The title of this blog may sound a little ominous but I promise, this job is as fun as it sounds. Since Social Media Marketing classes were introduced to the curriculum at my college my senior year, a lot of what I learned in my two years at Cyphers was done in the moment. So today I’m sharing some of the things I learned in my first three months that I have used every day since.
Tone. Tone is one of the most important things when it comes to creating content for a client. It seems like common sense, but it was something I had never given thought to until I was assigned my first content creation task- writing tweets for Seasons Pizza. Their tone is fun, edgy and a little risky. I handed in my list of tweets and while they were clever, they didn’t really represent the brand as much as they could have. This is where I was first taught how to take the tone of a brand, whether from reviewing previous social posts or reading the social media marketing guide, and apply that to how I wrote content- word choice, use of slang/popular terms, phrasing, etc.
It’s not just Facebook and Instagram. This was definitely an oversight on my young, fresh out of college mind. Social media marketing encompasses all social media platforms, even those that are less popular, looking at you Google + and FourSquare. Social media marketing has a lot to do with constantly learning new things. Whether it’s new apps or new ways to use your favorite apps, things are always changing and to do the best for your brand, you need to constantly be watching out for updates and trends. And don’t forget about email! Sending email newsletters is still a great way to foster connections with your brand between new and current customers.
It’s not 9-5. Don’t let this deter you. Sure, you may not have the most conventional schedule, but the beauty of this job is you can pretty much do it anywhere. For one client in particular there were posts that needed to be made on the weekends and sometimes after hours during the week, and I loved it. One of the more exciting parts about this field is that so much of it is based on what is currently happening in the world. So as long as you’re not living under a rock, you’re constantly learning new, creative ways to spice up your content, campaigns and creative!
Monitoring! Oh, monitoring. The love-hate of working in social media marketing. The amount of time you spend on monitoring can change drastically between clients. A client I worked on when I first started had anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours-worth of monitoring on any given day. Monitoring involves checking a brand’s social pages for interaction. On my first day of monitoring I was terrified to even “like” a comment, much less type an entire response. Luckily as time went on, I developed a deeper understanding of the clients’ tone and the type of questions that I could expect to answer. Things became less stressful, and I got a lot better at typing without looking at the keyboard (added bonus to the job). Sometimes a brand’s post can be flooded with positive comments, when other times they’re more on the negative side. Sometimes you will get totally off the wall comments that leave you laughing or rolling your eyes. It’s a mystery every time, but at the end of the day, when random people engage with the content you’ve created, especially when it’s positive, it’s a truly awesome feeling.
Influencers! The joy of creating an influencer campaign will stick with you well into your career. I still remember the first time I had an influencer reach out to me during a campaign. I was over the moon, all those hours of research and reaching out finally paid off! Seeing what the influencers posted about the brand online was even more exciting. Influencer campaigns are awesome but they involve a lot of work on the front end. It’s more than just sending out emails hoping for a bite. There are a lot of steps that require meticulous organization and an awesome team.
Well there you have it, everything that shaped my first three months at The Cyphers Agency. A career as a social media marketer is some of the most fun, creative, at times frustrating work. It’s not for everyone but if the above made you excited and you’re feeling like sending out a tweet, you might be in the right place.
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