What Does a Social Media Manager Do?

When I started working with Tricia at Mary's Herb Garden, I made twelve posts in thirty days. In those thirty days, her engagement went up 252%, she picked up 42 new followers, and she did about 25% of the previous year's sales.

I'm not telling you that to brag about the numbers, because the numbers aren't the interesting part. Nobody explains what a social media manager actually does, and it's why the whole role feels overpriced when you look at it from the outside.

What you think it is

If you had to write the job description yourself, it would probably be one word: post.

Maybe you'd add reply to comments, and if you'd thought about it for a minute, you might add something about editing the pictures. That's a reasonable guess, because posting is the only part of the job you can see from the outside.

Here's the real split:

20 to 30% strategy and 70 to 80% execution, and inside that execution, content creation eats 60 to 70% of the hours. Analytics and community management split most of what's left.

Which looks like it proves my point wrong, until you notice the percentages ae measuring time, not importance. The 20 to 30% is the part that decides whether the other 70% was worth doing at all.

What the job actually is

Deciding. Before anything gets made, someone has to answer what this account is for, who it's talking to, what it's supposed to say about the business, and what a person should do after they see it. This is the smallest slice of the calendar and the largest slice of the outcome. As one industry breakdown put it, most social problems aren't content problems, they're planning problems. When somebody says they need better posts, what they usually mean is that nobody ever decided what the account was supposed to accomplish.

Making. Captions, graphics, photos, video, etc (this is the part that EATS time).

Answering. Comments, DMs, the one who wants to know if you serve their zip code. This one matters more than the posting, because it's where a follower becomes an inquiry and where your response time becomes your reputation.

Reading. Looking at what happened and letting it change what comes next.

Do those four and twelve posts will outperform thirty. Skip the strategy and you can post every day for a year and wonder why nothing came of it.

The question that tells you what you're buying

Ask: If I don't tell them what to post, does anything get posted?

If the answer is no, you're buying the making. Which is a real service, and it fixes a real problem if the only thing wrong is that your page looks abandoned. Just know that you kept the deciding, so you're still the strategist. You've hired a very capable pair of hands, but you are still the brains.

If the answer is yes, you're buying all four, and that's why the price is higher.

What a social media manager is not

Your customer service department. They'll answer questions about your business. They can't resolve a billing dispute or approve a refund, and you don't want them trying.

A graphic designer on retainer. Social graphics are in scope. Your truck wrap, your menu, and your business cards are a different job.

A growth hacker. Anyone promising you a follower number is guessing, and the guess is usually optimistic.

A fix for a broken foundation. This is the big one. If your website says something different from your posts, and your logo is from a version of the business you don't run anymore, a social media manager can make the posts look great and it won't matter much. People will click through and find the mismatch, and the good posts will have done nothing but deliver them to it faster.

Who doesn't need one

If you like doing it, keep doing it.

If your work comes from referrals and repeat customers and nobody really looks you up first, this isn't the thing holding you back.

What I do

Social media management at The Brand Barn starts at $600 a month, and the strategy is included, because I'd rather make you twelve good posts that know what they're for than thirty that are just filling a calendar. Click here to learn more.

Recap

• A social media manager does four jobs: deciding, making, answering, and reading.

• Making eats 60 to 70% of the hours, which is why you thought it was the whole job.

• Deciding takes the least time and determines whether the rest was worth doing.

• If nothing gets posted when you go quiet, you bought the making and kept the deciding.

• Twelve posts that know what they're for will beat thirty that don't.

If you're trying to work out which parts you actually need handed off, that's a normal thing to be unsure about, and I have a form to help you figure it out.

Click here to fill it out (takes 90 seconds).