SMM Specialist: Duties, Pros & Cons, and Related Roles

Among all the specialties related to marketing, SMM can be considered one of the most in-demand. Let’s figure out: what is the difference between an SMM specialist and a herpetologist and content marketer, what you will have to do in this position, and where to learn all this.

Who is an SMM specialist?

SMM or Social Media Marketing is a set of activities that include the use of social networks to achieve marketing goals. The latter may differ from the niche and general objectives of the company. For example, brand development, attracting new clients, closing deals.

What does an SMM manager do? Perform the listed activities in social networks to achieve the company’s goal? That’s right. But other employees also work with social networks – for example, targetologists, content makers and videographers. We will talk about them below, but for now let’s figure out what tasks may be included in the responsibilities of an SMM manager.

There is a stereotype that an SMM specialist is an “octopus” who should be able to do almost everything. However, in practice, it often turns out that tasks with social networks are distributed among several people. For example, a content marketer prepares texts for publications, a designer deals with creatives, a targetologist sets up advertising for a finished post. In this case, the SMM specialist only needs to foresee this entire picture and prepare a media plan and a strategy for paid and free promotion. 

Although there are cases when all these tasks are performed by one person. Therefore, below we will give an example of just such a case, where the entire possible list of tasks is described.  

What are the responsibilities of an SMM manager?

Building and implementing a brand strategy in social networks 

Building a strategy means creating media plans and developing clear deadlines and goals that the company is pursuing. This may also include communication with the client if the SMM specialist responds to messages from leads on social networks. 

By implementation we mean the implementation of this entire plan, independently or by setting technical requirements for other employees. For example, an SMM specialist has developed a media strategy that includes the creation and development of the company’s Telegram channel. His next steps may be as follows:

Option 1: create a channel yourself, write a media plan, prepare texts and develop a creative style;

Option 2: prepare a media plan and create a channel, but leave the writing of texts to copywriters, and the style of creatives to designers.

The same work plan applies to other social networks. In the case of Facebook and Instagram, promotion of a finished post can also be added. And again, an SMM specialist can set up a campaign independently or delegate this to a targetologist.

Conducting targeted advertising 

Targeted advertising in social networks are ads that users see in their feed or on their page. Such advertising can be customized based on various parameters: gender, age, city and country, professions, and interests. This way, ads will be shown only to your target audience.

In other words, it is an opportunity to tell or remind, in the case of retargeting, about the product of your target audience. And conducting targeted advertising means full customization of the advertising campaign and individual ads. Depending on the platform, advertising is configured according to different parameters and in different advertising accounts – for example, Facebook Ads Manager, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager and others.  

Above is an example of targeted advertising on Facebook. The text before the “Show more” button can hold up to 480 characters, you can customize the image or their carousel , and also choose a CTA button, for example, “Learn more”, “Register”, etc.  

Managing the spending of budgets for promotion in social networks 

It happens that an SMM specialist needs to not only prepare content and set up targeted advertising, but also coordinate the budget. This is followed by reporting on the success of the advertising campaign in terms of funds spent/results obtained.

In order not to dance with a tambourine over the numbers at the end of the month in the hope of proving to the management that the budget was not wasted, we recommend using end-to-end analytics . This tool will show how investments in each advertising channel paid off. 

Achieving the set KPIs 

KPIs may vary depending on the company’s marketing goals. Most often, however, SMM specialists prepare reports on the number of subscribers and the percentage of growth in coverage broken down by different social networks. These may also be reports on the success of advertising campaigns: the number of clicks on ads, transitions, and registrations.

At different marketing agencies, they prepared a dashboard template for the marketing department , which can also be supplemented with social media reporting. The main convenience is that the report data does not need to be summarized manually. Everything happens automatically, and the likelihood of errors and inaccuracies is reduced. Every day you see an up-to-date picture and can quickly notice if something is wrong. 

In addition, the head of the department will not need to regularly open analytics within each social network to find out the intermediate results. Or ask the SMM specialist every day about how many people liked the last post. All data is visible on the summary sheet.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the SMM profession?

Any position has its advantages and disadvantages. However, they are often individual. For example, remote work can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for different people. Therefore, the examples of pros and cons below are conditional and generalized.

Benefits of the SMM profession

Flexible schedule and remote work options. Of course, the last year has made its own changes to many professions, but social media managers could work remotely before the quarantine. All you need is a stable connection to the network. Although this point can be viewed from different angles and even considered a disadvantage. After all, one of the features of the profession is that you always need to be aware of everything. In other words, not to miss a single trend or news. And this implies working 24/7, albeit in a passive format. For example, when a specialist scrolls through the feed and saves notes for future posts. 

The profession can be mastered quickly. It is true that you can come to SMM after graduating from the faculty of journalism, philology, or from a completely different field that has nothing to do with texts. The nuance is that although SMM can indeed be mastered quickly, you still need to have the desire to write texts, prepare creatives, learn quickly and analyze dozens of news items for fakes.

Lots of new acquaintances and the opportunity to realize oneself. SMM specialists sometimes have to develop their own accounts in social networks and even become opinion leaders. At the same time, if an employee has created unique content for the company, his work will become the face of the brand and will speak for its author.

The ability to easily change the field. Not everyone is ready to work “both as a reaper and a piper”, and social media marketing often requires exactly this. But having gained experience in SMM, you can “painlessly”, without retraining for years, go into copywriting, design, targeting or, for example, start a personal blog.    

Disadvantages of SMM

A huge amount of work. And such that it is simply impossible for one person to do. Therefore, if the company does not have an additional designer, PR manager and targetologist, the SMM specialist has to work overtime.

Dependence on technology. We have already found out that you need to search, prepare and think about content and trends all day long. Therefore, there is a dependence on technology, its charge, the presence of stable Wi-Fi.

Dealing with negativity. Communication with the audience is also part of the SMM specialist’s responsibilities, and you need to be prepared for the fact that not all users will thank you for your work and wish you a good day. The ability to competently respond to criticism, without taking the negativity personally, is highly valued in this field.

What is the difference between an SMM manager and related professions?

In the article, we have already mentioned quite a few related specialties that an SMM specialist should partially or completely master. Therefore, below we will briefly analyze them in order to understand what part of the work in social networks can be divided among narrowly focused specialists.

Targeter. A specialist who deals exclusively with setting up advertising on social networks. However, he does not write texts or prepare images. His main goal is to show advertising to as many target audiences as possible. Or, for example, to make as many people as possible perform a target action. A targeter is also involved in creating a portrait of the target buyer, distributing the budget for campaigns, reporting on results and all analytics. Below is an example of configured targeted advertising in the Instagram feed

Content manager, editor, copywriter, translator. We decided to combine these three professions into one item, since they have a common goal in working with social networks – to write content and use it to correctly present the product to the target audience. Differences in the specialties themselves begin outside of social networks: will the employee write articles for the blog, will he be engaged in SEO optimization of the site and blog, will he be able to edit publications of guest authors and make translations into different languages. But it also happens that the same person does all this. Pay attention to the example of a capacious text for a publication on Facebook. 

Marketing designer. Design specialists in the marketing department are not only involved in preparing creatives for social networks and developing a unique style – their tasks are broader. For example, they can also master HTML layout and prepare the visual part of email newsletters, presentation and landing page designs, infographic templates, layouts for partner souvenirs, etc. In other words, a marketing designer prepares all the visual content that may be useful in the department. 

Conclusion

An SMM specialist is more of a collective image than a real person. His responsibilities are distributed among several employees: a targetologist, a content marketer, a PR specialist, a designer. But if we imagine a company in which SMM is developed by one person, he would have the following tasks:

• development and implementation of brand strategy in social networks;
• conducting targeted advertising;
• managing the spending of budgets for promotion in social networks;
• fulfillment of set KPIs. 

Among the advantages of working as an SMM specialist are the opportunity to self-actualize and develop in a variety of ways, a flexible schedule, and work without being tied to an office. And among the disadvantages are high workloads, being tied to a stable Internet connection and equipment. For the best results, partnering with a top SMM agency can enhance your social media efforts.