It's been a little while since I first got
my social media management career started. And it's safe to say that there
have been some big changes. There are new tools out there, new
technologies, more competition. So today I thought I would break
down step by step what I'd do to get started as a social media
manager if I were starting today. And the first question you might
be thinking is like, Latasha, should I even get started as
a social media manager today? I mean, there is so much competition,
not just from other people, but also from robots and AI tools,
and my answer to that is yes. I still think that social media
management is one of the best entry points into digital. Meaning that if you want to build
websites, if you want to, do seo. If you wanna run ads, if you want to
be a content creator or an influencer, I think honing your skills as a social
media manager and using that job to pay the bills to fuel your passion is
one of the best things that you can do. It's what I've done and it's
not going away anytime soon, despite what you might think. Listen to this. LinkedIn reported that
social media managers. Third most in-demand marketing
position by posting volume in 2022. And according to Search Engine
Journal, digital marketing is the third top marketing skill in demand. And social media marketing is the fourth. So these are definitely skills
that will help you no matter where you wanna go in your career. And I think it is totally
possible to be successful today. Oh, and by the way, if you wanna
learn a little bit more about my story, and what I've been able to
achieve as a social media manager, as well as how you can use some of that
learning to build your own career. I'll leave a link for you down below, but
I wanna give you some of the basics today. Okay. So the first thing that you're gonna
wanna do is decide on your working style. You wanna decide if you would
like to be a freelancer, if you wanna work in-house somewhere, or
if you wanna work at an agency. And I'm gonna give you a really brief
rundown of what each of those things are and some of the pros and cons
of each freelancing is what I do. So I work for myself. I am my own boss and I basically contract
my services out to different businesses. Most people have a particular
niche that they serve. So for me, I work with a lot of
tech brands, a lot of SaaS brands, a lot of startups, and I helped
them post social media content. Working in-house is what I did prior
to this, so I worked for a Fortune 500. Staffing company. Before that, I worked for an automotive
company and I worked in their marketing department, so I was a full-time
employee of that company and they were the only brand that I worked on. And then before that,
I worked at an agency. And an agency is kind of similar to
freelancing and that you usually work with a lot of different brands, a
lot of different clients, but you're still a full-time employee in most
cases, or a part-time employee, whatever arrangement you work out. And it's that traditional job experience. So really quick, the pros and cons. I mean, obviously I think the pros
for being a freelancer are obvious. You get to work for yourself, but
there really are a lot of cons too. I've gotta be honest with you,
because I work for myself, that can put a lot of pressure. on myself in that I'm the
go-to for all the answers. And honestly, I don't
always have all the answers. It can be high stress. And while I personally have found the
highest financial payoff as a freelancer or a business owner, that hasn't come
without risk, that hasn't come without. Sacrifice. If you are looking to make a really high
income as a freelancer, you gotta put in the work, you gotta put in the hours. And definitely when I was first starting,
I wasn't taking a lot of time off. So work-life balance can be easier
but harder at the same time. It's kind of weird. Working in-house is really cool because
you really get to focus on that one brand and become a subject matter expert, and
so that's probably the biggest pro for me. Along with, of course, just
that solid, steady paycheck. So if that's what you're looking
for, if you want stability. Go in-house. The cons, though, I got bored. Honestly. I did get bored working for just one
brand, especially if the brand that you're working for isn't exactly
like the most thrilling industry. I did a lot of B2B marketing,
which kind of has a. A reputation for being a little
bit dull, and then agency again. It's cool because you do get a lot
of experience and I also find that if you have agency experience and you're
looking to apply to a job in-house or looking to pitch to a client,
they really look at that as a very good thing, having agency experience. is kind of like top tier. It's what a lot of brands look for. It's fast paced. You get to work with a lot of
different types of businesses, and so you learn really quickly. But the con to that is high
pressure agencies have reputation of just being a whole lot of work. They can be competitive. , they can be, you know, just a lot. Just really intense. So the reason that it's important to
understand what you wanna do, or at least what you're open to doing, I think it's
okay if you're like, I'm open to any of them, or I'm open to freelancing, or
agency, or, or whatever is, because it's really going to shape your portfolio and
shape how you are positioning yourself. If you. Only wanna work in-house
somewhere, then I'm gonna tell you to work on your LinkedIn. I'm gonna tell you to go to job fairs. I'm gonna tell you to, you know,
write a really good resume. Meanwhile, if you're looking to
build a business, my advice to you is gonna be totally different. You want to build a portfolio,
you wanna start networking, all of those kinds of things. So just get an idea of what you
feel like you would like to. And then I want you to choose a niche or
at least start thinking about a niche. So Nicheing, when I first started
wasn't quite as big of a thing just because there were less of us. There were less social media managers
out there, and there were less. Platforms. There was less kind of going
on in the social media world. I always say when I first got
started, I was writing Facebook posts and maybe a couple of tweets. That was pretty much it in the beginning. Now, as we know, there are so
many different content types. There are so many different
businesses that understand the value of social, which is great because
there's a lot of opportunity. but that also means that you
have to set yourself apart. You have to set yourself apart
from all of the others out there. And one of the best ways you can do
that is by honing in on your niche. A niche basically means an area of focus. So do you work with people in sass,
people in tech, people in beauty, people in food, uh, and even food probably
is too broad of an niche, right? Is it? Farm to table type food. Is it vegan food? Get really specific about the
industry that you wanna work in. And the way that I figure this out
is just think about really where your passion and your experience intersect. Or if you don't have a ton of experience
yet doing marketing for any brand. Where you can get experience. So for me, when I was first starting
out, I knew that I had a lot of experience working in staffing. I'd done that for years, but
I maybe wasn't that passionate about it, to be honest. Meanwhile, I had been freelancing
on the side for a beauty brand and an influencer startup. So I knew those areas. Did align a little bit more. I knew that I was a little bit
more passionate about those things. They were a little bit more fun for
me, and I did have the experience, so I kind of went that way. I leaned more into the influencer
startup world, and then that's kind of where I went down the
startup and SaaS path, if you will. And honestly, industry is
just one way of nicheing. I think that you can also
niche down by platform when you were first getting started. I think it. Serve you well to become a specialist
in one particular platform. You could of course, expand your
business, especially if you open an agency or you know, just get more
years of experience under your belt. You can definitely expand to do a
lot of different things, but in the beginning, I think it will serve you
really well if you say, I am a LinkedIn specialist for personal brands, or I am. A strategist for beauty brands that
wanna be on Instagram and so on and so forth, do one really, really well. And of course you can expand. If you feel really comfortable
with multiple, then definitely offer those all as services, but
that can really serve you well. And then also just by service. So there are a lot of different
services that fall under the social media management umbrella. There is what I would say
is the most traditional. Offer, which is actually publishing and
platform management, where you are writing a content calendar or you're scheduling
using a social media management system and you're pushing those posts to go live. But you could also create content. You know, that is kind of a separate role,
but a lot of social media managers, Offer that as a part of their role as well. So do you wanna take photos? Do you wanna create videos? That could be an offer. Are you a strategist? Do you really know how to look
at numbers and make really good business projections and
recommendations based on those numbers? Are you really great at advertising? Do you love to run Facebook ads,
Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, et cetera? So there's lots of different little
add-ons or you know, services that you could offer us standalone services,
aside from just the traditional. Platform management. So figure out what area you
wanna lean into and lean into it. Okay? From there, you want to build a portfolio. You might already have experience
if you worked in the corporate world already, but a lot of us are just gonna
be just starting out, and that's okay. I want you to charge what you're worth. I want you to make that money . I really
do, but you might have to start somewhere. Okay? I'm gonna be honest with you, and
there's a couple of ways that you can. There are what I call portfolio projects,
meaning that maybe you work with a brand that you're passionate about, maybe you
reach out to your current job, maybe you work at a retail store or a boutique,
and you ask your boss, Hey, can I build a new social media strategy for us? I'm using this so I
can build my portfolio. For my business, if you have a comfortable
relationship talking to an existing employer, of course, if it's not an
existing employer, maybe it's a community organization that you're part of. I know a lot of my students get some
of their first experience working for their church or any type of community
place like that that they're involved in, but it could also be a passion project. So for me, that's really how I got
started in social media, my portfolio. My own content. I got started by making just like
random Instagram accounts for things like I did a, an Instagram account
all about my hometown, just taking pictures of the architecture and
events that were going on, and I just honestly did it cuz it was kind of fun. and later on I realized, hey,
this shows that I can build a community around something. And it wasn't focused on me either. I wasn't in the pictures ever. It was like an anonymous account. So that really helped me because I
was able to tell stories when I went to apply for jobs and pitch for gigs. Like, yes, I know how to build
a community around something. And then of course, I also had
my own personal blog that really helped me hone in my skills as a
writer, which is important if you're gonna be a social media manager. And helped me learn how to just drive
traffic to things and you know, learn the basics of analytics and how to connect
that to business goals and all that stuff. But get some type of a project
under your belt so that you have something to point to so that you
can say, yes, I created content. Yes, I've written a social media
strategy, and so on and so forth. And those testimonials
are really gonna help you. They really are. The golden ticket, honestly. Put them on your website, put
them on your Upwork profile. Wherever you go to look for
gigs or jobs, they mean a lot. And they're really,
they're really worth a lot. Next thing you're gonna wanna do is set
your rates once you have maybe one or two portfolio projects under a belt. I get that question all the time. Well, how long and do I need to do this? How many projects do I need to work on? Just a couple. I think having a couple really
solid stories that you can tell, a couple of really solid case studies. Is perfect. Make sure when you're doing these
portfolio projects too, that you track your time and you start to
take a mental note of how long it's taking you to do each of those
services that you're providing. For example, it might take you, I
don't know, an hour to write a content calendar, two hours to get everything
scheduled, maybe an hour if you're doing content creation and so on. So, Write that down. You can also use a time tracker
like Toggle is a great one. HoneyBook has one. And from there, figure out how much you
wanna make in a year, and then you can do the math and figure out how much you
need to make in a month and how much you can take on as far as client load. And that's gonna help you
come up with your actual rate. I have a whole video all about
pricing strategies, so I'll link that. I won't go too in depth on that. in this one, but you do wanna set your
rates, put together your packages, decide what you're gonna offer for
that price, and then you wanna put that stuff onto a website, create a website. I think it is so important to have a
website as a social media manager, and this is true whether you're looking
to work in-house or at an agency. or whether you want to
freelance and work for yourself. Of course, I think it's a little more
important if you wanna work for yourself because that is really your calling card. I think it really legitimizes
you as a business owner. I personally have never worked with
a service provider who didn't have a website, at least not that I can think of. Maybe like on Upwork and things like
that, which I'll talk about in a second. in most cases. I wanna look at a website. I wanna really see what they're all about
and get to know them through that website. So build a website. I really like Squarespace, but honestly,
there are so many D iy website builders out there that you can choose from. There's Wicks, there's Showit,
there's a ton out there. So just use what calls you, or you
can hire a web designer to do it for you if you want it to be like
really polished and amazing looking. I personally have always built my
own websites, and the thing is they really do not need to be perfect. To start, you really just need
a few key sections, which are gonna be an about section. I think that's super important. Tell a little bit about yourself. Tell a little bit about the types
of industries, types of brands that you like to work with, why
you're passionate about this. You wanna have a services section,
which is where you are gonna list out those packages that you've put
together, and you can either put your pricing on there or you don't have to. It's up to you. I personally like to have price ranges or
kind of like a ballpark pricing section on my website, just so that I'm not
attracting the complete wrong client. If they are looking for something
that is like way, way, way top tier or something that is way, way, way cheap,
I'm probably not the right fit for them, so I want them to understand. you know about what
they're gonna be expecting. So put that on your services page
and then just make sure that there's a good way for people to contact you
so that there is a contact page or a contact form, or a contact button,
or a scheduling link or some way for people to get in touch with you. Don't just have your email at the
bottom of your footer on your website. Make sure it is easy for
people to get in touch. Okay? Here is where I am going
to get real with you all. I want you to start pitching. First, start pitching first before you
start building out a super in-depth content strategy to attract clients. And I know some people are probably
shocked to hear that from me. Some people are probably eyerolling
at me right now, but hear me out. I think creating content
is one of the best ways to attract clients at this point. Clients know whether or not they wanna
work with me when they see my videos, when they see me on LinkedIn, whatever. They have already pre-vetted
me because of my content. So when they're booking a discovery
call with me, when they're sending in a message, I don't
have to, I don't have to sell. I don't have to pitch
to them really at all. They just wanna make sure
that the logistics work out. So I think content is extremely valuable. Content also works slowly in most cases. Now, can you have a viral TikTok? Yes. You can have a viral anything. You can have a viral YouTube
video, TikTok, whatever nowadays. But it's kind of like the lottery,
you know, virality at least. So I do want you to create content. I do want you to build a content library. It is so valuable. But I want you to do this first. I want you to start pitching so that. Can eat so that you can live, so that you
are building more and more of those case studies and happy clients because it's
just so much easier to repeat something. It's so much easier to create good
content when you know what your ideal clients are looking for,
what questions they're asking. So start pitching. There are a lot of ways
that you can do this. Honestly, cold emails is where I started. I just built out a list of dream
clients that I wanted to work with. I searched for their email. And you can do this by scouring
their website a little bit. You can also use extensions and tools
like there's one called Snow io that works really well at finding email
addresses from LinkedIn profiles, and I would find the person who was in
charge of the marketing department. In a lot of cases, if this is a kind
of corporate company, this might be a marketing director, a VP of
marketing, or a chief marketing officer. If you are looking to work with a very
small business, like maybe a, a business like mine or an, you know, another coach
or a content creator or something like that, you would probably be reaching
out to the ceo, the founder, you know, the, the head person in charge. So just start building that prospecting
list and set a minimum amount of emails that you wanna send out every day. Honestly, it's that simple. I would say start big for me,
when I was first starting, I was making sure that I was spending. , I would say about half of my day
just doing prospecting activities. So I would be doing something that
would get me on a phone call, get me on a discovery call with a new client. So I was sending cold emails, I was
applying to things on job boards, or if I wanted to create some type of content,
I would make sure it was sales content. So like a webinar, I did lunch and learns,
or I would host at least one a month. I would host a class for people
in my ideal client base, and I would just teach them something. And then I would pitch at the end
and say, by the way, I'm open. I have space for three
more clients this month. If you want to get in touch with me, book
a discovery call, and I would do that. The other thing that I
mentioned was boards. Upwork is one that really helped me a lot
when I first got started, and sometimes I think that these freelancing boards
get a really bad wrap because yeah, of course, if you were getting inbound
leads from your content, that's a better position to be in than having to apply
for things on Upwork all the time. But what people don't tell you
is that again, getting all those inbound leads takes time, and
it also doesn't just take time. It takes building up thought leadership,
building up trust, you know, building up a name for yourself, if you will. So it's just not always super realistic. So I think that's what a lot of the
naysayers, you know, Say about Upwork. I think it's great for starting
out and building your portfolio. So my tip for either cold emails or
for applying for things on Upwork are to personalize your pitch. Make sure that you research
the company as best as you can. I know sometimes on Upwork, they're
kind of anonymous companies, so you can't really see, you know exactly
what they're all about before you pitch, but do your due diligence and. Your best to spend five, 10 minutes on the
company website before sending that cold email, before sending that pitch email. Look at their about section,
look at their team section. You know, try to get an understanding of
who you would be reporting to, who you would be working with to personalize those
pitches so you don't sound completely ignorant when you are reaching out. Another thing you can do to
personalize your pitch is again, make sure that you are reaching the. Person. Huge, huge tip. Don't email contact blah blah blah.com. Probably no one's gonna see it. If somebody does see it, they're probably
just gonna like push you off to customer service and it, it's just, It's not good. Don't DM people on Instagram. Unless again, your ideal client is
maybe someone like me or a solopreneur who you know manages their own
Instagram, then that might work. But if you're DMing, I don't know,
like Cannon, the camera company. On Instagram, I can guarantee you
they have a social media manager who's just gonna delete that because they
don't want you coming for their job. Something else you can do to
personalize your pitches is sending a video really like the tool video. There's a similar tool called Loom. Choose one record, a really quick
webcam style video, just saying, Hey. Cannon. I'm Latasha. I'm a huge fan of what you do. Read about this new campaign that
you have going on on your website, and I am a social media manager. I had some ideas of how I can make
this campaign even more effective. I'd love to chat with you about it. If you wanna book a free call with
me, I'll leave a link in the email. Either way, love your brand. Would love to work with you someday. Boom. Like just that was off the top of my head. I'm sure it could be a little bit
better, but just make introductions. Don't go in immediately with like, here's
my packages, here's this, here's that. Don't go in with that. It's overboard. Just start by making introductions
and when I was first starting, my goal was just to get calls like. . If I get, you know, a calendar full
of calls in my first few weeks as a social media manager, then I know
that just statistically speaking, I'm going to book some of those people. You know, if you can get, I don't know,
25 calls sounds like a lot, but that's 25 hours of work, or I guess even less
of their 30 minute discovery calls. The likelihood of at least one person
giving you a yes is very, very high. So just make your first goal
to book discovery calls. Don't overdo it, as I always like to say,
you know, don't kiss on the first date. Don't push for an
engagement on a first date. Just get that first date, get that
first call, and then I have a whole video all about discovery calls. If you wanna learn how to actually
convert those into paying clients. And then, like I said, create content. You know, once you're at a good place. Where you have a few clients, you
know you're paying your bills. Sure, you may have a ways that you
still wanna go, so you're not completely letting up on the gas yet, but start
allocating just, you know, an hour a week, two hours a week, whatever. You can really swing to creating
some content for yourself because it is, it's so valuable, you know,
to have a library of content that is building up over time for. and I have tons of content all
about building a content strategy. But the long and the short of it
is choose one longform platform. I didn't mean to make a little
joke there, but here we go. Choose one longform platform and
one short form platform to focus on. So for me it's YouTube. And then short form for me would,
I would say when I was first starting, it was actually LinkedIn. I was making sure that I was posting
at least a few times a week on LinkedIn and at least once a week on YouTube. And those things really worked together. I was able to repurpose my YouTube
content onto my LinkedIn and so on. For you, it might be YouTube
and Instagram, or a blog in Instagram or a podcast and TikTok. Whatever you choose to do, just
try to set aside like an hour a week to create something. It'll really work for
you in the long term. And just create content that
your audience, your prospective clients would wanna hear about. Big, big cheat code here. Do not. , just talk about things that other
social media managers wanna hear unless your, your ideal client is
another social media manager, of course, if you wanna help them. Do that, but I do want to encourage
you to really dive deep into the heads of your ideal client. If you are targeting dentists,
look up dentistry trends. Yes, that is a thing. I know that sounds
weird, but it totally is. Look up dentistry conferences and
go to those, or at least follow along with those on Twitter or on
social media, and pay attention to what that ideal client cares about. Because honestly, unless they're
also in digital marketing, Your ideal client probably does not care about
the latest Instagram algorithm update or, you know, changes to social
media channels and stuff like that. At the end of the day, they care about
generating leads for their businesses. So if you can speak to that and
you can position yourself as a subject matter expert, you will
have no problem booking clients. All right, so that's it. Those are the basic steps
that I would take if I. Trying to become a social
media manager today. Let me know if you have any
questions down in the comments. And again, I'm gonna leave a free class
for you down in the description as well, so you can check that out if you
want to learn more and go a little bit deeper on all of these topics really. But I really hope this was
helpful, and that's all I got. I'll talk to you in the next one. Let me know if there's anything else I
can do to help you along in your journey. Bye.
