How To Make Money Online As Social Media Manager: Top Tips
Right now, one area in high demand is a social media manager who works from home. Many earned $3,000 a month consistently for the past decade and worked less than an hour a day.
What Is A Social Media Manager?
A social media manager creates content for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
As a social media manager, you create photos and content for each social media platform. You post relevant content and include the best hashtags to grow each account. You will as well get rid of troll and spam comments.
Review The Skills For A Successful Freelance Social Media Manager Below:
1. Photography And Design
A social media freelancer often needs to capture and create content for clients. This is where knowledge of photography and design can come in handy.
Even if you're not a Photoshop expert, tools like Canva make design a breeze with templates tailored to social media posts.
The best camera is the one you always have with you when it comes to photography (your phone). Whether shooting videos for TikTok or Snapchat, today's smartphones can record content that meets each social media platform's image and video specifications.
2. Copywriting
Managing social media requires creating a lot of captions, so copywriting is crucial. Freelance social media managers need to be good at writing and editing, as the most effective social media posts are short, snappy, and fun.
Additionally, freelance projects often come with higher expectations than a regular job: Clients expect freelancers to deliver texts without spelling or grammatical errors. You can hire an editor to double-check your work before handing it out to clients as a freelancer.
3. Community Management
Many companies hire social media freelancers to handle the most time-consuming aspects of social media, such as outsourcing community management.
Community management typically includes monitoring inboxes and responding to DMs, editing comments and post mentions, interacting with other users, and moderating discussions.
Good community management requires detailed and organized, following the brand's tone of voice guidelines and real interactions with the community.
4. Sales Pitch
Freelancers typically need to create a pitch or proposal for each potential client and sell it effectively to get the gig at the desired price.
One of the most challenging aspects of being a freelancer is that clients can end projects at any time, so you are always looking for your next client. The more sales pitch you make, the more confident you'll be in selling services and developing your template style.
5. Analysis And Reports
As a one-person team, freelancers often need to provide analytics and reporting on customer social channels. An excellent freelance social media manager should provide a monthly report detailing the results of their work, such as audience growth, engagement rates, and reach.
6. Customer Relationship Management
One of the most important aspects of a freelance social media manager's business is building and maintaining customer relationships.
Freelancers are always responsive to the client, which means they have to respect the client's decisions about budgets, campaign messaging, visuals, and more (which can be frustrating).
But that doesn't mean freelancer social media managers should avoid rejecting tactics and strategies. After all, freelance social media managers are paid by customers for their expertise.
7. Flexibility
You have to wear many hats being a social media freelancer. When working with small business clients with limited resources, you are expected to go beyond regular social media duties.
A client may ask you for help with other digital marketing tasks, such as writing blog posts or processing payments. We once assisted a client with her sales booth at a community event while also capturing social content.
A Social Media Manager Must Do The Following:
#1. Set Up Your Business
Before you can begin working with clients, you must officially incorporate your business. The requirements to start a business vary from country to country but generally include:
Decide what type of business you want to register (sole proprietorship or Limited Liability Company).
Once you've registered your freelance business, some optional steps would be to create a business email, website, and social media accounts.
# 2. Create A Portfolio
It would help if you had a portfolio to showcase your previous work and skills to attract your first clients. It doesn't necessarily have to be created on a fancy website for many clients.
Let's assume you have only worked full-time in a few companies. If so, you can use projects and examples from those roles as long as you focus on the social media marketing strategies you contributed to and the results you were responsible for.
#3. Price Your Services
The beauty of being a freelancer is that you have complete control over the price of your services. Before you look for clients, it's a good idea to research how much your time and expertise are worth.
However, we always have conversations with clients before sharing service rates.
#4: Get Out There
Now the hard work begins: finding customers. No matter how talented you are as a social media manager, it would help if you made an effort to let clients know that you are available as a freelancer.
Here's What Works:
Local community-based groups – Many Slack and Facebook groups often have Jobs channels where members can post freelance jobs. You can get many projects through these types of groups.
LinkedIn too: LinkedIn recently added features for freelancers, like showing your availability for freelancing and listing your services on your profile. It's good to post once you've started your business so your network knows you offer freelance services.
Content Marketing – If you want to create a long-term, stable source of customer recommendations, start a newsletter, blog, or YouTube channel covering topics your prospects might be interested in, and add a CTA promoting your freelancer's social media services.
Conclusion
Earning money online as a social media manager has never been easier. One way to land regular jobs would be word of mouth – current and past clients can become a great source of referrals. If you've worked with a happy client, let them know you're open to jobs, as they often know other contacts and friends like themselves.
