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More from Academy Xi
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We’ve compiled this list of questions most frequently asked about Social Media Marketing to help you understand what it’s like to kickstart a fast-paced career as a Social Media Marketer.
- Social Media Marketing and why it’s important
- Social Media Marketing tools & platforms
- Careers in Social Media Marketing
- Industry demand for Social Media Marketing
- Becoming a Social Media Marketer
Already know you’d like to study Social Media Marketing? Get in touch with our Course Advisors to discuss training options, and check out the upcoming intake dates here.
Social Media Marketing and why it’s important
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media currently boasts 4.62 billion users globally, which is 58% of the world’s total population. Australia specifically has 21.45 million people active on socials, which equates to a whopping 83% of the national population!
Social Media Marketing involves leveraging the popularity of social media to promote brands, goods and services. Social Media Marketers post original, compelling content to stimulate authentic brand conversations, build a community, drive website traffic and generate sales.
The flexibility of Social Media Marketing makes it possible for businesses to quickly connect with millions of potential customers, or alternatively, target a very small and specific audience.
What does a Social Media Marketer do?
Being a Social Media Marketer isn’t just about regularly posting on the biggest platforms. Instead, it’s about aligning your content with an end-to-end strategy and converting as many ‘followers’ as possible into customers.
As well as having a strategic mindset, Social Media Marketers benefit from a range of creative skills, including copywriting and graphic design. Social Media Marketers are also expected to monitor the success of a campaign, which means using data analytics to measure outcomes.
How do businesses use Social Media Marketing?
Marketing has always been about meeting customers in the right place at the right time. In this day and age, that means connecting with them on social media.
Social Media Marketing is a fast, relatively inexpensive way for businesses to reach over half the world’s population. The impact a strong social media presence can have on a business is wider than you might think. Modern businesses rely on Social Media Marketing to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Humanise a brand
- Establish a brand as a ‘thought leader’
- Build word of mouth
- Increase website traffic
- Generate leads
- Boost sales
Social Media Marketing can also be used to manage a brand image during a crisis, as well as for day-to-day interactions with customer service and support teams.
What is a social media content strategy?
It’s all well and good being active on social media platforms, but you’ve got to use them tactically. A social media content strategy involves planning, creating and implementing content on the platforms of your choice.
Any good social media content strategy will cover:
- Setting your goals – Every strategy needs to begin with goals. The more clearly defined and measurable your goals are, the better. Your goals might be to increase a brand’s audience, drive traffic to a website, or increase leads and sales.
- Researching your audience – If you don’t take the time to connect with your audience, your audience won’t take the time to connect with you. Typically, understanding your target audience is similar to defining your brand’s buyer personas. You’ll need to answer questions like, “what content will your audience enjoy?” and “what tone of voice will they relate to?”. Social media tools such as Facebook and Instagram Insights allow you to dig into your audience’s data. You’re able to see the times of day they’re most active, the formats they’re most likely to engage with and where people find your content.
- Choosing your platforms – With a good understanding of your audience, you’ll be well placed to choose your platforms. For instance, if you’re targeting professionals, you’ll most likely want to use LinkedIn. If you’re trying to connect with Gen Z who have a passion for video content, it’s logical to use platforms like TikTok or Snapchat.
- Plan your content – You should define the underlying purpose of each piece of content. Will it be educational, promotional, entertaining or inspirational? Most importantly, you’ll want to keep your audience in mind and plan content they’re likely to find relatable.
- Measuring success – The only way to judge whether or not your content strategy is working is to use metrics. Social media management tools like Buffer and HootSuite offer metrics that will allow you to measure reach, clicks, engagement and hashtag performance. You’ll also need to review responses for sentiment to ensure your posts are being met with positivity.
What is a content calendar?
Creating a social media content calendar is one of the most effective ways to manage the execution of your content strategy. Being able to visualise what you’ll post in the coming weeks, or even months, helps you plan what your social accounts will look like in the long term.
Working from a calendar will also help you prepare for national holidays and seasonal events, which can provide original themes to produce content around.
Content calendars will normally take the form of spreadsheets, Google calendars, or for those who use social media management tools, interactive dashboards. Scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Buffer help marketers organise their calendars and will automatically publish content on your behalf.
Social Media Marketing tools & platforms
What tools do Social Media Marketers use?
There are a variety of tools that can reduce the heavy lifting of a Social Media Marketing campaign and raise the bar of creativity too. Some of the handiest tools include:
Hootsuite
As the world’s first social media management platform, Hootsuite has been at the forefront of social media for over a decade. As an integrated platform, Hootsuite allows you to schedule and publish content to all of your social profiles, track effectiveness in real time, and amplify your most important content.
Hootsuite also allows you to set up customisable streams that allow you to monitor trends and stay notified about customers, competitors, or any topic relevant to your brand.
Buffer
Buffer is a multipurpose tool that’s most commonly used to draft and schedule posts. Buffer started as a scheduling tool for Twitter, but now supports many of the biggest platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
Buffer subscriptions are split into two services, Publish and Analyse. The former enables you to plan and schedule your posts, while the latter helps you assess the impact your posts are having.
Biteable
Social media is increasingly driven by video content. With Biteable you can easily create engaging, entertaining, and informative short videos.
With an array of free video templates, footage, music, and animated scenes, Biteable is perfect for anyone aiming to create studio-quality content without needing expensive equipment. Best of all, most of the features are available with free accounts.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a research tool that enables you to optimise the impact of your content. Buzzsumo generates detailed metrics that can be used to analyse the impact of your content.
Buzzsumo allows you to track content trends, find influencers related to your brand, and even receive updates on the most popular keywords and search terms.
Mention
Mention is a comprehensive social listening tool that, as its title suggests, tracks mentions of your brand in real time. Mention can also be used to track audience responses to the posts of your competitors.
Mention makes it easy to be part of the hottest conversations. You can respond to comments and responses from within the Mention platform, while you can also use Mention to find suitable influencers for influencer marketing campaigns.
Social Sprout
Last but not least, all-in-one social media management tool Sprout Social can be used for scheduling, publishing and team collaboration.
Sprout Social differs from other social media management platforms in its emphasis on data. Sprout Social provides in-depth data and actionable insights that can be used to manage social conversations.
What platforms do Social Media Marketers use?
When it comes to delivering an end-to-end content strategy, there’s a range of platforms that Social Media Marketers can harness to reach their target audience.
Some of the industry’s most tried-and-trusted platforms include:
Facebook has 2.93 billion active monthly users, which often makes it a Social Media Marketer’s number one choice. With the Facebook Ads Manager, you can create ads that target users according to age, location, gender, relationship status, education, interests, job title, purchase history, device usage, etc.
For organic social posts, Facebook also allows you to create Custom Audiences from the list of phone numbers or email addresses that you’ve collected, meaning you can target specific customers. You can also use Facebook Pixel to reach customers who’ve already visited your website.
YouTube
YouTube may be 15 years old, but it still attracts over 2 billion users each month. As the second most popular social media platform, YouTube marketing is now an essential part of many successful content strategies.
When visitors view your channel, they can access your video content and link back to your website. They can also view any content you ‘follow’, or even content about your business that’s shared through other channels and platforms.
Instagram has 1.2 billion users, with each user spending an average of 7 hours a week browsing content. Instagram is distinct from other social media platforms in its heavy emphasis on visuals.
For brand’s that want to highlight the design or aesthetic qualities of a product, or for those offering a service that brings about a visually remarkable end result, Instagram is often the best platform to showcase what your business has to offer.
With over 830 million users in 200 countries, LinkedIn is the platform of choice for Social Media Marketers trying to appeal to a professional audience. LinkedIn marketing is the process of using LinkedIn to make connections, improve brand awareness, generate leads and foster business relationships.
Many marketers will also share cutting-edge content to establish themselves at the forefront of their industry. LinkedIn is now a core component of many successful marketing strategies because of how effective it is when it comes to expanding professional networks and building an industry reputation.
TikTok
TikTok has received over 3 billion downloads globally, making it the first ever non-Meta app to attract so many users. With marketers searching for new ways to engage audiences, TikTok’s videos have become an effective means to tell a brand’s story, share a value proposition, and nurture relationships with potential leads.
Today’s social media users often prefer video over all other content forms, with 67% of marketers claiming that sharing videos on social media has the highest ROI of all channels.
Twitter hosts 238 million users daily and offers Social Media Marketers the chance to keep their brand involved in the most important conversations. With Twitter, you’ll focus on generating a healthy mix of replies, organic tweets, retweets and Twitter takes, while you might even pay to feature your brand in Twitter Ads.
By posting links to useful articles, or creating your own informative content, it’s possible to establish your business as a thought leader in its industry. This is one of the most effective ways to build a Twitter following around your brand.
Snapchat
Snapchat has 347 million daily users, with over 5 billion snaps sent each day. Snapchat allows businesses to connect with customers through the temporary sharing of photos and short videos.
Social Media Marketers can promote businesses on Snapchat by using traditional ads, as well as by applying branded filters, lenses and geotags.
Careers in Social Media Marketing
With the reach of social media expanding at a staggering rate, it’s a great time to get involved in the industry. These days, countless consumers purchase products because of the interactions they have with brands on social platforms.
But what exactly does a Social Media Marketing career path look like?
Career paths for Social Media Marketers
Here’s an example of a successful Social Media Marketing career path, broken down into a few simple steps:
Step 1: Get formally trained
The internet offers a range of free tutorials that can be used by anyone keen to get started as a Social Media Marketer. However, if you’re wanting to build a reputation in the industry, you should consider enrolling in a Social Media Marketing course. Without this, it will be difficult to land your first role, since so many rival candidates will have a formally certified skillset.
Step 2: Build a portfolio
In order to stand out in a highly competitive industry, it’s crucial that you build a strong portfolio. Ideally, your portfolio will contain an end-to-end campaign strategy, as well as razor-sharp content assets and ad mockups. Prospective employers and clients will use your portfolio to validate your skillset and vet the quality of your work.
Step 3: Get hired as a Social Media Marketer
With formal training and a strong portfolio to your name, you’ll be well placed to begin applying for Social Media Marketer roles. Typically, you’ll work within a company’s marketing or team, or for a marketing agency. You might also choose to go freelance. Many freelance Social Media Marketers offer their services to a range of clients on a per-project basis.
Step 4: Get hired as a Social Media Manager
With a few years experience under your belt, you’ll be in a position to apply for Social Media Manager roles. As a social media manager, your focus will shift from creating and publishing content to managing a team that oversees the execution of a campaign.
You’ll offer direction, support and feedback to your team and likely be in charge of their professional development. Social Media Manager roles also demand a more analytical skillset. You’ll create reports and analyse data to figure out what’s working and what’s not. These insights will inform changes to your team’s content strategy.
Beyond these positions, with the right amount of professional exposure there’s also the possibility that you could land the most senior marketing roles, such as Marketing Director, VP of Marketing, or even CMO.
Industry demand for Social Media Marketing
How high is the demand for Social Media Marketers in Australia?
Social Media Marketing recently overtook paid search as the most lucrative marketing channel, with Sprout Social recording spending in excess of $137 billion and 25% year-on-year growth.
Following rapid growth in the industry, there’s now a sizable skills gap for Social Media Marketers in Australia, reflected in the 3,751 roles advertised on Seek.com.au (as of September 2022).
Keep in mind that a Social Media Marketer’s skills are universally sought after, so wherever you end up in life, you’ll have work experience and a CV that employers are searching for.
How much do Social Media Marketers earn in Australia?
The pay opportunities for Social Media Marketers in Australia reflect an industry that’s expanding quickly and always on the hunt for skilled professionals.
The latest figures document the average Social Media Marketer salary in Australia as $90,000. Even Junior Social Media Marketers earn an average annual salary of $78,500, while Senior Social Media Marketers command $117,620 per year.
Becoming a Social Media Marketer
How hard is it to learn Social Media Marketing?
Whatever your starting point, learning Social Media Marketing is not as tricky as you might think. That said, it does take time to understand the theory that underpins an effective Social Media Marketing strategy. You’ll also need plenty of practice to get to grips with the most popular platforms and the industry’s latest tools. For these reasons, it’s advantageous to undergo formal training as a Social Media Marketer
Where can I train as a Social Media Marketer?
There are many options when it comes to qualifying as a Social Media Marketer. Traditional universities offer Bachelor of Digital Marketing degrees, which cover Social Media Marketing but normally take 3-4 years to complete.
There’s little expectation for Social Media Marketers to be university qualified, with most employers and prospective clients prioritising skills, experience and a good portfolio over a degree.
As a result, more people are enrolling in condensed bootcamp-style courses, which prepare graduates for the industry in a much shorter period of time. These courses focus on the hands-on skills that today’s Social Media Marketers need to make an impact in the industry.
What Social Media Marketing courses does Academy Xi offer?
Academy Xi offers practical, industry-recognised training that’s designed for digital careers.
Our Social Media Marketing: Elevate is perfect if you want to boost your career with in-demand Social Media Marketing skills, offering you the chance to:
- Level up your social media skills and take on a new role or promote your business
- Develop an end-to-end social media strategy and put it into action
- Set goals, measure results and use analytics to refine your approach
- Build skills applicable in a wide range of industries
Want to discuss your transferable skills and course options? Chat to a course advisor today.
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