Your First Day // Social Media Manager

Regardless of whether you’re starting a new role as a social media manager or a similar role with a different company, you need to get your head around the brand’s social media.

If you’re not sure how to approach your new position as social media manager these tips will help you get prepared before you start your new role so you can be confident and productive in your first weeks.

1. Investigate and report

Just like the tax office investigates companies, you too need to investigate the new business you are working for by doing an audit of their social media. This is a very important first step to any new role as a social media manager. Do not overlook it!

The report should contain details of all the social media platforms the business is present on, the status of each and performance. Also make a note of who has access, any tools used and the processes in place for publishing content.

2. Listen and learn

You’re going to need to learn about the company culture and the attitude of staff towards the business’ social media, and the best people to learn from is the people that work there.

Talk to your new colleagues about the use of social media within the business. Are staff encouraged to use social and connect with the business? What improvements can be made? Find out about the use of social by the different departments – which ones are involved, which aren’t and why? Can you make it easier for them? 

3. Content performance

Take a look the performance of the social content for the past 12 months. Look at both the platform analytics and the website analytics, e.g. Google Analytics. Take note of the content that has performed well and the content that fell flat. Are there any posts that drove a lot of traffic to the website?

Were there any spikes in follower growth? Can this be attributed to anything specific, such as a promotion, offline advertising, Facebook advertising?

4. Competitor analysis

You will need to be aware of the business’ main competitors and their use of social media.

Similar to the audit you did you should investigate your competitors’ social profiles. What platforms are they using? What content do they post and how often? Who engages with the content? Who are their followers? Which content performs the best?

As well as knowing about the key players in the industry, take note of brands similar to yours that your audience follows on social media.

5. What are people saying?

Learning what is being said about the business and the industry will help inspire and shape your content.

Start by looking at your followers and the sentiment they have towards your products or services. What content are they most engaged with? What are they posting on their profile? Are you helping them to solve their problems?

Next, look at the profiles and content from other businesses in the industry. Keep up to date with news and events by following relevant hashtags.

This is an ongoing process. To ensure your content is relevant you should always be listening and reviewing what is being said.

6. Improve and update

Things move quickly in social media; the major platforms are constantly making changes and adding new features.

Review the existing social media profiles of the business and note where improvements can be made. Make sure the information is correct, the links work and logos are consistent and profile images are correctly sized.

7. Build a strategy

It would be nice to think that all businesses with a social presence have a social media strategy in place that is adhered to and updated regularly. Unfortunately, it ain’t true.

This is your time to shine. You can easily create a set of templates that everyone in your team can use and refer to when creating social content.

There is any number of templates you could create, but the key ones are:

• editorial calendar – details of content created, where it is promoted
• social media content calendar – details of what content is posted where, the accompanying copy and images
• social strategy – aligns goals for each platform with the business goals
• reporting template – track the activity and engagement on the platforms to improve performance and determine ROI

Get a head start

Stepping into a new role can be a bit daunting but, if you put these processes in place at the very beginning, it will make your job a whole lot easier. Do you have any other tips for social media managers starting a new role?