Social Media Marketer: 6 Steps to Learn Social Media Marketing in 2023

Social Media Marketing or you say digital marketing is how a company builds its brand, increases sales, and gains website traffic by using social media platforms. People use social media platforms to connect to new and already popular people worldwide. But in today’s world, it has become a hub for companies to engage with existing and new customers around the globe.

Who is a Social Media Marketer?

A Social Media Marketer is a person who is specialized in social media strategy. This person has updated knowledge about the recent updates in all the social media platforms, and he knows which social media platforms are the most suitable for conducting various marketing goals.

Role of Social Media Marketer

• A person, who is a social media marketer, is liable for conducting various works, such as overseeing the details of the accounts or pages on the various social media platforms. The work gets distributed if the company can provide a large digital marketing team.

• This person is also liable for planning regarding the social media platforms’ content and eventually executes those plans. They maintain their content calendars and look out for the accomplishments of their campaign on social media platforms.

• This person also follows the latest social media trends, the recent interest of their target audience, and consumer behaviour. By observing all these, they work on their plans accordingly. Eventually, it helps grow and engage more followers in the company.

• And lastly, they also have to look out to perform the audit of their goals (both unfinished and accomplished goals) and their competitions. Using Google Analytics and Hootsuite, these trained persons can identify the strengths and weaknesses of their present and past planned campaigns.

Do you need a degree to be a Social Media Marketer?

If a person has a social media degree or a marketing degree, then nothing can be better than that! If that person wants to be a Social Media Marketer, then it is possible as there is a very high demand for Social Media marketers. Apart from that, if a person has a degree in the fields of Communications, business administration, English, web design even, or graphic design, the good news is that all these degrees will help that person to acquire a position in the field of Social Media Marketing if they desire to do so.

If a person has a Marketing Degree, then he/she is bound to have the following skills/knowledge:

• To know the basics of marketing along with in-depth market analysis.

• Having the ability to read and interpret analytics, report writing, planning strategies, and others.

• To be grounded and well-versed in the industry of marketing.

• Having the ability to complete research independently.

• Having completed their internship in the sector of marketing.

• To have the endurance to remain dedicated to a particular work as they have previously done during a college degree. It might be more than four years, while it can be only three years for some.

• To have connections with people who are already present in the field and are well established.

If a person has a simple college degree, then he/she is bound to have the following skills/knowledge:

• To have expertise/ability in reading and writing reports and creating strategic plans.

• Having the ability to complete research work independently.

• To have the endurance to remain dedicated to a particular work as they have previously done during a college degree. It might be more than four years, while it can be only three years for some.

• To have completed an internship in any field so that they are already accustomed to the professional field.

Suppose a person has a marketing or college degree but no experience in social media marketing. In that case, he/she should start by working on their brand on social media platforms. They can start by creating their website and posting by showing off their graphic designing skills, blogging skills, content creation skills, or others, whichever they are interested in and feel suitable for. Creating a portfolio will also help to apply for various job opportunities in the social media industry.

Looking for some other ways to make money? Check out our post on how to make money from blogging.

How to Become a Social Media Marketer Without a Degree?

If the person does not have a degree, before creating a portfolio, they can start by learning more about marketing and social media marketing. There is a lot of demand in today’s world in the sector of social media marketing. Still, it is needless to say that the heavy competition in the field is due to people having qualifying degrees and relevant experience. So, developing relevant skills and experience is a must to be worthy in this field. One must search for the necessary skills to get hired by a company; one must look out for what skills and knowledge the company’s managers are searching for.

Firstly, among the necessary technical skills that are required to become a Social Media Marketer are WordPress (including Basic Web Management), Facebook Advertising, Graphic Design (popular graphic designing tools like Photoshop, Adobe, or Canva), Tools for Scheduling (popular tools like Buffer, Sprout Social, AgoraPulse or Hootsuite), Platform Analytics (mostly Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and others) and lastly Email Marketing (commonly used are AWeber, MailChimp, Constant Contact).

Since all these skills can be learned while working in a particular job, it is kind of needless and time-consuming to learn them on your own. Understanding how these tools work is more important and why they play a crucial role in Social Media Marketing than learning them individually.

Social Media Marketing: A simple roadmap:

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has threatened the world severely, has all the cons except for social media growth and the increasing usage of the internet and social media platforms. During the lockdown period from the entire world, Facebook has stated the usage of their platforms, the views of videos, and others have nearly doubled. The features like group voice calling and video calls have significantly increased during this period. A platform like TikTok has also stated that the search for their Brand name has also increased in this period. Therefore, the brands must understand the recent happenings around the globe and how they may affect social media marketing by creating a roadmap for their Social Media Marketing Strategy to organize their online campaigns.

Here we are going to discuss how to create a roadmap for strategizing Social Media Marketing:

1. Defining the target audience:

For a successful campaign, we must define our target population. It is very important to define that which we are targeting. We must first understand the upcoming trends our target population is following. We must follow up on our target population’s psychological, demographic, and geographic factors.

2. Identifying the problem in the market:

Next, it is significant to understand if there is any problem that our company is suffering from. It is essential to understand if the company is suffering from lessened brand awareness, if the company lacks in getting new leads from the market, if the company lacks in providing good service to its customers, the operational costs becoming an extra burden to the company itself. Answering all these questions is essential to solving the problems. Identifying the issue that the audience is facing is also an essential part of tackling with. By conducting in-depth research and analysis, we can surely figure out the challenges preventing the customers from getting the desired red output.

3. Setting social media goals and objectives:

After identifying the target population and the concerns that both the company and the customers are facing, the next part comes where we need to set a few goals for our strategizing our social media marketing. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) judge the number of newly arrived customers or clients, the increase in the engagements of the posted content, and the growth of traffic to our website.

4. Selecting Social Media channels:

There are plenty of options while conducting Social Media Marketing. We must analyze which social media platform is best for our Social Media Marketing. Keeping in mind the target population we have selected, we have to choose the social media we’ll be using. Focusing on a social media platform where the target population is scarce will result in a waste of time, resources, and effort. Secondly, the type of content that we are going to post is also a major point to discuss. If we decide to put some visual content like images or videos, then Instagram will be a good choice, whereas if we post a video, then Facebook or YouTube will be beneficial. If we write content then blogs like this would be great, If we post just audio, then Spotify will be the best choice.

5. Creating content for our audience:

Creating content is one of the most important components of creating a roadmap to Social Media Marketing. We must create high-quality content to attract more audiences from our target population. High-quality content is always grammatical mistake-free. It should be plagiarism free as well. Otherwise, it affects the SEO of the content. It should include eye-catching photos as well as videos. Infographics can also be leveraged to promote the brand. As a small business might face the scarcity of good photos and videos every day, they can use software like Canva, which can produce great images and be made without much technological idea. Another indispensable factor is maintaining consistency while posting content. Quality of content is not always the only key to great Social Media Marketing; consistency is the key to attracting new customers and keeping in touch with old customers.

6. Leveraging influencers:

Influencers can be integral to Social Media Marketing. If influencers are used for marketing strategies, it has been seen that the market has seen upraise. Since many active social media users follow these social media influencers, the target population can easily be targeted. The followers of these social media influencers are being followed blindly by many and are often considered their idols. So if they describe anything about the company, they seem to consider the fact reliable. Research shows that 63% of customers have listened to the influencers more than the brands’ advertisements.

7. How much do Social Media Marketers make?

On average, Social Media Marketers earn 55,314 US Dollars on an average. This data is according to the October 2021 data released from PayScale. Currently, jobs in Social Media Marketing are in high demand all over the world. The use of social media platforms is also increasing day by day and is expected to rise to 4.4 billion from a global point of view by 2025. The use of social media platforms as of 2020 was around 3.6 billion around the globe. Considering this statistic, the salary of Social Media Marketers will also increase in the coming years.

FAQs

Conclusion

Social Media Marketing is a growing sector in which both small and big companies invest. People from various fields, whether they are qualified with marketing degrees or with other degrees and some with no degrees, are doing the job with expertise. In this field, experience is a big issue to focus on. In contrast, knowledge can also be acquired while working for a particular company. By 2030, this field is going to get placed among the top paid sectors around the globe.