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Well, the quick answer would be yes. It is indeed one of the better options to choose as a career in this digital era, especially with the immense number of people available on social media platforms. It’s one of the fastest-growing industries, and if the opportunity is available, one should undoubtedly grab it.
Social media marketing forms part of digital marketing which is an umbrella term. Social media is a powerful revolutionary tool that can change one’s life either by helping to market their products or services or to connect with the audiences for providing value. It is useful for entertainment and educational purposes alike.
Using social media for marketing as a career is a lucrative option. Post-COVID, people are conscious about stepping outside their houses. They are habitual of using social media for not only entertainment but also watching the reviews, news, buying products, using services, etc., where it plays a vital role.
Please read the whole article to get a better understanding of why someone should opt for social media marketing as a career and what does this option leads to. This article will take you through a number of crucial topics that will definitely help you to decide whether to opt for SMM as a career or not.
So, let’s get into the article! 😀
In simple terms, it involves marketing a product or a service through social media in order to attract sales, build your brand, bring awareness amongst the public, and more. Social media marketing has become a primary need for any product or service to help reach its target audience. It acts as a bridge that connects the audience to the companies or individuals in building relations.
For example— A person or company that has a product or service to sell will have to find the intended audience who are willing to buy the product. These audiences are available at large on social media which can be attracted through social media marketing. So, social media here acts as a bridge that fills the gap between the companies and the customers.
Well, the question you should be asking here is— “Why not social media marketing?”
There are several benefits of using social media marketing for your businesses as well as for your clients.
Companies from around the world need a good social media marketer to help market their presence through social media. If you learn this very crucial skill, you can get a handsome salary from companies.
On the other hand, if you want to do it for your own business, learning the skill & implementing it properly will help you take your business reach and sales to the next level.
The career options which an individual looks for in the field are—Stock Market, Trading, E-Commerce, Accounting, Banking, etc. But apart from that, social media marketing as a career is also another great option that needs to be looked upon.
The benefits are not limited to achieving the desired goals and objectives. But, it also helps in maintaining and building relationships with the audience after that.
Let’s now look at some of the core benefits of social media marketing:-
- Availability of target audience: Target audience for your niche product or service are easily available on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, etc., You just need to find the people who are already looking to find solutions to their problems that your product or service can solve.
- Simplicity in promoting products: Nowadays, social media has become one of the most useful & effective tools through which you can promote your products or services. Putting your products in front of the right audience will help you get attention to your brand and bring in leads and sales eventually, if not right away. Ways of promoting your products could be done by either running advertisements or by organic means (which takes time to build the right audience but can be done without spending a single penny).
- Builds goodwill: Marketing through social media can build goodwill for your work, and people will trust on you as an accountable person. Although it will require consistent efforts with dedication which will reward in the long run. It is not an overnight process and consumes time and energy. Here the fundamental rule applies—the more value you provide, the more your get in return.
- No need of physical infrastructure: No physical infrastructure is required for starting your work and the money that is saved can be invested back in your business to help it grow faster. The only requirement is of a smartphone, PC, or laptop and you are good to go.
- Higher conversion rate: Conversion rates are calculated by dividing number of people visiting divided by actual number of sales. It gives you an insight about people reaching your site and actual number of conversions being happened. Higher conversion rates can be achieved through the proper use of social media marketing. Achieving a good conversion rate will give you an edge over others. It depends on several factors like the niche of your business, the quality of ads you’re running, and more.
Like every coin has two sides similarly, there will be pros as well cons.
- Time consuming process: If you want to go through the organic growth process, i.e., without running ads, it could take so much time and effort to get the results, since it is not an overnight process. Time is consumed in finding the right audience, creating good content, gaining engagement, increasing brand awareness, etc.
- Requires experts to manage things: A social media marketer is required to manage the things well. It requires expertise becuase the companies who recruit such people want them to handle social media platforms very well and engage with process well.
After learning about the benefits and limitations, let’s now learn about the skills that are required for social media marketing.
Skills play an important role in pursuing SMM as a career. Following are some of the important skills which are as follows:-
- Creative mindset: One must to have a creative mindset in order to attract the target audience. It enhances your work and motivates you to keep doing more. It’s a kind of skill where most people lack and if you work on it , success is nowhere far from you.
- Editing skills: It is another demanding skill which requires editing of image-based posts. It makes your work look & feel unique and also shows the level of dedication you have put in it. Image editing tools such as PicsArt, Photofy, Canva, etc., are recommended to learn. Here you get pre-made templates that can be used with little to no tweaking for your projects.
- Video production/editing skills: Video content is currently booming and gets more attention than simple image/text posts. It is becuase people prefer to watch videos more over reading posts or looking at a picture.
- Copywriting or writing skills: Copywriting is process of writing text for advertising or marketing purpose that aim to convince the person for decision making. Writing skill has a lot of value especially for social media marketing. It needs to be accurate with spelling, grammmar, and sentence formation. But there are resources available online which can help you to improve your writing skills.
- Analytical skills: It’s crucial in order to sustain a business in the long run. It involves studying patterns and identifying what is trending and what is not. If you can analyse and catch early trends, and start implementing good strategies to grow your business, you can take it to the next level. This skill is proactive which prepares you for the future.
If you learn the above-mentioned skills, you’ll have an edge over others, since you’ll not be dependent on anyone. Even companies look for a person who has multiple skills that can ease their work.
In this digital era, one can learn these skills easily from anywhere on the Internet.
Some of the ways could be learning from YouTube where there are various channels that provide these skills courses free of cost or learning from Udemy (paid & free) or one can even join a separate institution that teaches these skills.
Here are some YouTube videos/playlists that you can follow:
Here are some Udemy courses that you may enroll in:
- https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-digital-marketing-course/
- https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-marketing-masterclass/
- https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-marketing-strategy-course-wordpress-seo-instagram-facebook/
Role of Social media marketers
Social media provides relevant statistical data such as people’s behavior, their likes, and dislikes, demographics, their most active time, etc. These data if studied well provide a huge value to enhance the work and gain some hidden insights and patterns. This is where the role and responsibilities of social media marketers come into existence.
The role is to thoroughly research the demand of the product or service, where is demand the most, do competitive analysis, define the target audience and the goals, and then frame the strategy accordingly. This helps to cater the value to the correct audience and leads to overall growth.
Salary and Job description
Salary varies and it depends upon your experience and industry or size of an organization. For a beginner, salary estimation is between $40,000 – $50,000 annually. This can vary as per the location by putting the filters. With growing experience, salary keeps on rising.
You have the choice of working as a freelancer (Fiverr, Upwork, Toptal, Freelancer.com, etc) or starting your own social media marketing agency which will give you overall exposure and experience.
Different kinds of job descriptions are as follows: –
- Social media manager (managing social media)
- Social media executive (oversees social media accounts management, creates innovative content with regular scheduled posts etc)
- Social media specialist (after gaining in depth experience)
- Paid ads expert (work is to run and manage paid ads)
Final thoughts
After presenting the crucial points to you, I leave the conclusion up to you. It’s you who will decide whether to choose this as a career or it’s worth it or not.
To conclude, let’s look at what we have learned so far:
- What is social media marketing?
- Why social media marketing?
- Pros of social media marketing
- Cons of social media marketing
- Skills required for social media marketing
- Creative mindset
- Editing skills
- Video production or video editing skills
- Copywriting or writing skills
- Analytical skills
- Where to learn these skills?
- Role of social media marketer
- Salary and Job description
Hope you enjoyed and learned something valuable from this article. Please do share this article with people who might need it.
See you in the next article.
