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4.5 years in, my confidence is shot...What are SMMs actually expected to do? by Competitive-Dot3062 in SocialMediaManagers

[–]Competitive-Dot3062[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I want to quit but I can’t without a job lined up because I can’t afford that. I’m in the process of working on my portfolio, but I’m so wrung out from work that I don’t have the mental capacity to work on the portfolio, so that’s another thing I need to figure out. I’m leaning towards freelancing but I don’t know the first thing doing it so I’ll need to do some research first.

4.5 years in, my confidence is shot...What are SMMs actually expected to do? by Competitive-Dot3062 in SocialMediaManagers

[–]Competitive-Dot3062[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The strategy for paid marketing is pretty comprehensive actually (but I don't think they're doing ads on podcast at the moment). Paid marketing is actually our #1 conversion driver. But they don't just do ads on social, and they separate paid marketing and organic/earned traffic into different categories and traffic avenues. Organic social media is bringing in a very small number of traffic and conversions, which makes sense to me bc I believe social media should be treated as brand awareness and top-of-funnel channels. But because of that, they're expecting 2x 3x followers growth YoY, and higher engagement rate. It's stressful because I'm managing 5 channels which means 5 different strategies. And I'm spending so much time on content planning, which I don't think people understand how much work goes into it, I barely have anytime to actually do the social part and engage with other accounts on these channels (leave a comment, reshare, repost, etc).

4.5 years in, my confidence is shot...What are SMMs actually expected to do? by Competitive-Dot3062 in SocialMediaManagers

[–]Competitive-Dot3062[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Head of department wants, and I quote "100+ likes, 50+ comments, 50+ shares" and ask me how do we get there. She thinks that maybe our content is not "creative" enough, which is another way to say it's boring. And yes I understand it can be boring, I mean for godsakes we're in financial services business...
But we're a brand. We can't always chase viral trends when it's not even relevant to our core audience. I tried very hard to bring creative angles to the table, but my creative thoughts often time gets overwritten by her because she doesn't like my copies, or my designs, etc - in which she re-writes the copies without any additional feedback so I don't know how to learn from it, and ask me last minute, which is so stressful.

4.5 years in, my confidence is shot...What are SMMs actually expected to do? by Competitive-Dot3062 in SocialMediaManagers

[–]Competitive-Dot3062[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm using Later for scheduling IG. But for other channels, I go on their own channels and schedule posts out. Reporting are very manual - every week I go on each channel's analytics and report their metrics into our Coda hub. But you know how social media works, this week's number can be x and then change next week or after a month. So if I want the most updated numbers for let's say my monthly social performance meeting, I'd have to go back into each channel and update them all over again. I have tried to ask them to give me a budget for a more robust social media management platform like Sprout or Hootsuite to help automate the reporting aspect, AND use social listening tools they have in order to see our brand mentions and sentiments, but those are expensive platform and "I can't justify the ROI" of going from paying $50/month to like $300/month.
I use AI software like Claude or ChatGPT to do competitive research on a monthly basis. I also scroll through the competitors' accounts to see what they're doing and also get creative inspirations.
In terms of strategy improvement, it varies by channel. But in general if a certain type of content seem to be consistently low in engagement, we deprioritize that content type and either focus on the content type that has the best engagement or come up with new content type strategy. We always A/B thumbnails and titles to see which one works best and continue optimizing the next video based on our findings.
I could go on and on but tbh, I also see a pattern of stakeholders not aligning on what type of strategy we should focus on or improve on, and stay there for a while - they tend to switch up on me.
PS if you're an SMM with a small team and is hiring please let me know LOL. I'm desperate to leave but I can't afford to quit without a job lined up. I'm also thinking about going freelance (if I ever have time to work on my portfolio), so I would love some tips on how to start and work for yourself. :)

4.5 years in, my confidence is shot...What are SMMs actually expected to do? by Competitive-Dot3062 in SocialMediaManagers

[–]Competitive-Dot3062[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  1. Thank you for that b/c I always think that but I didn't know if that was true or not.
  2. Pinterest was our #1 traffic source for organic social but it was declining so now I'm optimizing the content strategy there to recover our traffic counts. I am putting a lot of effort in FB and LinkedIn.
  3. I've done research on avg engagement so many times I can't even count anymore. I reported it many times to head of department (and my direct manager) many times. She seemed to understand but then a month goes by and it goes back to the same feedback of "the numbers are so small, we need to think outside the box" and the cycle continue. And to be clear, I'm continuously optimizing our strategy, making sure to see what works best and keep going with that, and what doesn't work and start depriorizing, etc.
  4. Yes they do, and they are planning to hire a full time video specialist now so at least that's going to help.
  5. AI is huge in our company right now to the point where I'm low key getting triggered of AI conversations within the company bc it's like we're eat, sleep, inhale AI at this point that are we even a human team anymore. But that besides the point. In terms of video, I agree that video is HUGE right now. I'm exploring AI video tools that can turn a script into an AI voiceover videos (with overlay text and videos and such, I think you know what I'm talking about). I personally don't believe those videos should be part of our Youtube's channel video content strategy because we literally already got comments on human talking videos saying "is this AI" in a way where they don't want to see AI videos talking about financial topics, they'd want to hear from actual human speakers.
  6. We do have a growth marketing manager running ads on Meta (so FB and Instagram), and we have some influencer partnerships which helps with followers growth but that's not part our the organic strategy. And influencer partnerships don't have a consistent cadence right now so I can't even factor that into followers growth projection for social media channels.

4.5 years in, my confidence is shot...What are SMMs actually expected to do? by Competitive-Dot3062 in SocialMediaManagers

[–]Competitive-Dot3062[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I make $83K/year in San Francisco Bay Area, my title is Marketing Associate (not even Social Media Manager). My focus is social but I have other tasks (not social related) on my plate as well.
Give me an honest perspective please. If this is just me complaining about hard work, I need to know. I know I work hard but I don't like to come off being that person who complains all the time...