How to Become a Social Media Manager: Complete Guide to Start Without Experience in 2024

With more than 5 billion users and a wild appetite for social media customers by brands, you can now become a social media manager, build a career, and earn a living from scratch because there is a growing demand for the role.

Unlike many years ago, this was not the case. In fact, few years ago, there were not a lot of opportunities to build a career or earn a living, working as a social media manager. Today a lot has changed. And even people without certain degrees are now getting ahead to become successful social managers.

As an aspiring social manager, you’re probably aware of the mouthwatering benefits of becoming a social media expert. You’ve also learned about the opportunities in this niche and you’re already planning to get into it but before you do, here’s the other thing you need to know…

Being a social media user does not guarantee you’ll become a successful social media expert. To create a career in this field, you must be more than an average user. You must learn the bolts and nuts of social media marketing and then apply these skills to create real-life results.

That said, in the following paragraphs, I’ll be sharing with you some of the key strategies you’ll need on this journey and how you can actually build your career from scratch, regardless of your pedigree.

Who is a Social Media Manager?

A social media manager is a digital marketing professional whose role is to manage a client’s social media accounts, update posts, interact with the client’s audience, respond to inquiries or carry out other tasks on social media on behalf of the client.

Unlike in the past, in most firms today, the role of a social media manager is clearly defined in most companies, with responsibilities, specific skill requirements and remuneration captured in the company’s payroll.

Also, as companies continue to see the relevance of social media in customer acquisition and business growth, most brands now have specific requirements and expectations from prospective social media managers.

Luckily, there are also a lot of training, certifications, and experience-building opportunities available for social media managers, to get them prepared for their roles, making it easier for aspiring social media managers like you to get started with the right skills.

The Role of a Social Media Manager

To become a social media manager successfully, you want to understand the role you’ll be playing for any client you’re working with.

Although, generally, as a social media manager, your primary role is to manage, a social media account, to achieve specific outcomes for a brand, a social media manager’s role can be grouped into the following;

Custom Roles

Some clients might be very specific on the roles they want you to play as their social media manager. Also in some cases, you as the social media expert might want to outline specific roles you want to play for clients as the case may be.

General Roles

In any case, the role of a social media manager might generally involve activities like; updating client social media, creating posts, representing the brand, responding to enquiries, engaging with client’s fans, managing client’s reputation both in times of crisis and generally at all times, preventing the escalation of social media crisis for clients etc.

Premium & Advanced Roles

Most times alongside the general roles, an ideal client also wants you to stay on top of social media and industry trends and to be able to use this alongside platform analytic insights to drive their social media outcomes.

Furthermore, in some cases, clients may expect you to be able to create and manage social media ads, as well as be able to manage a crisis that involves the client’s brand if such issues arise, etc.

Skills to Become a Social Media Manager

Although experience can come in very handy, when you plan to become a social media manager, you don’t really need a ton of experience to get started at the entry-level.

However, the following skills will be very helpful as you work on garnering your social media management experience;

Content Writing

Even though it’s possible to become a social media manager without experience, to get successful at the job, you need a decent content writing skill.

It does not matter that you don’t have a degree in creative writing, learning how to create simple social media captions, posts etc. will be very helpful for you especially if you’re on one of those social media platforms popular for written content like Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

Digital Marketing

Content marketing demands using a creative approach towards creating, posting, and using a strategic approach to promote a specific kind of content for a specific audience, in order to create a specific outcome.

As a social media manager, a great deal of your job will revolve around creating content. Depending on your niche or the particular social media platform, your content might come in any form including videos, audio, graphics etc.

Having a good grasp of how to use certain digital skills to create, post and promote this content in a way that will help you create expected outcome for clients will be very useful in your career.

Search Optimization Skills

Search engine optimization or SEO for short revolves around optimizing the content you create for the search engines in such a way that the content is easily findable by the target audience you want to reach.

While social media platforms don’t have same search engine capabilities like Google, for example, they do have built-in search engine algorithms that can make your content visible to the right audience when your posts are optimized correctly.

So, when it comes to post optimizations for social media, you want to get familiar with the use of social media hash tags, group and page features, tagging, geo targeting etc., to reach a wider audience with your posts.

Page Analytics

To become a social media manager successfully, understanding how to use analytics to create data driven solutions will be very helpful for you in your career.

With your knowledge of analytics, you will be able to make data driven decisions that will affect the kind of content you create, your marketing procedures, your posting schedules and even the way you interact with your audience.

Graphics Design & Editing

A lot of social media posts will demand some graphics design skills to create them especially if you’re using a picture driven platform like Instagram etc.

For this reason, for some clients, whether you plan to become a social media manager without experience or not, you’ll need some basic graphics design skills to get your job done effectively.

To do this successfully, you might want to have some skills using Graphics Design tools like Corel Draw, Illustrator, Adobe or using templates and other softwares like Canvas.

Alongside this, you might also need some video editing skills as well as ability to use certain video editing software like Adobe and other easy video editing applications.

Platform Specific Skills

All social media platforms are not the same. Beyond the skills listed above, to be successful in your role as a social media manager or influencer, you must have a good grasp of some platform specific skills.

And you can only do this by actually using the social platform and exploring its features.

Also try to understand how it works, the kind of post that aligns with the audience and the kind of terminologies they appreciate.

Average Social Media Manager’s Salary

While the average social media manager’s job might not look like a get rich quick job, compared to others in the digital marketing ladder, social media managers still make a very decent income as professionals.

Social Media Manager Salary in US

In the United States for example, according to a report by Payscale, a senior social media manager earns a much as 63,000 USD yearly, with the average fees at around 43,000USD for entry level social media managers.

Social Media Manager Salary in UK

For the United Kingdom, the average salary is pegged at about the range of 16,000 to 35,000 GBP, depending on the years of experience, among other things.

Social Media Manager Salary in Nigeria

In Nigeria, the social media manager salaries varies, depending on the industry or brands involved. In some cases, you can have experts charging from NGN45,000 to 70,000NGN or more, on a monthly basis.

There are instances where a good social media manager in Nigeria can earn as high as NGN200,000-500,000 NGN and above, depending on their years of experience, network, influence, and the result they are creating for the brand.

And of course, Payscale estimates that the average base yearly salary for a social media manager in Nigeria is in excess of 750,000NGN. So, you can see its quite a decent industry to get started in.

How to be a Successful Social Media Manager

Regardless of your experience, exposure or certifications, the following are some steps you can take to become a successful social media consultant;

Learn the Skill:

You can’t become a successful social media manager without learning the skill. Learn the skills, get the certification.

While you may not need a certificate to get started in some industries, compared to the results you create, there are specific industries that these certifications will give you an edge. Get a social media marketing course here.

Beyond learning the skills, try out your hands on actual social media marketing gigs to garner the experience. This will come in handy.

Avoid Costly Mistakes

Some mistakes like typos, posting wrong, unverified or controversial content might never be intentional but they can be very embarrassing both for you and the brand you’re managing.

And you’ll be called out or dragged on the social media. Avoid this at all cost as it might have a negative impact on your client’s brand.

So, to be successful in this role, you want to post only verifiable content, double check your content for typos, avoid copyright infringement and use only controversies that can advance your client’s brand.

Stay on Top of Your Game

Even if you want to become a social media manager without experience, to be successful, you have to be very sociable and able to relate well with your target audience.

To avoid sounding socially awkward, study your client’s audience, their industry and understand social ethics as it relates to your client’s brand needs.

Understand Client’s Market

Depending on your arrangement, if you’re also responding to enquiries on behalf of client’s brand, you need to have a fair knowledge of the brand or industry.

Some jobs may require you to learn the ins and outs of client’s industry so you can easily represent them online. So, you want to ask questions where you have to and read up about your client before getting started.

Specialize on Platforms

Currently, there are over 4 leading social media platforms, outside the smaller ones.

You don’t have to learn the ropes about these entire social media platform before you become a successful social media manager.

You can choose to focus on learning as much as you can on your preferred social media handles and then demonstrate your expertise on those platforms.

Use Automation Tools

To make the most out of your social media management career, you have to understand how to use automation tools to create, schedule and share content online.

Doing this simplifies your work, frees up your time and enables you to post content on schedule.

There are a lot of social media automation tools you can use to get started on this. But keep in mind that these tools are not meant to replace you but to make your work easier.

Final Words

In, years to come, the increase in social media users will only push up the demand for social media managers by brands.

So as someone aspiring to become a social media professional, not only should you use this guide to start to position yourself as a social media manager, take steps to learn specific skills that will give you an edge by registering at Win Media Academy here.

When you do, you’ll learn advanced and industry specific skills, garner experience and gain all the mentorship you need to become an exceptional social media manager.

So, its your turn now! What is the biggest setback in your journey to become a social media manager? Drop your comments below.