Social Media Manager: Important Habits to Follow

The world of social media is evolving rapidly. There are over 3.8 billion active users of social media; and, according to a study, users spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes everyday browsing, sharing, liking, and tweeting on social sites. A notable example is the increase of daily active Instagram stories—a rise from 150 million stories every day in 2017 to 500 million active stories in 2019 has been noted. With the competition and demand for online content soaring, it may be difficult to create an effective and engaging community in today’s connected world. 

Social media techniques are evolving so quickly that even the ones being used a day before are becoming obsolete. Considering these factors, there would be a lot on the plate of a modern social media manager; these changes are also leading to higher rates of burnouts and stress due to the expectation of being constantly connected, conduct ongoing analysis, and even making strategic revisions.

It would, therefore, be beneficial for social media managers to practice certain habits and daily routines—that have been listed in the article below—that will help them successfully complete their tasks. Read on to know more.

What is social media management?

Social media management refers to the process of creating, scheduling, analyzing, and engaging with potential and new customers using content posted on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Businesses, whether it’s a start-up or a multinational corporation, may choose to avail of the services of either a social media management agency or a social media manager. They can help you reach out to your target audience using appropriate strategies and maintain and/or improve your brand’s image. Moreover, they can make running marketing campaigns much easier.

Managing social media platforms is an integral factor in a business’s marketing plan. With around 11 new users added every second, the need to be an approachable and dynamic company is quite essential. Doing so can help your business stand out against your competitors. You can achieve commendable results using reliable social media management tools and follow the necessary advice given by the social media manager that you hire. 

The following sections will provide an insight into the habits and daily routines that will help social media managers successfully carry out their daily tasks and reduce the instances of stressful days.

Professional habits that social media managers can follow

Many people are of the opinion that social media managers have to simply browse social networking platforms and post content on a daily basis. However, the truth is a bit more complicated. Social media management is a multi-faceted job that requires multitasking and keeping up with market trends. Social media managers are experts at handling various online activities ranging from responding to customer comments and addressing their issues to developing strategies. Social media managers basically help provide a blueprint to help businesses achieve their long-term marketing goals. 

But, as a social media manager, it is important to inculcate certain professional habits—such as the ones mentioned below—to perform your daily tasks successfully, acquire better focus, and maintain good health. 

Focus not only on building an audience but also a community

 

As social media managers, it is important to know about your target audience and understanding their needs. This is followed by devising plans to increase a brand’s reach and growing their audience. Moreover, it is important to maintain an engaged online community in order to enhance a brand’s popularity.

As part of the job description, social media managers have to follow the ongoing trends in order to know who should be included in a brand’s social communities and what they would want to hear from the brand’s company itself. However, failing to do so can lead to social media content not performing as per expectations; this happens because it lacks reason and purpose and fails to connect with its target audience as it is basically another advertising format. 

It is always easier said than done when companies would want to engage with everyone and include them in their online community. But, considering reality, the mission and message that you, as a social media manager, would create may not always or immediately resonate with every single customer. If you are part of a start-up, small business, or non-profit organization and are dealing with a niche, local industry and their issues, you have to work accordingly as your company’s online community will be quite smaller as compared to a national organization.

A great advice would be to know where and when to introduce your social attractions. If you choose the right mix, you will be able to increase the number of users who will join the ride. Once you find your community and leverage it suitably using the right type of content based on your company’s requirements, newer members will be persuaded to join as well.

As a social media manager, you should check up on your company’s social communities and observe the strategies that were working. You should consistently answer and address any comments and questions, respectively. Just by being present and providing a personal touch to your social media accounts, you will be able to gain the admiration of your existing communities and even generate newer leads. You should always learn more about your followers and see what inspires and interests them. Once you have your data, you can proceed with creating content accordingly and drive up the traffic to your website.

Consider using time-management methods

As part of your job, how much time do you have to spend on social media? Does it entail a part of your time (like 10%) or the whole time? The best way you can determine the time you will take for managing your company’s social media is to know how much time you will need to devote to it. 

Acquiring the desired results from a social media campaign is similar to getting results out of an exercise plan—you will have to be consistent and keep working (although in certain timely sections) to view the changes you need. Exercising for a mere 30 minutes daily will be beneficial in the long-term rather than sitting at a desk every day and getting zero activity. The same holds true for social media as well. No matter how much time you would have to focus on social media, be it all day or just an hour a day, you must ensure to make a time management plan in order to steer past and clear any bottlenecks and avoid wasting time (which can be so easy considering that your job entails a platform that is designed to get your attention and deviate from the task at hand). 

Some experts recommend using the Pomodoro Technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo. This technique involves setting a kitchen timer for 25 minutes and working continuously without any distractions. If you are not constantly checking your social media accounts, using the Pomodoro Technique at the start of the workday will help you focus and complete your tasks in this specific amount of time. According to this technique, you can assess the tasks you completed in the first slot. Once you have finished this, you could take a short break. Moreover, you can take a break after every 4 Pomodoro slots. This will help you focus better and make sure that you have addressed all relevant messages and notifications that would come in overnight.

Once your 25 minutes is up, and the timer dings, you’ll be able to note how much you have accomplished. And with every time you set the timer, you will be able to have a structured workflow and perform even better.  As social media managers, it is important to remember that effective social media management is not only about posting and promoting your company’s brands and just letting it be. The actual work would be time-consuming as you will have to invest your time in interacting; building connections; exploring and keeping up with trends; creating content; and tweaking, analyzing, and improving your strategies.

Social media management is a field that requires a disciplined approach and practice. Following a good time-management strategy will help you complete various responsibilities.

Take breaks to enhance your mental health

As noted earlier, working as a social media manager, like in many other fields, could be quite stressful. However, the consequences are just being noticed and are being properly studied and understood. The always-on mentality dominates almost every industry throughout the world, especially in the social media domain. However, constantly using social media can affect our mental health greatly. Even as social media managers, it is important to take a break once in a while, even though you may feel like it’s not an option because of the number of tasks to be accomplished. 

This could include switching off social media notifications when you are leaving the office. If you absolutely need to address an important issue, you can set aside some time (such as 10–15 minutes) and dedicatedly work on this task on each platform and then get a good night’s sleep.

You, as a social media manager, must ensure to take digital timeouts and just take some time to give yourself a break from the screen and the content you need to keep examining. If you need some additional help, you can consider listening to mental health podcasts. After all, maintaining good physical and mental health will only help you do your job better.

Know that you cannot always deliver perfect results

It is not guaranteed that your content will be perfect every single time and your social media To-Do list may not always be completed. In many cases and related to different topics, you, as a social media manager, may have to be okay with a complete yet imperfect content contribution as it may be better than simply not doing it at all.

This does not mean that social media managers must let inferior-quality content or automation to lead your social campaigns. But you must ensure to not spend loads of your time designing or improving one single post or spending days on end editing a video that will be around 30 seconds long. One of the main traits of a social media manager is attention to detail but going after perfectionism could be quite tiresome. You must ensure to do a short but thorough check and keep creating an engaging social media profile. 

You can always try creating a game plan and when you find a way that works for you, you can follow it to improve your brand’s image. 

Advocate for yourself

Every job has its difficult periods; however, having that constant feeling that you are struggling to keep your head above the water is not good for your health. Social media managers have to perform different tasks including being marketers, content creators (be it of any type), data analysts, and even customer service agents. This could lead to a build-up of stress among social media managers.

If you are the only member of the social media management team in your company, your responsibilities could amount to having around three full-time jobs. If this is the case, you should ensure to make your superiors or managers aware of the situation and how it is creating a hindrance in maintaining a good work–life balance. Before doing this, ensure to keep track of the time you spend and list out as many tasks as possible that you would need to do and how long it will take to accomplish them. You must stand up for yourself if the environment you work in is getting too stressful as it could affect your mental and physical health in the long-term.

Besides these habits, there are certain tasks a social media manager should add to their daily To-Do list. The following tips will help you have a disciplined approach when completing daily tasks.

Keeping up with popular trends

It is important for a social media manager to monitor their trends in real-time. With the world of social media evolving every day, trends being used today may become obsolete tomorrow. Therefore, you must ensure to check for the trending articles, topics, keywords, and hashtags throughout the day and plan accordingly.

Social media management tools, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, can help you identify consumer behaviors and their habits and online activities. Some tools also offer features such as trending stories based on the interest areas of your target audience. This trend analysis can help you gain an insight to develop your company’s content and marketing strategies and monitor its impact on your company’s products.

 Timely content creation and curation

Content rules the world of social media marketing. As a social media manager, it is part of your job to create and curate engaging content that will keep your audience engaged and help them interact with your company. Having a content plan that includes creating and curating videos, blogs, infographics, and other types of content to promote your brand to a wider audience base.

Creating content from scratch could be time-consuming, but there are many agencies available that can help you in this venture. As a social media manager, you should ensure to check the content being provided is free of plagiarism, educational, and informative for its readers. The content type being used, whether they are listicles or blog articles, should include keywords that have higher ranking capacities on search engine ranking pages (SERPs) so that the visibility of your brand is increased.

As it may not always be possible to create original articles from scratch, companies have to rely on content curation will need to create large numbers of quality articles in a short amount of time. Content curation involves creating content using information available from existing articles. It is important to always post non-plagiarized and reliable content with multiple backlinks as it will help your company seem dependable. 

Spending time finding new ideas to create and curate content for your company’s social media profiles will help you in your long-term marketing strategies.

Once you have your content in place, the immediate next step is to create a content calendar. For this, you must analyze the time a specific type of content works with your audience. A social media manager knows the importance of sharing informative content at a time when the audience is most active.

As a social media manager, posting content consistently helps build a powerful social media presence. Therefore, scheduling a content publishing calendar is also quite important for a social media manager.

Reaching out to new followers

A social media manager has to work towards increasing the followers on their social profiles and keep them engaged. Moreover, they must ensure to target newer leads in order to drive up the traffic to your company’s website.

For this, a social media manager has to analyze and identify people who show interest in your products and services. You can try and acquire more followers by creating different strategies based on various purposes to gain more followers, such as using the services of social influencers (who can target and reach out to local audiences), contests (various contents to increase the engagement levels), and campaigns (reaching out to audiences during holidays and so on). Using the right tools can help you save time doing this mammoth task and help you reach out to newer followers.

Monitor your brand’s growth and competition

A social media manager should take some time off daily to monitor their brand’s growth and competition as well. Any mention of your brand’s name, product, or services should be checked. Moreover, any comments or questions should be immediately addressed and resolved. This will help you gain a higher level of engagement with your customers and even make your brand seem more reliable. 

Although it can be quite a task to monitor these factors manually, using social media management tools will help you in the long run. With these tools, you will be able to access keywords that are trending and even check their popularity levels in the past and future as well. Moreover, some of these tools also help you check the competitors in your field. You will be able to see the tactics they are using and even be able to use their marketing model if it works for them. You can also check the activities that your competitors are employing. As a social media manager, making this check as part of your daily routine will help you successfully entail any tasks that will be a part of their day.  

Understanding your competitors’ workflow is one of the key ingredients to help your social media marketing strategy. Knowing the plans they have and creating even better alternatives for your company can help you stay ahead and rank higher on SERPs.

After you launch a few strategies, you must ensure to check the results of it. As the lifespan of content curves like a roller coaster, you must wait and see which types help your company’s marketing strategy.

Fruitful habits for the present and future

The social media landscape is constantly evolving and is crowded with a wide range of content formats. Sometimes, the work you do may not always click with everyone in your community and may not always feel like an achievement. But you should know that, in the long-term, with multiple trial-and-errors, you will be able to view the results of your hard work.

The daily schedule of a social media manager includes handling multiple tasks that require a deep understanding of factors and need to conduct research on a daily basis. Therefore, it is quite likely that you may be drowned in some tasks while other, smaller ones might get ignored.

In 2020, and this new decade, you should ensure to put your mental health first. It is important to check the capacity and scope and time given for the tasks being assigned. Constantly using social media could have negative impacts if you are having to ignore other aspects of your life such as spending time pursuing your hobbies, spending time with family, and so on.

This is why you must use such time- and task-management tips can help you, as a social media manager, structure your daily tasks and perform them successfully.