hi everyone my name is stefanie lahart
and i help business owners entrepreneurs and content creators turn their online
conversations into real world customers so if you're at the point in your business
where you're ready to expand your marketing team it's important that you know what you're
looking for and how to ask for the right person so in today's video i'm going to explain the
difference between a social media strategist and a social media manager that's going to help
you to not only fulfill the positions that you need to in your business but make sure that you're
putting the right people in place that are going to give you the best results to actually help
you build your business before we get started if you're not already a member of my online community
consider this your engraved invitation please subscribe to my channel and hit that notification
bell so you'll know when my next video goes live now as a business owner you know how important
it is to make sure that you hire the right person for the right job at the right time
and this includes when you are expanding or just building your social media portion of
your business because remember social media marketing for many businesses is their entryway
into marketing in general so it's really really key to know what it is that you need to have done
in your business and the kind of person you're looking to fulfill that need now it can be easy to
assume that what isn't a strategist or a manager the same i mean if you just hire somebody who
does social media don't they just know what they should be doing they kind of do all the same
thing and that's where i see a lot of business owners start tripping up because they think that
just hiring this one person all of their social media needs get fulfilled and then they don't
understand why certain tasks aren't getting done or why they are not able to scale their marketing
in a way that they need to because the person that they put in place is not the right person
whether with skills or background or experience or knowledge or even personality and it can become
one of those things that can really hold you back in marketing okay so i'm going to start with
social media strategy because that's where you have to start everything within marketing
of any type whether it's social media it's traditional any kind of marketing you
have to have a plan you have to understand what you're doing why you're doing it and how that
content is going to be created in order to fulfill the marketing need that you have right so that's
where your strategy comes into play so when you're thinking about actually either building your team
scaling your team you first have to make sure that you have a strategy component in there which
is where your social media strategist comes in and where i tend to work with most businesses
these days where in the past i was more on the manager side here's the difference with the
strategy your strategist is going to come in look at your business and then really start thinking
about your business goals what you need to do where that marketing needs to happen and most
importantly how that's going to start adding to your revenue this is where your strategy comes
into play without this from the onset you are going to end up in the hole that i've seen many
businesses in where they just simply push out content on social media and get no results because
they did not know what they were asking for so case in point when you decide something like you
want to run facebook ads because you want to get more traffic to your website there's a specific
pathway you need to do in order for that to happen this is how your social media strategists can
help you because they are not necessarily going to create the facebook ad for you but they're going
to create the product lifestyle or the customer oh the customer journey of how it's going to come
through the pipeline move through the marketing messages and then come out with the desired
outcome which is usually a sale of some sort or at least building your contact list your strategist
will be able to put those systems into place to give you kind of the grand overview of everything
you need within your marketing channel in order to make this happen your social media strategist
is going to be in charge of planning strategy and goal setting this is what's going to make your
marketing actually work they're also going to be able to help you with the development of brand
awareness and online reputation which again for the longevity of your product or your service is
going to be something you need to be aware of from the beginning and actively cultivating and this
is going to all be part of the initial strategy with your strategist now what your strategist
is also going to be able to do for you is to be able to help you develop a really robust
seo program that's not only going to help you within the social media aspect but also tie in
with your website which will help of course with the generation of inbound traffic so your social
media strategist is going to be really key in the cultivation of your leads and online sales they're
going to think of everything from the beginning of the life cycle all the way through to the end
and how all of those processes get put into place in order to fulfill that need within your
marketing wheelhouse now to compare this with a social media manager what a manager is going
to do for you is to take the strategy that's already been created nine times out of ten already
implemented and then keep cultivating that and making sure that they're building on that through
content creation engagement with your audience reputation management and also doing some real
world in the field research for you so you can get feedback on how your audience is responding
to your products and services and things like that your social media manager is like your front line
person that's going to be interacting with your your actual audience and this is where the big
difference comes in your strategist is putting the whole plan together your social media
manager is the one that then takes the ball runs it down the field and then actually interacts
with the crowd when they get the touchdown yay we're all happy we all got what we want right
that's what you really need within this to work otherwise you might just find that you have
somebody who is in your marketing department creating social media content that doesn't
do anything it doesn't convert to anything it doesn't really have any purpose other than
filling up a space on that little window in your phone and that's not good as a business owner
as an entrepreneur as people who have limited budgets when you're first starting out with your
business you have to make sure every step that you're taking within your marketing is actually
generating a lead we have to attach a number to every action that we have so making sure that
you have the strategy in place and then the right person that's going to follow through with all
that it's like a win-win kind of situation so you have your strategist you have your manager they
can be two different people they can also be the same person now why did i say that one i've been
saying all along it's two different jobs right because i wanted to make it very clear to you what
you should be expecting from both of these roles so yes you can then tie them in together that
maybe your strategist is also fulfilling all this as long as the person that you hire as your social
media manager is aware of an experience in putting that strategy plan together and making sure that
they understand that every action has to have a reaction and the reaction should be a positive
one that ends up in building some kind of customer engagement or sales or longevity or partnership
kind of things it is not just about i'm fulfilling a need of posting content on channels and if you
get stuck in that i call that the social media suck if you've seen any of my other videos and you
don't want to be in there and one of the key parts of your social media manager is that they are
going to be engaging with and responding to your audience now you already see what this looks like
on something like instagram you put up a post and then the company actually responds to every single
comment that's put on there with a good manager what they're doing is they are actually furthering
that conversation so somebody makes a statement about your product good bad whatever they are then
able to respond in a way that's actually going to continue the conversation in a productive way
and actually get people to engage more so even if the first comment was not exactly what you were
hoping with the post you can always turn it around with the right manager to make it a productive
conversation and your manager can make sure that they are guiding the conversation of your social
media platforms at all times so your social media manager is going to listen to respond to and
engage with your audience across all of your social media platforms what this is going to do
is to help you increase sales and improve your customer relationships if you are taking the time
to actually post on social media in order to grow your business you have to also respond to your
audience that's why having somebody like a manager is really important so that words aren't falling
on deaf ears all the time you make a post people respond to it and then there's just crickets
having a manager in place will help you to further that conversation thereby growing your customer
relationships and once you understand how these positions can work together it'll help you to keep
building your team and of course keep growing your team in a scalable way people do their jobs better
when they understand what's expected of them and when they know that there's support in place in
order for them to get their job done your social media marketing could be the only thing that you
actually need to market your business when done in the correct way and set up as a strategy with
a process and a plan it's going to be something that will not only level up your business but will
make it a scalable and profitable and that's what you want as a business owner so thanks so much for
watching any questions or comments drop them below if you're not already a member of my community
please subscribe to my channel hit that notification bell you'll know when the next video
goes live and feel free to share my channel with other people that you think would be interested
in social media marketing entrepreneurship and building online businesses because that's what
we do here okay i will see you in the next video
