Krista Neher, Author at Launchest

How to Become a Fabulous Social Media Manager

If you are serious about managing social media and you want to become a fabulous social media manager, there are a few things that you can do to separate yourself from the competition and stand out.

If you are ready to go from good to great, here are 10 tips to help you become a FABULOUS social media manager.

Keep Your Skills Up To Date and Always Be Learning. If you want to become a great social media managers you’ll need to stay on the cutting edge of social media. I’ve been doing this for 7 years, and every time I go to a social media conference I learn tons of new things (I even learn from my own training workshops). You can’t be complacent.
Bring New Ideas to Your Clients. Don’t just keep implementing the same thing, but bring innovation to your clients. It may be experimenting with a new tool, trying a new approach or enhancing your strategy. Bringing new ideas shows that you are thinking vs. just doing.
Measure Everything. The best social media managers are always analyzing, measuring and adapting. If you don’t like numbers or analytics, you’ll be in trouble. Analytics need to become your friend.
Admit Your Mistakes (and learn from them). Social media is still new, and trial and error is the only way to truly know what is or isn’t working. If you can’t acknowledge the things that didn’t work (and explain WHY and how you WON’T DO IT AGAIN) you aren’t demonstrating an ability to make smart choices.
Link Back to Strategy and Broader Business Goals. Social media doesn’t exist in a bubble – it is connected to the rest of the business and social media strategy. Linking what you do back to the business shows that you are committed to business success and that you are strategic.
Share Relevant Articles and Examples. Sharing SELECT articles with your clients or boss shows that you are staying up-to-date and always thinking and looking for new ideas. Don’t be annoying about this by doing it too often.
Understand the Entire Digital Strategy. Again, show that you are committed to success by connecting social media back to bigger strategies. Social media should like to email marketing, SEO and the website.
Respond Quickly to Everything. This is a general business tip, but being quick to respond to everything makes you look on-the-ball and organized. Most complaints that businesses have about many of their agencies and partners is about not getting responses quickly.

I have a company that wants me to run their social media – what next?

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Many of our Launchest clients get started as social media managers because they are approached by a business, but they don’t really know where to start.

If you’ve been asked to run social media for a business, you’ve skipped one step in starting a business (getting clients) and you may be able to skip over some of the business set-up, like creating a business name and website.

If you have a social media client, someone who wants to pay you to run their social media, here are the first 5 things that you need to do:

1) Decide how much to charge.

I’ve written a number of posts about this, so I won’t go into it in detail, but I will say that you need to charge an amount that you (based on your unique situation) can live with. Calculate an estimated hourly rate that works for you (at a minimum) but also note that most people forget to include time communicating with clients in their calculations. Read more about how to charge for social media services here.

2) Send a killer proposal or packages with options.

Unless you already have a verbal agreement tog et started, you’ll want to send them a proposal or packages that clearly outlines what you will do and how much they will pay you. Don’t make the rookie mistake of being vague – spell out exactly what you will do (number of posts, etc.) so that you are both on the same page.

3) Get a signed contract.

This may seem like overkill, but TRUST ME – you want a signed contract so that you are clear about payment terms and have something in writing.

4) Create a client on-boarding process

Once you get the paperwork in order, you want to get off to a strong start and make a good impression. This means that you’ll need a good client initiation process where you set clear expectations about timing, results and what you need from the client. Develop a process for the first month to go smoothly and so that you can quickly get everything you need to get moving.

5) Have monthly and daily checklists

Assuming you know how to get started with social media (and actually run the social networks) the next thing you’ll need is checklists to keep you on track every month (and every day). You should have a clear idea of exactly what you need to do to get started each month, and what to do every day to be sure that you are delivering as promised.

How do I start a Social Media Business? (FAQ)

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People often ask about how to start a social media business. I’ve been running a successful social media business since 2007 and have consulted with countless small businesses and social media agencies — so I’ve seen both sides of the equation.

When it comes to starting your social media business, many people aren’t sure where to start.

If you are thinking about starting any business, there are a few things to consider.

What are your goals?

Determine what your goals are for starting a social media business. What are you hoping to achieve? This will help you to establish your business model. Are you looking for:

A new full-time company that you can start quickly
A side-business to supplement your income
A part-time business
A large and growing business with a team
A side business that can transition into full-time

I’ve seen college students that start a social media side-business to make extra money while in school, or seasoned professionals who are in transition create a successful business. There are different objectives depending on your goals.

What will it take to get there?

Once you know your goals, you’ll need to do some math to establish what it will take to get you there. Based on your unique objectives, figure out:

How much time you’ll spend on an average client.
How much you plan to charge a client.

Based on your time spent and how much you plan to charge, you’ll start to see what your business could look like based on the number of customers that you can handle.

There isn’t one set amount that any social media manager can charge – it will depend on your experience level and ability to impress your clients.

For example:

If you are looking to do social media management full time, you’ll probably have certain income requirements. You’ll need to be sure that your pricing structure allows you to meet your income goals.

1 average client is: $1,000 a month and takes about 10 hours a month to service

If you spend 80 hours a month on client work (50% of a full time job) you could manage up to 8 clients brining you $8,000/month.

Don’t Under Value Yourself

Many social media managers find that clients will offer to pay them small amounts, like $200 to run their social media. For most professionals, this would never lead to a viable income.

Consider how long you’ll spend with a client and don’t under-charge. If you want to build your experience base and results, consider offering a discount introductory rate.

Get Started!

Once you have your business model in place, get started. Depending on where you are at, you may need to start with a social media certification to validate your skills.

Next you’ll need to:

Create a business name and presence
Build marketing materials
Prospect and find clients
Pitch clients
Write proposals or create packages
Get clients set up (client on-boarding process)
Manage social media effectively

(Launchest can help with this!)

Finding Social Media Management Clients

by Krista Neher Leave a Comment

If you want to start a social media business, the main thing that you’ll need is CLIENTS!!! People who will pay you for your services. If you don’t have clients, you are basically dead in the water.

So, how do you find clients?

The first step is identifying the types of businesses that will actually make good clients… getting them to sign up for your services is a whole different blog post (or 10).

When evaluating a business to determine if they’ll make a good client, consider the following factors:

1) Do they have an established and profitable business?

Businesses that aren’t making money won’t have money to invest in marketing – especially marketing that generates returns over time vs. direct response marketing. If they aren’t yet profitable or they aren’t established, chances are they won’t be able to hire you. Even if they can hire you, they will probably be more difficult clients because they will feel like they are spending a lot of money, but they may be one of your smallest clients.

2) Do they invest in marketing?

A company that doesn’t do any marketing will be difficult to sell on social media marketing. Start with companies that spend on marketing already — it is easier to get a budget allocation than it is to create a new budget.

3) Is social media a good choice for them?

I’ve seen marketing agencies turn through clients faster than you can say “good-bye” because they had an excellent sales team, but they were working with a lot of businesses that really shouldn’t have invested in social media. As a result, even though the agency did a great job, they had huge turnover and were constantly selling and onboarding new clients.

4) Are their competitors doing it? And doing it well?

Many businesses can be easily persuaded into running a social media campaign if they see that their competitors are doing it (and doing it well). Look for businesses that are nailing their social media strategy and approach their competitors. For example, one local restaurant hired a social media manager who did an excellent job. Most of the other restaurants in the area didn’t really do much on Facebook. After one restaurant was successful, they all wanted the same success and within 6 months 5 neighboring restaurants had hired professional social media management services.

5) Does word of mouth drive their business?

Social media is like word of mouth on steroids. Most businesses rely on word of mouth to get new customers, and social media marketing is a strong strategy to amplify word-of-mouth. These businesses can be easy to sell on social media because you can easily demonstrate the value.

1) Decide how much to charge.

2) Send a killer proposal or packages with options.

3) Get a signed contract.

4) Create a client on-boarding process

5) Have monthly and daily checklists

What are your goals?

What will it take to get there?

Don’t Under Value Yourself

Get Started!

1) Do they have an established and profitable business?

2) Do they invest in marketing?

3) Is social media a good choice for them?

4) Are their competitors doing it? And doing it well?

5) Does word of mouth drive their business?

Determining how much to charge as a consultant is difficult. There are HUGE variances in what consultants charge, and it depends on how you structure your offerings.

Some of the things to consider are:

Launchest includes a complete pricing guide with industry ranges for different experience levels, but here are some top-level guidelines: