multiple accounts.
Step 4: Once you’ve got a solid business plan, you need to reach out. Reach out to semi-popular YouTube personalities, reach out to livestreamers and internet celebrities who may not have a social media manager yet. You need to convince them that whatever you charge them will be worth it in the long run because they’ll be completely hands-off social media and you’ll have a lot more free time on your hands.
Here are some of the key responsibilities you’ll have when you manage social media accounts:
- You will be responsible for answering people’s direct messages on platforms like Twitter/Facebook and other social media platforms. You’ll have to answer people’s inquiries about their questions. This part is almost like customer service in a way and a lot of these people contacting these accounts don’t know they’re being handled by a social media manager.
- You will have to delete comments and posts at the request of the client. Sometimes, people like to flood public posts on Twitter and Facebook with hateful or mean comments that they don’t want to see. If at their request, you’ll have to make sure you’re constantly keeping up with their mentions, replies and likes to delete and block certain people from accessing their page.
- You’ll more than likely be in constant contact with the person behind the social media account to give updates on things like analytics and to forward any important messages they may have gotten.
How do I Manage Multiple Social Media Accounts?
Be warned, this is not an easy job. Just because you can make more money doesn’t always mean that this is a good idea because this is how a lot of people end up tiring themselves out and getting sloppy. All of those responsibilities above are just three prime examples of things you’ll be doing when you manage social media accounts.
Now, imagine doing that with 2, 5 or even more social media accounts. Do you honestly think you could keep up?
- You need an enormous time commitment to handle multiple social media accounts. If you’re someone who only has an hour of free time a day, you probably shouldn’t be tackling this job and this isn’t something that you should be engaging in. You might want to find another hobby.
- You need to be task focused and detail oriented. You can’t be logging into the wrong accounts and sending out post updates or tweets. You have to make sure you have everything organized and tidy.
- You need to remember that you’ll be talking face to face with multiple different personalities. So, instead of just one client who will more than likely want consistent reporting, you have to come up with detailed reports on every single client you have.
How To Manage Social Media Accounts
If you’re dead set on having this as your profession, then say goodbye to a lot of your free time. You’re going to be spending a lot of time reading angry comments, moderating someone’s public profile and posting updates when needed. You’re kind of like a virtual janitor for a personality.
Tip #1
Do NOT go for the big streamers and YouTube personalities first. These people already have entire management groups and agencies that do their management for them. They already have people behind their accounts and public relations groups. You will not be able to compete with them.
Tip #2
Don’t come off too greedy either. The entire goal is to of course make money but you don’t want them to think you’re only in it for the money. Remember, you’re there to provide them a service as well, not just to collect a paycheck. You have to offer them something that makes paying you worthwhile and convince them that their time saved is worth it.
Tip #3
You have to stay committed. When you first start sending out messages and proposing yourself as a social media manager, you’ll get rejected a lot and you’ll get blocked by people too. It happens. However, you have to stay committed and keep putting yourself out there. All it takes is one person to say yes to get your career going.
We’ll try to summarize this down to get you started on your new career managing social media accounts
Build a website or a portfolio that shows off your past work and history working with social media accounts
- Come up with a plan and long-term goal that shows your serious about this business
- Come up with a price you want to charge people and stick with it, don’t allow people to talk you down or de-value your services
- Reach out to potential clients via Twitter and advertise your services to them
- Remember, not to go after the most popular personalities because they more than likely already have entire teams of people working for them
Social media manager can be a lucrative job and it can be really exciting, but it’s demanding and it takes a lot out of people to actually do. You have to dedicated, attentive and detail-oriented. However, if you can market yourself and you strive to be successful in the field, you can make a lot more money than you would normally make in any normal 9-5 job, so get out there and market yourself.
