I'm going to be revealing how you can get
social media manager jobs without having a prior marketing degree. Now this is one of the biggest
questions I get asked is what freelance skills can I go out there and provide without needing all of
these different marketing degrees college degrees etcetera and being a social media manager is one
of the most lucrative freelance jobs that you can provide you can do it from the comfort of your
own home wherever you're traveling in the world as long as you have an internet connection. Now
a lot of consumers these days have more choices than ever before and that's why companies are
constantly looking for ways that they can stand out from the rest so as a social media manager
what your job is is to help those companies leave a lasting impression on those end users and
encourage them to do something and that's what a social media manager's job is all about it's about
helping companies make connections with customers and that is all about leaving an impact with them
so they either follow the company spread the word or purchase a product or service so these jobs can
be very lucrative whether you're just looking for a side hustle or if you want to build your own
social media agency this might sound like a lofty goal but it is completely possible.
So I'm
going to be going over a blog that I posted on the Profitable Freelancer website in more detail
in this video, so let's get right into what we were going to be covering. First we're going to
get into what a social media manager actually does then we're going to discuss why you can get
freelance social media jobs without a degree after that we will go into how you can build your social
media manager resume without having a ton of prior experience then we're going to go over how to
get your actual job your first freelance gig lastly we will go over freelance social media
software tools that help make your job easier, so let's get right into it.
So what does a
freelance social media manager actually do when we start to look at what a social media manager does
it's important to understand that your role as a social media manager is to understand firstly why
companies use social media in the first place and that is to get a potential customer or a current
customer to do something so think about your own experience with companies on social media any good
professional account is going to be encouraging their users to do things in creative ways and it's
going to make you want to do something such as like or share a post tag the company or the
product in your own post which shows real world evidence that people are using the products
also they may ask you to follow an account on social media which helps grow their presence they
can also ask you to visit the company's website also to shop a product to buy something online
and also to sign up for a freemium subscription to something and that is usually to get them to
sell you on something that is paid down the line so once you start to understand that social media
is a relatively inexpensive way for companies to go out there to reach potential customers and to
have them share their own experience aka social proof that's going to help you provide more value
to the companies you work with.
So as a social media manager you are responsible for creating
sharing measuring and also communicating all of the results you got to your social media manager
client now what you do in a social media manager job is going to vary but usually you're doing
one if not all of these things you're designing the social media campaigns from the ground up and
that is where you're telling companies where they can actually reach their goals what platforms you
suggest them using then you're also going to be the one creating that content so all the photos
the videos the copywriting that is going to be part of your job as a social media manager
to create those posts next your job is to schedule those posts out and have them go out on a
specific time and day on different platforms based on past data you're also going to be working on
responding to users comments on that platform to increase engagement and to show that the company
is actually there when a user has a question you're also going to be monitoring for activity
that might actually be a threat or hurt the business's brand such as a negative review and
your job is going to be to work on providing a remedy to those issues that also shows future
potential customers that you're a legit business and that the client you're working for takes their
customers very seriously you're also going to be measuring the effectiveness of those campaigns and
you're going to be reporting those results to your client now this goes from the actual management
side of things and goes more towards the client side of things and that's where you're going to
be communicating all of the results that you're actually able to provide those clients with
and then you want to go above and beyond when you're a social media manager and you're a
freelancer and you want to also suggest the next steps they can take to continue increasing their
engagement and ultimately increasing their sales so because social media has evolved so quickly
companies like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram they're changing their policies very often so a
lot of traditional colleges just haven't caught up to the formal social media marketing as
it is today so that's why even though you may know people who have marketing degrees and you may
think they have a whole leg up on the competition but in reality you might know a couple more things
if you have a college degree but a lot of these things can be taught with some self-study some
discipline some practice and then you can start getting these freelance social media manager
jobs even if you don't have a marketing degree. Now let's get into how to build a
social media manager resume from scratch so the first thing you want to do is get some
experience so whether that's paid experience or otherwise you want to get some hands-on
experience managing social media accounts so this can be your own social media accounts that
you use to kind of practice with or you can manage another businesses account as a free trial to get
some more experience so when you're working on growing your your social media account whether
that's your own account or a client's account what you want to do is focus on becoming that
social media manager that you know clients want and that is all about keeping track of how much
engagement you're creating it's all about keeping a note of all the different posts that you've
done the content calendars that you've created all of this is going to go into creating your
portfolio down the line so you need to think of it as instead of just going out there and
starting to get clients take one step back and get what I like to call a "trial client".
So
this is someone that knows that you're a beginner but also knows that they can get a good deal
with working with you because you're just getting started and now what you're going to be able to do
is leverage all of those results and all of that experience you've gotten with that client turn it
into a case study and use that to get clients down the line so in order to do that you also need
to learn the principles and the software that you need to effectively manage a brand so once
you're getting that hands-on experience you also want to start to think about how can I sharpen
my skill set? How can I gain more knowledge and learn how to do these different things use these
different softwares before I get out there in you know the real world per se and start providing
this to clients that you don't know? So what you can work on is starting to get used to learning
learning new things watching videos just like this maybe taking an affordable online course on social
media management and all of that's going to help you learn how to build a unique brand on social
media it's going to help you use different graphic design software understand the best social media
analytics software platforms to use also how to create and follow brand guidelines how to design
social media campaigns how to schedule posts out and also most importantly how to present the
clients with concrete results of your social media management campaign and that includes how many
users actually clicked to the website how many people bought a product how many people shared
a post these are what's known as performance indicators and my best advice is to learn and to
practice at the same time and this is something you're never going to feel 100 percent ready to
do but that's what separates a freelancer from someone who just stays in the nine-to-five world
their whole life.
When you're scared to take that step because you don't know every single thing
that fear is going to hold you back so learn to get that knowledge that experience that hands-on
experience while you're also understanding that you're new to this you're practicing and it's okay
if you make a couple mistakes because you're going to treat this as an entire experience that you're
then going to use to your future success so once you're starting to learn that what you're doing
is kind of like your homework and the performance and how you do on this trial client job
is more of like the grades you're getting that's a good way to kind of structure it in your
mind because then when it's time for the actual final assignment aka getting your first paid
real client that is going to give you all of that confidence that you need to take those next
steps even if you don't have a marketing degree then you want to translate that experience
you have into a real portfolio aka a resume and this can be done by creating your own website
or what i actually suggest is creating a profile on a freelancing website such as Upwork.com and
what you can do is then post your experience to that platform, and what you can do is link
to the different social media accounts you've managed in the past you can provide samples
of the post you've done you can also show how well your past campaigns did and how they
were your ideas and how you implemented them how you manage those campaigns then you can also
get into what skills you have what platforms you use to manage social media accounts and then you
also want to list your own social media accounts if you have them and they're professional of
course and also any certifications that you've gained from taking things such as online courses
then from there what you want to do is you want to then focus on getting your first freelance
social media gig.
Now don't panic i know this can be something that is scary especially because
we just went over you're never going to feel ready but once you've gotten some hands-on experience
then once you've actually worked with a client or worked with your own accounts created some case
studies you have an online freelancer profile that's when it's time to get your first gig
now don't think of this as the end-all be-all but it's just the next step in your progression
you need to go out there and actually get your first gig so a lot of like how-to freelance guides
they talk about you need to use word of mouth and you need to network and get referrals now i'm
not saying this is wrong but this is something that you do once you're already established once
you already have your entire database of clients you're going to have people recommending you,
but when you're just starting out I'm going to be honest with you it's going to be difficult
to get those word of mouth referrals so what you need to do is reverse engineer the process go
where the clients are already posting thousands of jobs every single day and the best website like
we mentioned is Upwork.com for that there are clients posting for social media manager roles
every single hour and if you go to the website you can start to scroll through and see all of the
new jobs that were posted so luckily since these platforms exist you need to leverage them and what
they're designed to do is connect freelancers with all of these gigs that clients want to hire people
for and now that you already have a profile set up you have your portfolio on there and your past
experience it's time for you to start to reach out to clients and to express how much value you
can provide to them and that is done by sending a proposal out which includes your profile a cover
letter and any attachments you want to deliver to them as well as answering any questions that
the client has asked in their job description. Now I have an entire course on the Zero to
Mastery Academy which teaches you everything from designing your Upwork profile, to pitching
your services, scaling your freelance business, so if you want to get started you can click the link
in the description get access to the ZTM Academy, and that also includes all of their other courses
but even if you don't do that understand that when you're pitching your services to potential clients
you want to make sure that you are already taking a good look at what they already have set up.
You
want to use this in your cover letter to let the client know you're not just copying and pasting
your cover letter to a million different jobs but you have handcrafted your proposal specifically
for them and the best way to do this is to mention what they already are doing on social media then
what you want to do is ask the right questions so the client understands that you know what
you're talking about you're not just trying to get the job but you're asking them questions to
qualify them and see if you're both a good match for each other you also want to expect the clients
to have just abstract goals they might say things like I just want to grow my following how can you
help me or I want to get more people to click to my website and your job as a social media manager
is to break down those vague desires they have and break them down into concrete goals that is what
a good freelancer does when they're trying to get a social media gig online is they provide
specific actionable steps that they will take to help the client reach their goals because
that's why people are posting jobs they have a problem they need solved they need more followers
they need more business they need more engagement that's where you come in and you need to show
the client with all of your past experience and all of your knowledge that you are the right
one for the job that is how you're going to stand out from the competition and also tell them
exactly how you plan to measure the effectiveness of your social media services, one of the most
important things I teach all my students is ask the client how they're going to measure success
and if the client doesn't know the best way to measure success that's where you can provide some
of those concrete actionable steps we just spoke about so you want to get used to clients having
just these vague abstract goals and your guide is to show them how to get to that level they want
to get to in layman terms so don't use a bunch of jargon that they're not going to understand don't
get into all the specifics keep it at a high level and that is going to help you land more online
social media gigs next let's get into the free tools you can use to make your social media
management job easier.
Using tools is something I highly encourage because you're not alone there's
all of these different softwares a lot of them are free some of them are paid but they're there to
help you and they're built to help you save time so as a social media manager even though your job
might not be as technical as let's say a developer and it might not be as creatively intense and
demanding as let's say a graphic designer, however, it's important to understand there are
technical aspects and there are creative aspects to this job and they're basically requirements
because if you don't have them you're not going to be able to deliver top-notch social media
campaigns so to make your job a little bit easier let's get into the top four online social
media management tools, I suggest you use as a freelancer and this is going to help you
create manage and measure social media efforts and the first one is Buffer.
Buffer is a social
media scheduler and it's one of the simplest tools you can use to automate different campaigns to go
out and post on different platforms and what you do is you set it up and then that's it you can go
to sleep and they're going to post all throughout the week all throughout the month when you have
it set up this is one of the lowest hanging fruits as a social media manager you do not want to be
manually posting everything it's just going to take so much time so what this also helps you
do is repurpose content for different platforms you can see that they describe themselves as a
platform that helps you chart your path and share your story and they're proudly an all you need
social media toolkit that lets you focus on doing what you love for your business or in our case for
your freelance clients business now if you start to look at Buffer you can see that they partner
with Facebook Pinterest Linkedin it helps you show up where your customers are where your clients
customers are analyze publish engage and then celebrate so all you have to do is get started
on Buffer connect your clients social media accounts and that's going to help you take your
marketing social media skills to the next level. Now going to the next social media management tool
I love using and I really encourage people to use and that is called Canva.
Now Canva is what i
like to call one of the top tools you can use as a non-designer so instead of using photoshop
and having to pay a yearly or a monthly subscription you can use a free tool called Canva,
so once Canva gets pulled up here we go we can see that Canva will help you design so many different
things as a social media manager and this is exactly what you need because it's going to store
everything in one place it's going to give you thousands of professional templates to start from
images and quality content to choose from to help you get a head start at bringing your best ideas
and work to life that includes presentation social media videos print products marketing office you
can see that they help you create logos as well and flyers and there's all of these pre-made
templates that you can get a head start with to provide very high level graphic design work
even if you don't have any past experience it's all drag and drop so you can start to pull in
your clients past assets past things they've produced and start to repurpose them in a lot of
different ways, so if you've never used Canva go ahead give it a try it's one of the most easy to
use tools that anyone can pick up pretty quickly and I actually use it in my own business and
for a lot of my clients for YouTube thumbnails, for presentations, for social media posts,
for editing videos, and getting b-roll there is so many capabilities when you start to dig into
Canva and that is the second tool you can use as a social media manager next let's get into the third
tool and that is called Asana.
Now Asana is a project management tool that helps you create and
share content calendars with your clients for free now this is also going to show your clients
that you're going to take it above and beyond you're not just going to communicate them via
email or via message but you're now going to give them an entire calendar with a project management
platform. So let's take a look at what Asana looks like so we can see here that Asana helps you work
on big ideas without the busy work so from the small stuff to the big picture asana is going to
help organize teams so they know what they need to do why it matters and how to get it done so once
again once you can kind of separate yourself from the competition let's say you're both reaching
out to a job you and another freelancer and the other freelancer doesn't provide an Asana content
calendar to the client but let's say you do just taking that extra step and going above and beyond
and just taking that one extra step can go so much further than you imagine.
So this is another tool
I really encourage you to use if you're working on different projects if you're reaching out to
different social media manager jobs take it to that next level and start to provide Asana content
calendars to show that you are the real deal next let's get into the fourth tool you can use
as a social media manager and that is IFTTT. Now this is a slightly more advanced platform
however it is extremely useful and it helps you reduce your content creation time and how
much time it takes you to schedule posts out because it helps you recycle content
and that will really help you automate all of your content marketing efforts so
let's take a look at the IFTTT website we see here that their tagline is do more with
the things you love and you connect your apps and devices in new and remarkable ways make
things you love more powerful and as you start to scroll down here you can see that all of the
biggest brands in the world they do use different tools to power and to connect everything together
and even just looking at their website you can tell this is a pretty new age brand all of these
different brands are compatible and what you do is you start to connect different things together
and like we said it helps you save time and when you're able to save time that helps you get more
done and that results to earning more money.
So let's finish it up here by going over why being a
social media manager is such a lucrative position and that is because when you're a social media
manager you are now going on the other side of the token instead of being a consumer and just
absorbing social media content you're now using all of your skills and your knowledge and your
expertise to be a producer and once you make that shift from a consumer to a producer I guarantee
you're going to start to feel so much more value with all of the services you can provide so being
a social media manager is an incredibly lucrative position you can charge a lot of money for every
hour that you work once you get some experience and you can make upwards of six figures a year
just by managing clients social media accounts now the power of being a freelancer is that
you don't just have to work with one client you can start out with one client but once you
get them under the belt you start charging them every single month let's say you charge them a
couple thousand every single month then you go out there and you get another client then once
you get them to a good pace where everything's automated you go and get a third client and that's
when the power of freelancing really starts to compound on top of each other and something that
might have just started out as a side hustle can quickly turn into your main full-time career and
that's all without needing a marketing degree. So I hope this video was helpful to show
you that being a social media freelancer is an incredibly powerful role you can start to
perform without having a degree all by sitting down starting to get some experience and start
getting clients online and this is something you can do from the comfort of your own home or
wherever you want to travel in the world as long as you have an internet connection.
Please, if you
found this video helpful hit the subscribe button it will really help me keep producing content all
about freelancing entrepreneurship and lifestyle freedom, also before you go please hit the thumbs
up button it helps spread the video and it really just helps you know pat the YouTube algorithm
on the head so more people can find my video, lastly make sure to click the next video that
pops up on the screen so you can continue to learn how to make money online and to be a successful
freelancer. Until the next one, have a great day..