The Future of Work — Social Media Management and Marketing in detail

In the third episode of the Future of Work series, I talk about social media. This is a continuation of the previous episode and focuses on the differences between social media management and social media marketing in more detail.

As the name suggests, social media marketing is the ability to use social media as a marketing tool for your business. This marketing function is very similar to the traditional marketing channels that many of us are familiar with.

Social media marketers must be creative and should have a full understanding of the business and the audience. They must also be able to perform in-depth research and understand analytics to figure out what is working and what is not.

Social media management, on the other hand, is more tactical since it focuses on the day-to-day tasks. It involves answering questions about what to post, when to post, where to post, which hashtags to use and who is the target of your post, among many others.

Social media managers are project leaders. They look at the big picture and make sure that everything is organized from the calendars and to-do lists to the content pillars and hashtag strategies. The goal of social media management is to build a consistent following to ensure that social media followers and the engagement are growing.

The question that social media management constantly strives to answer is this: What are you trying to achieve with your social media? This allows social media managers to ensure that the content they plan and create align with the goals of the business. For this reason, planning is a crucial aspect of management. In fact, poor social media managers are those that do not have a plan.

Social media management is the strategic running of the business but done in tactical terms while social media marketing is market-based as it involves how to market the products or services.

If you’re a business coach, for instance, you want a social media marketer who will help you stand out to your target audience by highlighting what you do and what makes you different from the other business coaches on the market.

Because of the differences in the tasks of social media managers and social media marketers, it can be a challenge to find just one person to perform all the responsibilities. So, which one should you hire? It depends on your needs.

If you’re a business owner who doesn’t have time to grow your social media because you cannot post every day, you don’t have time to plan content or learn new trends, then you need a social media manager.

On the other hand, if you don’t know how to market yourself or who your target market is, much less how you’re going to communicate with them, hire a social media marketer.

If you’re a virtual assistant who is into creatives and is not into doing engagement or follow-ups, apply as a social media marketer. Conversely, if you are not good at designing graphics and would rather focus on following trends and analyzing data, apply for a social media management position.

Which social media person do you need for your business or which position will you apply for if you’re a VA?

Let me know in the comments!

#socialmediamanager #socialmediamarketer #socialmediamanagement #socialmediamarketing #dataanalysis #virtualassistant #danmeyer

Dan Meyer Sonic VA, which specializes in matching Filipino Virtual Assistants with American Small Business clients and has been a leader in the outsourcing industry since 2011.

Dan is also one of the top experts in Virtual Staffing and has personally trained over 10,000 Filipinos in areas such as virtual assistance, data analytics, business process outsourcing and social media marketing & management.