“I am a social media manager”

What runs through the minds of the persons I tell this to is “so all you do is Facebook and Twitter?”. Sometimes they even voice it out and ask me if it is even a job. Till date, I still have to explain to my dad that I have a job and that ‘doing Facebook and Twitter’ is a job.

There are also those people who don’t get all disappointed with what I’ve decided to spend my life doing. These are the ones who actually think just doing Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and getting paid is quite cool. This should be encouraging but is it? Or are they just saying this because ‘doing Facebook and Twitter’ looks too easy to be a job…easy money!

Truth be told, it’s quite fun and a bit demanding as far as the work is concerned. I can boldly tell you without holding back that it’s a line of work riddled with demands and pressure from surprisingly almost everyone…if not everyone.

Another truth is that when ‘work’ tends to look like ‘play’ the more open you are to criticism. This is because everybody believes that they can actually do it too. I mean, doesn’t everyone have a Facebook account? Therefore everybody has an opinion about how to manage an account.

People replace their social media channels all the time and are used to scrutinizing content material that they see and engage with.

What I’ve learned is that ‘doing Facebook’ all the time for a living or on behalf of a brand is a job where you need a skin as thick as that of a standup comedian due to the fact that you’re exposing yourself to a whole host of potential abuse and scrutiny.

First off, there’s the client or boss who you’re posting for who usually has an opinion on how they want to be perceived online. Sometimes what they want isn’t what they need but when you work for a boss who thinks her nine-year-old son can do your job, then you’ve got a big problem on your hands.

Then there is the target audience you want to delight. However, you have not just the target audience but both new target audience and existing audience. And then there’s a chance that the guys who occupied the position before you are keeping tabs of the account to see if you are an improvement or a failed attempt at replacement. They’ve possibly got the most insightful evaluations of all and probably still have access to the account analytics.

Did I forget to mention the competition? They’re an unpleasant bunch who are out for blood at any given time. And in all likelihood when you’re snoozing.

So, if you think you are just ‘doing Facebook and Twitter’, think again. What you really are doing is dodging bullets and firing some of yours. Social media management is tough.

It gets worse though. Due to the fact that at some point in the 24-hour job, the social media manager has to fall asleep. It’s already tough when you trying to impress everyone throughout regular office hours let alone providing responses in the night time.

I find myself ‘doing Facebook and Twitter’ quite an awful lot every hour of the day. Thanks to tools like Buffer and HootSuite that allow for scheduling before hand so one can take care of people on the other end of the time zone.

Don’t for a moment think social media management is just ‘doing Facebook and Twitter’. It looks trivial, however in a land where traditional marketing is losing its impact, where the skip-ad button is the most pressed button on the internet and where T.V. Ads truly don’t interest anyone anymore; just ‘doing Facebook and Twitter’ needs to be taken more seriously.

This is because whether tough for you or not, it’s certainly a very critical piece of the marketing puzzle. It requires a great deal of insight, strategy, and analytics.

Plus don’t forget your colleagues. Even they too think they can do Facebook better than you.

Written by

Tega Gabriel