From Lagos to Mombasa, Pretoria to Delhi and DC, the social media is shaping conversations and visibility, and new brands are getting on these platforms to expand their reach. This push has created a demand for social media growth engineers, and many young people are learning how to become a social media marketer, to meet this demand.
Although it is very rewarding, the path to becoming a social media marketer is not a walk in the park. Outside the needed rigorous training, hands on experience and a portfolio of jobs, the cut throat competition in this industry has elevated the bar in hiring and job opportunities.
To achieve your dream of becoming a growth expert on social media, you have to learn, gain experience and build a portfolio of jobs. But even more importantly, you need a real life hands on guide to shape your journey. And in this guide, I’ll be sharing with you my experiences, insights and lessons and how you can use this to shape your journey.
What is a Social Media Marketer?
A social media marketer is an expert that uses their digital marketing skills to achieve a specific outcome for a brand on the social media. This outcome could be promotion and brand visibility, coordinated growth or target sales.
The meaning of a social media marketer can be nuanced in most cases and each brand might have their own definitions based on their job descriptions and role expectations but the main role of a social media marketer is to use a combination of social media marketing strategies to achieve a specific outcome for a brand.
Social Media Marketer Vs Social Media Manager
Although the roles of a social media marketer and social media manager might look very similar, both roles are different in a way. One takes care of all aspects of growth marketing on social media while the other takes care of an aspect of it.
For example, while a social media marketer’s role encompasses using all social media marketing approaches including social media management, advertising, content creation and posting etc., the role of a social media manager might just evolve around platform management, content creation and engagement.
In a nutshell, the role of a social media marketer covers all aspect of social media marketing including branding, marketing and growth while the role of a social media manager might be more narrowly focused on platform management, community building and engagement.
Steps to Become a Social Media Marketer
There are many ways to become a social media marketer. I’ll be discussing the popular steps in the following paragraphs
Find a Goal & Niche
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I this is not your regular opening especially when you’re in a hurry to become a social media marketer as soon as possible but really, you need a goal.
You need a goal so you can narrow your focus, align your learning and target your clients more accurately. This is very crucial. So, drop whatever you’re doing right now and find out exactly why you’re getting on this journey.
Now, as soon as you’re done with this part, you need to find a niche that matches your goal. Let’s say you’re a lawyer and your goal is to use your lawyering skills to evolve a career around social media marketing then you’ll naturally find a niche that caters to lawyers.
And by the way, you need a niche because you don’t want to target everybody. I mean it’s more difficult to achieve so much, if you choose to target a whole bunch of brands without narrowing down to a specific focus.
So, you must narrow down your niche or target industry. Identify a niche that aligns with your goals and stick with it.
Choose a Platform
There are so many social media platforms out there. It might be difficult to become an expert on all the platforms but you can focus on identifying and knowing the most important details about all the popular platforms used by your target audience.
What this does for you is that it gives you an edge. While you do not become a generalist, you become the social media marketer that can step in and use a specific platform effortlessly, if the need arises.
Now, after getting a general knowledge of the key digital platforms used by your target audience, take a step further, narrow it down to a specific or some specific platforms you’d like to niche in. This could be LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tiktok, or whichever platform you prefer.
To become a social media marketer successfully, you need a certain level of expertise in using selected social media platforms, to achieve a specific outcome. This is why you have to narrow down your skills to choose a social media platform that works for you.
While choosing a social media platform to major in, you need to pay attention to a lot of considerations. For instance, you want to consider the social media platforms with the largest number of your target audience, the platform with a decent number of users in your locality and the kind of platform that matches you niche.
Learn the Skill
Now that you already know your niche and target platform, it gets even easier to learn social media marketing as you can now focus on aspects of it that aligns more with your goals.
There are a lot of platforms where you can learn the needed skills to become a social media marketer. Most of them worth your time are paid although there are some free ones too but the most important thing is that you’ll have to keep in mind the content form you’ll create and the platform you’ll be posting on as this will impact on your learning choices.
For example, if you’re planning to create mostly video content for platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube, you’ll need a learning platform with options for content geared towards video content formats as this will be more beneficial for you.
Also, if your goal is to create content for platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), you want to have a very decent understanding of written content alongside other content format.
Generally, regardless of your platform preferences, learn the nitty gritty of content creation using different formats. This is important because almost all the social media platforms are using a bit of the different content formats although in different styles and for different reasons.
For examples, Instagram and Tiktok users still use captions even where their contents are mostly video focused, just as Facebook, LinkedIn and X are also using video content and other content formats alongside their majorly text based contents.
Additionally, after learning the skills, apply them to your own social media platforms. It is important you create a page on your preferred social media platform.
Get Familiar with Social Media Marketing Tools
There are a lot of social media marketing tools that can make your job must easier. This includes tools like Canva, Buffer, Google Forms, Meta Ads Planner, etc. you need to identify these tools, get familiar with how they work and how you can use them for your clients.
As a social media marketer, you also have to understand advertising on specific platforms. From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter etc. This is very important as your job description includes advertising and promotions.
In addition to this, you need to have mastery on content posting styles on your specific platforms. If your preferred platforms uses a certain kind of caption, tags or content styles, study how it works for other platforms and your competition then find a way to align yours with that.
Furthermore, identify the optimization strategies on specific platforms so you can use this to create a better visibility for your content. These strategies could include things like the use of hash tags, tagging, mentions etc. Find out how it works on your preferred platform.
And finally, understudy the use of metrics, insights and content performance to gauge the effectiveness of your social media strategy, content types and engagement levels. Some of these things are part of what you’ll learn at any basic social media marketing class but to become a social media marketer that is well grounded, you can apply it directly with your own platforms to create a better outcome.
Build a Portfolio
To become a social media marketer, you need a portfolio to showcase your work and experience as an expert. And you must not leave any stone unturned in putting this together.
As a beginner, it might get a bit difficult to get opportunities to build a portfolio with actual jobs but you can start with your own social media platforms.
Put it up as you’d put for a client’s page. Publish on your social media handles the kind of contents that would work for your clients and also, use the strategies you could use for them. This kind of gives a client a first-hand view of your skills.
PS: You can also separate your personal social media pages from the business page to further keep things on brand.
As a way to build your portfolio, you can apply for internships or volunteering opportunities, where you get to have a first-hand experience of working as a social media marketing expert. This can also give you real jobs to include as part of your portfolio.
In addition to that, as a beginner, volunteer to work with organizations, NGOs or brands free of charge or at a subsidized rate. This gives you opportunities to land jobs for your portfolios much faster.
Finally, if you’re working as a freelance social media marketer, you can consider charging reasonable or subsidized rates during your early days while you build your experience, expertise and portfolio.
As you land more gigs, prioritize building a portfolio alongside case studies and actual outcomes. This can be very helpful while you’re trying to get hired.
Create a Strong Online Presence
A strong online presence can get you in front of your target audience, position you as a thought leader while getting you all set to become a social media marketer that gets well known. This is why you need one as soon as you’re all set to get started.
Now, the first step to get a social media presence is to define your brand then set up social media handles for your brand on all the top social media platforms you’re targeting.
Build a page on these platforms with your brand name, logo, brand images, bio description etc. and then start posting and sharing content that aligns with your brand goals and audience needs on those platforms.
In addition to that, get your brand a website. This is very important as a good number of your target audience are going to search for your social media services on the search engine platforms so doing this positions you for visibility.
Create pages for your specific social media services and target audience. Optimize these pages with your user keywords, captivating content, images and powerful titles and link to them from your website’s home page.
Create & Share Content
Content marketing provides a powerful opportunity for brands to create, connect and share powerful experiences with their target audience, to drive specific outcomes.
As someone that wants to become a social media marketer that gets hired, you need to include strategic content marketing as part of your growth marketing strategy to drive traffic and visibility.
That means you’ll have to consider creating and sharing targeted content on your social media platforms, websites and blogs.
Employ social media storytelling as part of your strategy. This can add a punch to your content, potentially increasing the effect, impact and outcome you create with your content, especially considering that social media users are always on the lookout for relatable content.
Create and share a well optimized content on your blog alongside other platforms. Focus on sharing high quality, valuable and well-targeted content that is aimed at meeting the needs of your target audience. This is very important.
Final Words
There are so many things you can do to become a social media marketer successfully. In addition to what you just learned today, consider promoting your brand across specific platforms using paid advertising and other options, if you have the need for that.
Also, understand the trends. You can create content that go viral, leading to improved visibility, new followers and many other benefits but you have to understand the trends to let this work for you.
Finally, you have what it takes to evolve a career in social media marketing and if you’re not really sure about how to get started, you can join our social media training here or reach out to us here so we can guide you all the way.
Now it’s your turn. What are your challenges when it comes to starting a social media marketing career? Drop your comments below.
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