SMM-manager: description of the profession, responsibilities and necessary skills

Nowadays, professions related to Internet marketing are becoming more and more popular. The development of social networks has brought SMM managers to the forefront.

What this specialist does, what professional knowledge and skills he should own, and what are the prospects for development in the profession, we will talk in our review.

SMM stands for abbreviation Social Media Marketing, which translates as "social media marketing."

Nowadays, many companies have their own representative offices in social networks. This is not surprising, because it is there that their potential customers spend a lot of time. Communication time in chat rooms and forums has long passed, stagnating in narrow niches by inertia. That is why in the labor market there is a demand for professionals who can communicate with subscribers in the same language. This makes it possible to promote the brand, increase recognition and increase sales.

SMM managers oversee the activity of the customer’s company in social communities, they are responsible for moderating groups, communicating with the target audience. The duties of these specialists include the publication of text posts, video and audio content, organization of affiliate marketing with other brands.

SMM-manager should be well versed in all the intricacies of the brand’s representative offices at different sites, be aware of the difference between the features of promotion in Instagram, Odnoklassniki, VKontakte and instant messengers. The skills of a content manager are important to them, but personal qualities such as a good sense of humor are no less important.

For a specialist in social networks, it is important to be able to prioritize, understand which comments to delete, which to leave and which to respond to. Social Media Promotion Specialist should always stay abreast of the latest trends and technologies.

SMM-manager can be engaged in several areas of activity.

• Group Admin. This employee completely and completely oversees the content in the public of his clients. Admins are universal workers, the so-called handymen: copywriters, designers, and Internet marketers. They organize competitions and prize draws with community members, advertise their community in other public places. Also, the administrator's tasks include tracking comments and blocking bots and spammers.
• Moderators. These are assistant administrators. As a rule, they perform routine work and are used in the role of workers "on the eavesdropping". Usually, their duties include publishing posts pre-prepared by the administrator, as well as responding to comments.
• Owners of their own public. These specialists administer and promote their business and their personal page. In fact, they do the same thing as regular SMM managers, but at the same time they work for themselves.
• High category SMM managers. Typically, these professionals simultaneously lead several projects of large companies at once. Often such people are better known than business owners. They fully represent the enterprise in social networks and are the true soul of the public.

The vast majority of representatives of this profession are employed in the freelance system, and this gives many advantages.

• Free working schedule. The SMM manager himself plans his working hours and decides at what time and how much he needs to do.
• Ability to work from anywhere in the world. In order to fulfill its functional duties, a specialist needs only a laptop and the Internet.
• Good income. The upper limit of income in this profession is not defined. Here, everything fully depends on the amount of work, everything is simple: you work a lot - you earn a lot and, accordingly, vice versa.
• This is pretty interesting. There is no place for boredom in SMM, everyone is in a constant asset, communicating with bright personalities, and this opens up opportunities for creative expression and manifestation of creativity.

But there are also disadvantages.

• Irregular earnings. These specialists periodically encounter a lack of order. Interruptions in work are not uncommon for them, especially when it comes to people without a well-known name.
• Stress. They are inevitable when communicating with people. Even on social networks, when there are no personal contacts, a lot of negativity falls on the shoulders of the group administrator or moderator, and there’s no getting away from it, since you need to take part in any discussion and respond to every negative comment.
• Lack of social guarantees. In most cases, freelancers work without official registration, so they have neither medical insurance nor deductions to pension funds.

There are certain responsibilities that need to be performed by the work process.

• Drawing up and maintaining a content plan. This is a list of topics for future posts.As a rule, they make it up a few weeks in advance, but as the group conducts it, it can be subject to some adjustment depending on which posts are welcomed by subscribers and which do not give a response.
• Organization of feedback. This function is to respond to user comments, work with objections and work out the negative. The SMM manager must monitor compliance with the established public rules, delete posts and comments that are prohibited by company policy.
• Interaction with other publics. In order to promote, any groups from time to time exchange advertising posts with representatives of other communities or place their ads in publics with a large potential audience.
• Work with opinion leaders. It includes the conclusion of agreements with famous bloggers and media characters with the goal of public relations of their group on their sites. For this, interesting commercial offers are compiled.
• Group activity support. To do this, administrators hold contests, as well as quests, surveys and sweepstakes, rewarding their most active subscribers.
• Organization of offline events. A good result for advancement in some areas is the holding of flash mobs and non-virtual meetings.
• Targeting. Here you should determine the posts suitable for the target, then analyze their performance and choose the potential audience reach.
• Budget planning. An experienced specialist must pre-calculate the budget for advertising, the costs of participating in competitions and all kinds of activities. He must clearly understand the principle of cost recovery for maintaining a public.
• Writing posts. A competent specialist should be able to independently write texts for publication in a group, while he should be clearly aware of the difference between commercial and entertainment posts, apply geolocation, hashtags and other methods of increasing coverage.

In order to qualify for consistently high earnings, an SMM specialist must possess a whole set of competencies and personal qualities.

In order to make money on social networks, certain skills are useful.

1. The ability to design a group in such a way that it attracts an audience. To do this, it’s not enough to understand graphic editors, here you need to know and understand the psychology of people. If you feel good about your audience, then even the most ordinary photos with catchy text will be no less effective than the most rich and cool design.
2. Knowledge of the technique of setting up public and groups, including secret ones, this will allow you to confidently get around your competitors. Many are content with only those tools that lie on the surface, and this is a big mistake, all technical innovations need to be tracked in a timely manner.
3. Skills in writing texts and compiling video content. It’s important that people like posts because it is they who make users return to the group again and again. However, it is important that the entertainment component does not take down the commercial one.
4. Ability to work with objections. You will probably have to talk a lot in discussions, work with negatives, make commercial offers and agree on the exchange of links.
5. Ability to attract subscribers: to know the paid and budget-free methods of promotion. However, keep in mind that it is important to attract only potential buyers and customers into the groups, and not anyhow, since the goal of any activity is to promote the brand.

In order to start managing groups and publics, a professional should have a whole range of personal qualities:

• creativity, thinking outside the box;
• constant striving for personal and professional self-development;
• systemic thinking;
• ability to analyze large amounts of data;
• focus on achieving a positive result;
• increased self-motivation and self-organization;
• independence and independence in the formulation and implementation of tasks;
• Excellent command of the native language and preferably English;
• ability to express your thoughts unconventionally.

To date, there is no possibility of obtaining a higher education in the specialty SMM manager. However, if you have a university diploma in the specialty of an advertiser or PR specialist, then this will be a significant advantage.

In order to enter the profession and master the basic skills are offered distance learning options.

Courses. They can be conducted offline and online. In order to get really useful information, it is better to give preference to trusted educational organizations that will teach you how to correctly identify the target audience, select an effective platform for advertising the community, compose interesting content, and teach methods of promoting the public. Among the most effective courses include classes from "Netology" and Geekbrains. These courses are designed for the practical use of knowledge and immersion in the profession from the very first day of training. Here, not only the necessary information is given out, but also tasks are offered, the implementation of which is discussed with the curator.

If you don’t want to spend money, you can study at free webinars and courses, read books, thematic publications and watch videos on topics that interest you.

We offer you an up-to-date selection of useful books:

• Evgenia Kryukova, Denis Savelyev. “100+ Hacks for Internet Marketers”
• Alexey Ivan "How to come up with an idea if you are not Ogilvy"
• Barbara Cher "The Work of Your Dreams."

Among YouTube channels, one can single out SMMplanner - here you will find all the necessary information about the latest in the world of social media, new cases and trends.

The spread of the salaries of the SMM manager in Russia is large, in many respects they are determined by the level of competence of the manager, brand awareness and responsibilities. The range varies from 5 to 100 thousand rubles, but the average spread is 20-50 thousand. In Moscow, these figures are slightly higher - from 40 to 130 thousand.

In freelance, these specialists can receive any amount: both very miserable, and very substantial, depending on the degree of their workload.

In order to become an SMM manager from scratch, you need to perform several actions.

To start choose one of the social networks in which you feel like a fish in water, and focus on it. At first it’s not worth spraying, it can be difficult for beginners to disperse their efforts simultaneously across several networks, especially if they have different principles for influencing the public. For example, in VKontakte texts are of great importance, and on Instagram, images come to the fore.

Required correctly design your own page. When you offer your services to potential customers, they will certainly go into your profile before deciding whether to hire you. For them, it will be completely superfluous to know what level you reached in the new computer game or how fun you had with your friends last weekend. Your page should be designed in a business style so as to reflect your professional interests.. It will be useful to collect on the wall materials about marketing, new Internet promotion chips and advertising.

Make an attractive quotation and send it to your first potential customer. You should not immediately pursue high incomes, it may make sense to work for some time for free, and then confirm experience and competencies with your successful case and good reviews. Having such a set in the arsenal, you will already dictate your conditions to customers.

As such, there is no career growth in the specialty, however, there are prospects for the growth of financialTo attract customers, you can use one of the strategies below.

• Direct sales in the forehead. Everything is simple here: you need to place a commercial proposal indicating the cost of services, stock and time limit. For example, to fix the corresponding post on your page or create a status in the social network - in a word, use any place where a potential customer can see the advertisement. In order for the appeal to succeed, it must meet the following criteria:
  • to be understood that is, information should be interpreted only in one way without any discrepancies;
  • have an attractive price the proposal should be perceived as very profitable, but at the same time limited in time, the customer should decide as quickly as possible whether to agree to it or not.
• Sales in two steps. This mechanism works as follows: first, you offer your customers something very cheap, or even free, for example, test advertising setup, public audit or group design development. And at the second stage, you are already making a more complete proposal. This is an effective way, since the customer has already seen you in business and if he is satisfied, then he will have no reason to refuse your services, except that there is no budget for promotion.
• Content Sales. This is where your own group will help you. The customer will familiarize themselves with the materials you have proposed and draw up an initial opinion about your professionalism.