Social media is used by 3.8 billion people, that’s almost half of the world’s population. Their audience has grown by 9% since last year and continues to grow every day.
Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube – just a small fraction of the platforms where half of humanity has migrated to. It is logical that along with the number of users and varieties of social networks, the demand for specialists leading these platforms is growing.

The world is moving to Digital at the speed of light. Few people pay attention to the notice boards at the bus stop or near the front door. Our eyes are much more often directed at the screen of a phone or computer, rather than at billboards and citylights. Opportunities on the Internet are becoming wider and wider, the audience is more active and versatile. Accordingly, the demand for employees serving this huge and growing audience at all levels is increasing. Modern shop owners, for example, it becomes more profitable to sell goods through Instagram or a website, than to rent premises in crowded areas of the city, pay staff full-time and still do outdoor advertising to attract customers.

It is therefore quite logical that the demand for quality services is actively growing.

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Who is an SMM (Social Media Marketing) manager?

It is an expert in promoting a business, product or brand on social networks. He is involved in advertising planning and budgeting, as well as creating and administering groups, communities and regularly filling them with content. An SMM specialist increases the number of subscribers, attracts bloggers to co-operation, encourages people to communicate, creates content, conducts prize draws and promotions, reacts to negativity and, in part, works with targeted advertising.

What should an SMM manager be like?

Being an SMM manager means constantly learning new tricks and techniques, being versatile and daring to experiment.

The necessary skills for this profession can be divided into two groups: natural and acquired.

The natural ones include communication, creativity, empathy, curiosity. These qualities will help you touch your client’s heart and form an emotional connection with them, which is now a key factor in the choice. We love it when we are understood, can laugh and support, good specialists know this very well, moreover they like it themselves.

To the acquired ones – understanding of network algorithms, writing texts, photo and video processing, data analytics. Here you can’t do without studying the theoretical component and working it out in practice. The better and more you understand the technical side of the profession, the easier it will be for you to track your results and clearly trace the coefficient of efficiency of your work.

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Social media updates

Social media adds new chips almost every week, it’s important to stay up to date and use them for promotion. Here are a few changes for 2020:

Instagram

  • The big news from Instagram is hiding likes, which started in Canada and then continued in six countries. In November, testing of the feature expanded to the rest of the world.
  • The times of no likes are near. This means that communication with the client will be much more meaningful: correspondence in Direct, interactives, saves, comments.
  • The social network began to block accounts with suspicious activity: mass viewing of stories and subscriptions, scoring likes and comments.

Facebook

  • An internal payment service Facebook Pay has appeared, it will work in all products of the company.
  • Messenger now has buttons with answers to frequently repeated questions and an autoresponder.
  • We started to be recommended the time for posting, it has a good effect on the number of views.
  • 3D photos appeared in the feed and stories.
  • The range of emotions of the “like” button has expanded, now we support, laugh and sympathise together. We are getting closer to each other.
  • Among curious tests: a new format of publications with connected chat, lists of best friends and hidden likes.

Twitter

  • A method to combat false tweets has emerged. From 5 March 2020, Twitter will mark messages with untrue information, photos and videos in orange. Such fate befalls tweets that threaten the life and safety of a person or group of people, become a reason for mass riots, harassment, etc.
  • This year, many people were waiting for the appearance of a button to edit tweets, but one of the creators (Jack Dorsey) announced that it will not be there, as retweeted material will be different from the edited message, which means that the thought of such publications will be greatly distorted.

YouTube updates

  • As of recently, you can listen to the music track from a video when the programme is minimised.
  • Adapting vertical and square videos to fit the screen size. The video player will change shape and aspect ratio depending on the type of content being played.
  • These are just some of the updates that you may have already noticed or went to check on your accounts now. But if you’re an SMM manager, you already know about all of these developments.

SMM manager salary

The average salary of an SMM-specialist in Ukraine is 13 000 – 20 000 UAH per month ($ 500-800), usually it is a standard office schedule from nine to eighteen. If you become the head of the direction in the company tentatively you can get 20 000 — 25 000 UAH (800 – 1000 $). Do not forget about freelancing, where you can regulate your income and workload independently (it all depends on your ability to work). The cost of running one page in Instagram (for example, an entertainment facility) starts at $150, depending on the load and the number of social networks with which you will work.

Our figures are averaged and approximate as the level of payment depends on the qualification of the specialist, the scale of the project and responsibilities, and also depends on the region.

How to look for a job SMM

What is the purpose of mastering this profession?

There are several options here. The first is to get a new speciality, find a project or a company and work and earn safely. The second option – the development of your own small business, not every entrepreneur can afford a separate quality employee and here you have to roll up your sleeves and all to the maximum on your own.

If your option is the first, then after the course it will be a question of finding a job (or maybe you already should).

To do this, create a CV (after the course you will already have at least one case study), decide on the field you are interested in covering and let the world know that a young and talented SMM specialist has entered it.

Don’t be afraid to praise yourself, showing your strengths is a sign of mature judgement, not bluster.

At the beginning of the article we listed quite a few duties for SMM manager, it is important to understand that you are not a multi-armed god Shiva and to be able to do everything equally well is impossible. Someone cool writes texts and communicates with clients, someone has a developed sense of beauty and creates incredible vidual, and someone gets high from statistics, graphs and numbers. Look for tasks that will be a pleasure to perform, directions in which it is interesting to develop you.

To find a freelance project, it is often enough to write in your Instagram or Facebook profile that you are looking for a job. You will receive at least a few offers of cooperation. Confidently talk to the customer and discuss all the terms. Only after a thorough discussion, agree (well, or don’t agree).

If you are looking for a job in the company, then here will go in the course of standard sites for job search, such as work.ua, rabota.ua, headhunter, Linkedin. A good option to look for a job in telegram communities, now many publish quite interesting offers.

Tools of an SMM specialist

A good SMM manager has his own set of tools for working in the network. They are chosen by trial and error. Now there are a lot of applications and sites with similar functionality, here everyone chooses what is convenient and likes.

Here are some examples:

  • Statistics (Popsters, JagaJam, Publer, Socialbakers) — will allow you to quickly analyse and evaluate the popularity of content and the effectiveness of the community on various parameters.
  • Photos (Snapseed, PICSPLAY, VSCO) — editors will help you to process a photo or create a new graphic material based on templates, the endless number of functions will often help you in your work.
  • Planners (Inpreview, Preview, Content Office) — will help to form aesthetic visual content.

Self-education has never been cancelled, pump yourself up in different directions, the more the better. Here are the books that can be useful at the start:

  • “Storynomics. Story-based marketing in a post-advertising world” by Robert McKee (2019) — because we’re already smart and learn from other people’s mistakes.
  • “Targeted social media advertising: exactly in the bullseye. Get more clients from Facebook and Instagram” Sergey Scherbakov (2018) — for those who are interested in advertising and targeting.
  • “Account. Reactive promotion in social networks” Mikolaj Jan Piskorski (2018) — a good guide for promotion in social networks.
  • “The Art of Colour” Johannes Itten (2015) — all the subtleties of colour selection, to create beautiful and harmonious compositions.

Perspectives of the speciality

SMM is a powerful tool for business development. And with a competent approach, it can ensure the formation of customer loyalty, attract visitors to the main company website, create information support, study demand and increase sales.

Career prospects of today’s SMM-manager have quite a wide range. The most obvious is growth to the head of the SMM-direction.

An organic career progression would be the Digital direction, working with all sorts of forms of digital channels to promote the brand.

Also a great option for career development is PR, as SMM is a direct component of it.

In any case, it is obvious that work experience will give a lot of skills for further development and you will definitely understand the vector of your further development.