What do you want to be when you grow up?

This is a question that most of us got to hear when we were children and teenagers. And back in the day, we probably said something along the lines of a doctor, lawyer, police officer, and so on. 

But technology changed and it brought forth a lot of new possibilities and new career options. Becoming a social media specialist is one of those options. 

If you were to tell somebody (let’s say about ten years ago) that you’d like to work as a social media specialist, you probably would have gotten some incredulous stares and laughs. But with social media being on the rise, having this position doesn’t seem like such a bad decision. 

What Comes With the Job?

You might think that being a social media specialist is easy peasy lemon squeezy. After all, how hard is it to create content for social media outlets and manage some social media profiles? 

Well, it might not be that easy. There are a lot of things that you need to consider when it comes to social media. And of course, there are a lot of mistakes that you can make. Today, we’d like to make sure you learn the best tricks you can use as a social media specialist, as well as what mistakes you should avoid. 

What Is a Social Media Specialist?

But first, let’s see what being a social media specialist entails. 

As the name suggests, a social media specialist is a professional that creates and manages the content on social media platforms. These platforms include but are not limited to, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. 

The goals of a social media specialist can be diverse and they generally depend on the business’s needs. But some of the most common goals are: 

• Build a bigger following
• Educate followers through content 
• Engage the audience
• Promote a product or service

Dealing with content is not the only responsibility that a social media specialist has. Some of the other tasks that a social media specialist might have to complete are monitoring social media metrics, answering questions and comments, going over each platform’s analytics, and conducting all the research and creative processes. 

So a social media specialist is a must-have if you want to make use of social media marketing. And based on the latest studies, social media marketing is something that you should invest your resources in. This is not only because there are about 3,78 billion social media users online (although that is a pretty significant factor) but also because 54% of social browsers use social media to research products. 

5 Mistakes You Should Avoid as a Social Media Specialist

Oftentimes people don’t think of what should be avoided when doing something. They concentrate on finding out the steps that need to be taken to succeed, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. But even though you have a clear recipe for success, mistakes still can happen.

For example, let’s say you want to make a dish. You google the recipe, you get your ingredients, and you start cooking. You don’t bother reading the whole recipe beforehand, so you don’t see the section right at the bottom of the page which informs you of the mistakes you should avoid. 

You follow all the steps, you make the sauce for your dish, and when you add the sauce over the rest of the food, everything sticks to the pan and gets burnt. Your dish is ruined and now you probably have to order takeout. 

If you were to read the recipe from head to bottom, you would have seen that the chef advised avoiding pans that are not nonstick. So in the long run, paying attention to other’s mistakes is what can save your business from failed social media marketing campaigns. 

1. Creating Content for the Wrong Audience

When creating content, you should always have your target audience in mind. 

Businesses depend on their target markets. Think of it like this: a business’ product (or/and service) was designed to solve the problems that a particular group of people has. But without proper marketing, this specific group will not know that your product or service exists. This will give the business’s competition the perfect opportunity to sweep in with some good marketing campaigns and steal all of the potential clients that the business had. 

This is why when crafting a marketing campaign, the first thing that you need to take into consideration is the business’s target market. The target market is the audience that you want to follow on social media. 

Let’s take an example. Your business is selling photography drones, so of course that the target market would be photographers. The content on your social media outlets should be intended for photographers. This means including aerial photographs taken by your drones on your feed, sharing the latest news about drones, using more technical terms in your copywriting, etc. 

2. Not Posting Regularly 

Imagine this: you find a business that you like, they have great products and services, their social media pages look well put together, so you give them a follow. But seeing that the business doesn’t post all that often, you soon forget all about it. After all, once something is out of sight, it’s out of your mind.

The lack of activity on social media will allow the business’s competition to steal potential customers. Nobody wants to give their competitors this chance, which is why posting regularly is such a big necessity.

The best way to do so is by atomizing the content posting process and creating a posting schedule. Both these things can be easily accomplished with a social media management tool such as SocialBee.  

3. Forgetting about Client Communication

With the protection of anonymity, people are certainly more comfortable opening up and reaching out on social media. This means that you should be expecting people to leave behind comments, reviews, and even direct messages. 

The way and urgency with which you respond to your clients can make or break your business. You want your interactions with followers to be as smooth as possible, with no room for misinterpretations. 

Depending on the tone of your brand, you can joke around with your followers and be more easygoing in the interactions you have. The whole point is not to ignore comments or reviews and address everything that needs to be addressed, especially if you have a following that is on the smaller side. 

4. Not Tracking Results Properly 

Although the main responsibility of a social media specialist is creating content and managing it, this cannot be done without having the right analytics. 

Here are a few things that you should take into consideration when analyzing your content and your social media pages:

• The most popular post you have had in the previous week/month
• The average number of likes and shares per post
• The average number of comments per post
• The average number of new followers per day, week, and month 

Knowing these details will help you know what types of posts perform the best. This in turn will allow you to manage your time and resources better. You can find a great social media analytics tool on the SocialBee platform. 

5. Using the Same Content on Every Platform

It comes as no surprise that every platform is different, which essentially means that each platform has:

• Different requirements (image size, text length, use of hashtags, etc)
• Different predominant audiences (for example TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat are rising in popularity with Gen Z)
• Different kinds of content that perform well
• Different approaches that social media specialist should be mindful of 

You might think that using the same content for your social media profiles would be okay, especially when you are sharing an update about your business. But that’s not quite right. As mentioned above, a lot of elements differ from one platform to the other. 

So if you want to broadcast your business on multiple platforms, you need to be prepared to create specific content for each platform in part. 

5 Lessons Learnt as a Social Media Specialist 

Mistakes can teach us a lot of significant lessons. But so does advice. Just as there are some things that you should avoid when it comes to being a social media specialist, there are also things that you should try out. 

Here are five things that you can easily apply in your social media marketing strategies:

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Use Tools 

The great thing about modern marketing is that there are plenty of tools that you can use to create digital marketing campaigns. 

Do you want to automate your social media posting? There’s a tool for that. Do you want to create stunning visuals for your copies? There’s a tool for that. Do you want to track your social media engagement levels? Well, surprise, surprise, there’s a tool for that too. 

But with so many tools around, it’s hard to know which ones you should use. After all, you wouldn’t want to spend your resources on a tool that’s going to collect dust. 

Now, SocialBee is a tool that you’ll find useful when it comes to social media marketing. But other tools are worth being checked out. 

2. Look at Other Business’s Content

It is said that imitation is the best form of flattery, but not when you can be charged with plagiarism. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take a look at your competitor’s content and analyze the number of followers, likes, and comments they have on their posts. 

It’s quite likely that you and your competitors have the same target audience, so seeing what works best for them might give you some ideas for your content. 

When getting inspiration from other brand’s content, you should not forget about your brand image and brand tone. For example, your competitors might be using memes and humor in their content, which gets them a lot of likes and shares. But your brand tone is on the serious side, which means that you cannot create the type of posts that your competitors have. 

3. Change It up Once in a While 

Consistency can be a very good thing, but something you might want to surprise your followers. You can do this by: 

• changing the design of your visuals
• using some new hashtags
• creating polls on your feed
• going live on your social media accounts
• partnering with an influencer
• hosting a giveaway. 

Like previously mentioned, the important thing here is to stay on brand. If you’re changing the design of your visuals, make sure that you’re still using the brand colors and shapes. Or if you have a serious tone, don’t go on a meme splurge on your social media pages. 

Make sure you deliver bite-sized changes and monitor everything carefully to see how your audience reacts to your new approach. 

4. Share All Kinds of Content

This means that you should have various kinds of content on your page. Don’t stick just to promotional content. Although that is one of your social media profile’s main goals, it’s not the only one. With your social media accounts, you should strive to educate and entertain your audience.

This means curating articles and news that are specific for your department, sharing educational pieces, such as podcasts and blog posts, making field-specific memes, and offering your audience some fun facts. 

You can also share the content that your followers are tagging you into. This will show your audience that you are paying attention to what they are doing, which will create a more trustful bond.

5. Less Is More 

You might think that the more social media platforms you post on, the better. After all, a lot of social media platforms can only mean that you will have a greeted reach. But while this might be true, being on multiple platforms is not always such a great idea.

As we previously mentioned, each platform has different requirements. This means that to deliver quality content, you need to know those requirements and create your content accordingly. 

The task of creating content for each platform in part can become quite time-consuming, depending on the number of platforms that you have. So make sure that you start with a manageable number of platforms and after you have mastered creating and posting content on those platforms, you can start moving up. 

Bottom Line

With social media being so complex, the job of a social media specialist is not easy. But knowing what mistakes you should avoid, what tips you keep in mind, and what tools you can use will make this position more manageable and fun.