Who is the Social Media Manager and what does he do?

Social Media Manager, how many times we heard this word, especially during the last years! The job’s world is without any doubt changed in the last period and the professional figures that came out are really many.
But basically who are those professionals and specifically what do they do?

What does it means

Having a few of familiarity with the english we can easily understand that the Social Media Manager is a “manager” if we can call him like this, of the Socials Media. Instead of what the major part of the not insiders thinks, though, this professional isn’t “the one that is paid to stay on Facebook” but, instead, his role is more specific. Firstly let’s start saying that as a Social Media Manager this professional has the duty to stay well or not on all the principal channels. 
That’s means that we aren’t talking only about Facebook (even if it is without any doubt the most common one) but even about other channels like Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter etc.
Yes but, concretely, what does he do on this channels?
The SMM’s duty is the one to manage the communication on behalf of companies and privates that don’t have determined skills about those Socials. Like we know nowadays the marketplace as the advertising moved online and especially on the Social Networks which allow to reach an high number of persons in shorter times, or we can even say in real time. 

For this reason a good SMM knows the mechanics that regulate those channels and knows how to move himself to rightly promote a product or a service or anyway to show in a determined way a specific content.

Which characteristics he has

Like we could see the Social Media Manager is a fully-fledged professional figure that has determined skills that allow him to make this kind of job correctly.
As a professional he obviusly has to have some characteristics that can make the difference. Besides to know naturally, like we said, the functioning of the Socials, he has to be able to adapt himself to the changes and to have spirit of enterprise.
Very often (and with Facebook we had a constant proof) the policies about the Socials rapidly change going to change even the contents’ kind to show.
Another absolutly essential peculiarity is the one to make real “market analysis” if they can be defined like this, about the effective popularity of the Socials. To better understand: a good SMM needs to know all the channels even if it isn’t a must that he has to follow all of them. 
The ability is the fact that he has to be able to understand which are the most used channels, or the socials more suitable for a customer, so to move in this direction. By the way at the end of everything the thing that the customers want are the results. 

Request

At this point it is fair to ask ourselves: yes but is the Social Media Manager required? Like we already said there are nowadays many companies that are digitalizing themselves, going to use even the Social channels.
For this reason there is a big request of those professional figures even if we have to say that for stand out in a crowd they need to have important theoretical and practical skills.
Surely it is important to study a lot and to obtain a good field experience that allows to understand and to “touch with the hand” this world. A job that can donate even many satisfations and results if it is been made in the right way. 

This post is also available in: Italiano