Social Media Marketer: Job Description, Salary, and KPIs

It was late in the 1990s and early 2000s when social media came into existence. The most popular platforms – Facebook and Twitter – became available to users throughout the world only by 2004 and 2006, respectively. Social media has now become essential to businesses and there is a dedicated, full-time role for it. Find out all about what a social media marketer does and who makes for a successful social media marketer.

Table of Contents

• Why Should You Hire A Social Media Marketer?
• Job Description
• Salary
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Why Should You Hire A Social Media Marketer?

Is your brand looking to:

• amplify its presence on social media platforms?
• get more likes, shares, subscriptions or clicks on posts?
• drive more traffic or generate leads through social media?
• engage with customers and prospects online?

If you answered yes to all or most of these, you certainly need a specialist – a social media marketer – to help you achieve these outcomes.

This new-age role is crucial to businesses of all kinds, as social media platforms have become an inevitable medium to reach out to customers and prospects. That’s because most of us spend more time on social media now, than on anything else online. Statista says over 80% of people in the U.S. have a social profile. And, the 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that people, in general, spend more time socializing than other daily activities. Hence, it makes sense for marketers to also focus their energies on grabbing customers’ attention, where they are most active.

A social media marketer brings in a combination of marketing and social media management skills to strategize, plan, and execute social media marketing plans that can fetch the desired outcome – be it creating brand awareness, generating leads, driving traffic, or simply engaging your customers and prospects.

Now that you know why a social media marketer is needed in your larger marketing team let’s find out more about the role.

Learn More: What Is Social Media Marketing? Platforms, Strategies, Tools, Benefits and Best Practices

Job Description

The job of a social media marketer is to utilize his marketing and social media management skills to ensure a strong social media presence for the business, contributing to the overall business growth both in terms of brand perception and profitability. In an always-online, interconnected world, this is a full-time role that includes various responsibilities. Here’s what a typical job description for the social media marketer role looks like:

Role and responsibilities

• Conceptualize and create social media marketing campaigns and strategies, including budget planning and allocation; content ideation and distribution; and implementation schedule

• Grow and expand the company’s social media presence into new platforms, while enhancing presence on existing platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram

• Plan, create, distribute, and schedule engaging written or graphic content in the form of e-newsletters, web page content, blogs, and social media messages

• Create a regular publishing schedule and implement it through an editorial calendar to plan, manage and promote specific, timely marketing campaigns

• Create brand awareness and ensure a strong online reputation through constant engagement and well-planned, timely, accurate and platform-relevant updates across social media

• Stay updated with all new developments within the organization, through constant interactions with other teams such as advertising, product development, brand management, sales, etc. for ensuring brand consistency across all social messages

• Engage with customers through content aimed at turning prospects or followers into customers and existing customers to social media brand advocates

• Train and guide social media and marketing team members on social media implementation best practices and strategies

• Research and monitor competitors’ social media activities to ensure brand safety and success

• Report progress and growth on all social campaigns to senior marketing management

• Support sales by cultivating leads from social media campaigns through a planned approach

• Collect and analyze customer data about visits and interactions to create comprehensive reports and use that information to improve future marketing strategies and campaigns

Skill requirements

• Content creation and design: To be able to create or supervise clear, concise, and gripping content for social media and other website posts, a social media marketer needs to be adept at content creation skills. A sense of design, along with an understanding of what kind of visuals or design elements are well-suited for specific social media platforms, comes handy in planning, creating, and distributing content effectively across platforms.

• Understanding of social media marketing tools: There are plenty of social media tools out there that make the social media marketer’s job easy, however, it’s important to know which tools offer solutions specific to your company’s requirements. An in-depth understanding of the tools and their features and the ability to connect that with specific organizational requirement basis the maturity of its tech stack allows a social media marketer to adopt the right tools.

• Technology and data analysis: This job is not just about being creative but also requires a strong understanding of technology especially data management and analytics to be able to schedule, manage and improve upon the content experience of the customers across social media and company’s online posts. A social media marketer should be able to leverage customer data from social media platforms and the company’s customer data platform (CDP) to plan and strategize effective and relevant campaigns across social platforms.

• Agility and willingness to learn: The love for social voice, tone, style and an understanding of the internet culture is a required skill for any social media marketer. Since social media itself is fast-paced and ever-evolving, this role requires agility and an enthusiasm to learn and adapt as per the new developments in the space.

• Collaboration and project management: A hands-on social media marketer should possess strong project management skills to be able to plan, schedule, and implement timely online posts and relevant campaigns. Additionally, to stay abreast of organizational changes and align with other functions or departments such as product development, brand management, design, IT, and so on, one requires excellent collaboration skills.

Learn More: 10 Ways to Ace Social Media Marketing In 2020 And Beyond

Salary

The salary for a social media marketer varies basis the years of experience, level in an organization, and the industry or size of an organization. Typically, a starter to mid-level social media marketer in the U.S. can expect to earn an average of $40,000- $50,000 annually.

PayScale, the compensation software and data company, shows that the average social media marketing manager’s annual salary is $50,660, including bonus, commission, and profit sharing. It elaborates this on its website as:

– An entry-level social media marketer with less than 1 year of experience can expect to earn an average total compensation (includes tips, bonus, and overtime pay) of $40,624
– An early career social media marketer with 1-4 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $47,161
– A mid-career social media marketer with 5-9 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $62,089
– An experienced social media marketer with 10-19 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $68,493
– With 20 years and higher more experience, one can earn an average total compensation of $70,791 or more

This can also vary as per the location, as PayScale reveals that social media marketers in San Francisco, California can earn an average of 53.4% more than the national average. These job titles also find higher than average salaries in New York and Los Angeles (26.9% more) and California (26.9% more).

Learn More: Social Media Marketing Problems and Their Alternatives

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

A key performance indicator is defined as a type of performance measurement to evaluate the success of an organization or an employee and the activities in which he engages to achieve marketing objectives. Here are some of the most important KPIs to evaluate the success of a social media marketer.

1. Engagement

Engagement is critical to the success of all your social media plans and strategies, and certainly more important than reach. Having a large reach is of no use if your presence on social media is not engaging enough. A well-engaged audience promises more leads, which is another one of the important KPIs (which we will come to later), but this is the foundation of your success or failure in social media. Here are the metrics that can be used to measure engagement levels that a social media marketer has been able to drive across platforms:

– Clicks on links
– Likes on a post
– Comments on posts
– Shares
– Brand mentions
– Profile visits
– Active followers

2. Reach

To establish a strong social media presence, it is essential to focus on increasing the reach of your posts and target new prospects, so your messages can travel far and wide. A good reach is the groundwork you need to ensure before you can strengthen and estimate the overall engagement on your posts. You can measure reach by tracking:

– Number of followers or fans
– Impressions on a post
– Overall traffic data (On your website or blog through social media)

3. Leads

Being the desired outcome of most social campaigns, this is the most important metric of all. While, all likes and shares are good determinants of your popularity among your audience and community, it should all ultimately lead to – leads – that are easy to convert! Hence, a social media marketer needs to track and be able to bring in qualified leads at the end of each month, quarter, or year. If the numbers on this metric do not look satisfactory after a specific business duration, you’re certainly doing something wrong and should relook at your social media strategy.

With that, we have covered some of the most crucial KPIs a social media marketer must take care of. We have also outlined the skills required, an in-depth job description, and expected compensation. Being a social media manager can be a very fulfilling position if you enjoy the world of social media, marketing activities, and building relationships with a virtual and global community.

All the best!

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