No, it’s not scrolling TikTok all day, unfortunately…

A day in the life of a social media agency owner/freelancer/social media manager aka ME looks like this:

• 5:30am wake up and run to town – 5k door to door
• 6-7am: gym (strong body strong business – right?)
• 7-8am: spend an hour drying my curls
• 8am: post all client LinkedIn content: it performs best first thing in the day
• 8:30am: engage from all the accounts including my own whilst necking a protein shake for breakfast
• 9am: email scan for anything urgent/important
• 9:30am: strategy planning for the week
• 10:30: check all Facebook and Instagram ads are running fine, make any budget tweaks to ad sets
• 11am: send out briefs and assets to contractors to draft posts or create any graphics I need for content
• 12pm: lunch (nearly always tofu, rice and veg), walk around town or go to a yoga class
• 1pm: content creation – imagery and copy collation before sending for client approval
• 3pm: re-check ads, just because
• 4pm: copywriting/reel making – I do all the nice and creative work in the afternoon
• 5pm: make sure evening posts are scheduled before I run or bike home
• 6pm: make and eat dinner, chat crap with my boyfriend and annoy my cat
• 8pm: in bed with a book – currently reading ‘Surrounded By Idiots’

There are many areas you’ll need to get to grips with and include. I’ve been had by freelance ‘social media managers’ before who don’t have a marketing background or just plain miss off half of what’s required to provide a full service. If you’re looking for a social media manager make sure you ask for links to the profiles they’re managing and screenshots of their insights pages to see how much traction they’re actually getting. You can use sites such as SemRush to see how much traffic they’re driving to a website through social too.

Here are all the tasks involved in running a corporate social media account effectively:

Carrying out an initial audit: running analytics on what’s worked, what hasn’t, competitors and where their traffic and sales are coming from.

Account refresh: updating the bio, profile and cover imagery along with highlight covers for optimum aesthetic.

Strategy planning: planning ahead by the month, week, and day what themes, brands and topics are going out each day. Planning ahead allows you to align all other marketing activity especially if there are multiple freelancers or agencies involved so you can align email, web, blog and PR content.

Creative: either commissioning and running shoots, shooting content yourself, briefing in the client graphic designer or your own or even just resizing all the imagery from the client yourself optimally.

Analytics: making sure Google Analytics, web tracking and your Facebook pixel are set up properly so you can track conversions and whereabouts in the buyers journey customers are dropping off to fix it i.e. wrong link, broken checkout, complicated purchase process, slow website. Creating measurable funnels is the best way to see and resolve any snags as quick as they arise.

Copywriting: writing your captions is key, getting a good hook in there and conducting hashtag research and keyword optimising your posts for searchability, nailing the client tone of voice, converting their values.

Feed planning: using apps to pre-plan your feed to make sure it will all look pretty as possible when posted and won’t throw off any pattern you’re using. Only applicable for Instagram.

Scheduling: using analytics tools to see when your audience are most likely to be online and engaging with your content then using a scheduling tool to pre-plan posts. Most tools give suggestions on timings.

Account engagement: the cardinal sin is to POST AND GHOST. You need to be engaging from the account, replying to comments, liking/sharing other’s content. Simply posting is not enough and will work against you in the algorithm if the account isn’t behaving in a ‘human’ way and interacting.

Running paid ads: building audiences, optimising budgets, creating the content, running and continual daily monitoring, tweaking and updating.

A/B testing: day, time, graphics, copy, audience, video vs still, carousel vs static – the possibilities are endless. Continually monitoring your top performing post styles and topics can help refine and improve your posts and ads over time.

Ongoing research: regularly checking competitor pages as well as sites like reddit/quora: what are your customers up to and asking about? What are they talking about in your niche on Twitter? Do you have the answers and solutions?

Reporting: essential. Even if your client doesn’t want a swanky powerpoint – great results are great case studies and naff results mean change is needed. The more regular the report, the quicker you can spot any fixes to be implemented.

And THAT’S IT REALLY!