Day 154: Social Media Manager’s Work is Never Done
Day 154: August 27, 2020
Global Cases: 24,615,962; Deaths: 834,966
Egypt Cases: 98,062; Deaths: 5,342
Sondos Karara
Integrated Marketing Communications Junior
“Oh, You work as a social media manager? I think it is a very easy job, you just post, reply to comments, and sometimes you just automatically promote the posts.” These were the first words to come out of my Dermatologist who I met for the first time last week.
His words made me ask myself, “how do people think that it is an easy job while we are the ones responsible for the online public image of any client we work with”.
Before diving into details, I am a digital marketing freelancer who is passionate about media and marketing, and my dedication led me to work with my role model, Mrs. Esaad Younis when I was only 16 years old. To develop myself I started taking digital marketing diploma-level courses and different internships at the age of 17. Besides my work with Younis, I helped entities and people I know to build their online presence.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world and we experienced a major lockdown, people started focusing on their social media presence. I have been receiving calls from different people I know to help them rebuild their social media pages.
One of these people was Islam Hatem, a friend of mine who is a multi-talented up-and-coming star looking to have a plan for his social media in order to help his future artistic career.
My first foundational step before creating a social media marketing strategy is studying the personality of my potential client through his current social media profiles because this helps in knowing him and his audience. However, in this case, it was easy because I already know the client on a personal level.
The second step is building a digital personal brand, this step requires a lot of research to know what will be implemented on the client, meetings to know exactly what the client wants to focus on, the message he wants to deliver to his audience and creativity to create the visual aids, such as the logo and templates which will be used later on.
The third step is studying the statistical information of the competitors using certain online tools, and comparing them to the client’s statistics to start building the content creation and posting strategy.
The fourth step is the most crucial as it involves planning and agreeing on the type of content which needs to be created. This step requires both the marketeer and the client to be aware of the latest trends, social media traffic, and the audience’s tastes.
Lastly, after the content is ready to be posted we come up with appropriate captions to attract the audience and plan for the social media advertising targets and crisis management scenarios if needed.
In the end, my work isn’t only about posting and replying to comments, it requires me to constantly be online to keep updated with what’s happening, new algorithms platforms use and trends.
For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.
