Are you a college student who’s taking a serious look at your career plans? Or, are you a working professional who has realized that your current job is not all it’s cracked up to be? Either way, you might be wondering if you could do social media professionally.

Getting paid to be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms may sound like a dream. It’s a totally viable career though. Indeed reports that a social media marketing manager makes an average of PHP 31,732 per month.

The question is, how do you go from a casual user to a paid social media specialist?

What is social media management?

It refers to the process of analysing social media audiences then creating and publishing content that caters to them. It also involves interacting with users, collaborating with influencers, reporting on performance, and helping out your niche’s community.

What is a social media specialist?

Whether working in-house or as a consultant, a social media specialist is a skilled professional who focuses on social media advertising, marketing, and management. They help businesses achieve their goals for social media, like increasing online revenue or growing their following.

What’s needed to be a social media specialist?

When hiring a social media virtual assistant, most employers prefer someone who’s been in the industry for a while. This, however, shouldn’t stop you from pursuing a career as one. All you need to do is follow these steps to land the job – even as a newbie.

FIRST – Develop these core skills

There are a few essential skills that are important for a social media marketing manager. These include:

Organisational skills

Realize that you won’t be dealing with your personal accounts. This means that you can’t just wake up in the morning and post a picture of your breakfast. You need to schedule every post in advance. Hence, find out what events are coming up to coincide your posts with them.

Data analysis

Your efforts should result in increased conversions, engagement, and traffic. However, you must be able to present these in graphs, tables, and other reports. If you don’t know how to make odds and ends of the data you see, consider enrolling in an online course for that.

Writing and editing

This is especially important if you have to create other content like blog posts. You can be more efficient and less stressed if you brush up on your spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structures. Look at how top brands are writing their posts and learn from them.

Photo editing

As a bare minimum, you must be capable of cropping and resizing images for the web. Employers will pay you top dollar if you can make posters or infographics for various platforms though. Practice through free plans on Canva, Visme, or even Adobe Spark.

Communication

It’s hard to produce quality content on your own. Speak with small businesses to see if there are any expertise posts you can make. Ask customers what information they want about a product or service, then write about that on your social media account.

Apart from the core skills mentioned, it’s also a good idea to be knowledgeable in these:

• Using email marketing services like Mailchimp and ConvertKit
• Recording and presenting data on Microsoft Office or Google Workspace
• Taking high-quality photos or creating images from scratch

SECOND – Follow these tips

After you’ve developed the skills necessary as a social media specialist, try these methods:

Build your own online presence

To attract clients, you need a thriving social media presence of your own. Create accounts on all the major platforms and familiarize yourself with their different requirements. Market yourself well to convince others that you can market them too.

Contact small to medium enterprises

Many of them aren’t looking for a social media marketing manager even though they need one the most. Since you don’t have experience, don’t expect to get paid a lot in the beginning. There’s plenty to learn when you’re a pioneering employee though.

Be disciplined with your time

Juggling accounts on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other sites is more time-consuming than it looks. You can’t afford to waste hours scrolling through the news feed for hours. Hence, have a system in place to keep yourself organized and on schedule.

Do your homework

You can’t possibly know everything about social media marketing and management just because you read a few articles—and that’s fine.

Whenever you’re in doubt, Google it. Inform prospective employers that you don’t know something but you’ll figure it out. Honesty always pays off than pretending to know.

Let people know

Lots of opportunities open up by informing your friends and relatives that you’re working your way towards becoming a social media specialist. They might want to refer you to someone they worked with in the past.

They may also share the information on their accounts to expand your reach.

What should you do when you’re hired?

Things don’t end when you receive a job offer. Rather, it’s only the beginning of what could be a fulfilling career as a social media virtual assistant.

If you want to progress in this industry for years to come, make it a point to ask about branding guidelines from the get-go. You want to be informed what topics to cover, what style to use, and so on. This helps you avoid trouble later on.

Another thing is have a detailed plan. Curate the content you’ll be sharing on different channels. For instance, keep the styled photos on Instagram posts but leave the behind the scenes on stories. Infographics are best published on Facebook but not on IG too.

Having a hard time finding social media work?

Maybe you’ve yet to receive a job offer as a social media specialist. Perhaps you’re having a hard time finding companies or people to send an application to. In that case, we at Remote Workmate have your back.

We’re an offshore staffing agency with connections to clients from around the globe. We provide guidance for both newbies and veterans in the field of social media and marketing. If you think you have the skills that our clients are looking for, become a candidate for the roles that interest you.