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What exactly do 'Social Media Experts' do?
We've all heard that hiring a social media manager can help businesses achieve their business objectives, but how exactly do social media experts achieve their goals? What are the day-to-day tasks of a social media expert?
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4 Answers
Social media experts are people who can think from the point of view of the market and understand the needs of a business and bring the two together. They are also intelligent to pick up on clues in the market for sales conversions, future product development, customer care and brand management. It's about knowing all the little tips and tricks to do this and being courteous and responsive with people. By understanding the objectives of the business a social media strategy can adapt accordingly. For example, is it about improving customer service, or about driving more sales, bigger lists or about gathering market intelligence? The actions on a daily basis depend upon the objectives of the business.
What Social Media Strategists Do:
I can't speak to what Social Media experts do. Even though I began working with Social Media as a communications and promotions channel in the mid-90s, I've yet to meet an expert. The field changes too fast from both a technological standpoint, user behavior standpoint and an engagement possibility standpoint.
In my experience the SoMe® pro does many things:
• Research the audience and competition for a brand to establish benchmarks, proper channels and opportunities.
• Understand the brand's goals and look for opportunities in social media for meeting those goals.
• Develop strategies for social media channels that can augment and enhance existing marketing and PR efforts or stand alone to reach a brand's goal whether it is outreach, sales, awareness, product development, customer service, promotions, etc. and develop tactics to make those strategies see the light.
• Execute the tactics developed around the strategy. This could be anything from launching a Facebook page to doing blogger outreach with media kits.
• Create buzz-worthy content. After all, if you don't give users anything to share or talk about, it won't be social.
• Establish a brand voice or communication standard in SoMe® as an addendum to the client's existing brand guide.
• Establish guidelines or training for staff should the client desire to maintain their social media internally.
• Actively participate in the social media engagement on behalf of the brand should they choose not to manage it themselves.
• Look for emerging technologies and user trends to get in front of, but don't forget those that are no longer hip but still valuable (i.e. Foursquare versus MySpace).
• Measure and shift, measure and shift - always measure the response to the SoMe® engagement and be prepared to shift priorities, tactics, tone, etc. as user behavior, technological opportunities and business goals change.
Of course this is just my view of what a social media professional does on a day to day basis, but I'm not an expert, just an experienced professional. There are plenty of social media experts to be found on Twitter.
Assuming that the expert actually manages your social media assets:
1) Man the Trenches: We manage your Twitter, Facebook and other assets directly, engaging in conversation, sharing relevant content and basically looking for any excuse to share, tweet, comment, "like", retweet and reply to your contacts.
2) "Friend Farming": We regularly sweep social networks for people that are interested in the sort of things your company does (i.e. targeted demographics) and befriend and invite them into your immediate social circle by becoming Friends, Fans, Followers or Connections.
3) Field Reports: We keep very close tabs on the various metrics and use those to evaluate how well your social marketing is doing. While pure numbers of contacts are important, it's also important to know how ofter the contacts interact with you and how much they seem to be interested in what you have to say.
4) Keep you up-to-date: We stay informed about the state of social media and make sure to keep you in the loop about trends in social marketing, new networks to consider using and new approaches turning all that content and conversation into sales.
Social media management is an additional component of my job as a marketing communications professional. At Towers Watson Data Services I try to co-mingle our e-marketing efforts with our social media sites (LinkedIn group, Twitter) so that we can gain visibility in the marketplace and increase our reputation as thought leaders in the world of compensation and benefits data.
Using social media is a really great way to dispense information quickly and to a wide market without the need of a distribution list or a newswire subscription. I use LinkedIn and Twitter to post press releases, new product updates, and e-newsletters as soon as they are ready for distribution. It’s easy, cost-effective, and fast.
I use the LinkedIn discussion forum to post topics relevant to comp and benefits. I find this is a good way to bolster our brand and it's a great opportunity to see what our clients are thinking. Based on their comments we can identify where our products meet their needs and where they don't. We can also determine market need for new products.
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