A Day in the Life of a Social Media Manager

I've noticed a steady increase in the number of roles on Chinwag Jobs that mention "social media" or "community" in the title. But what's it like to do the job? In this guest post, Rebecca Jesson, Social Media Manager at Sheffield-based agency, Quba shares her day...

One of the questions I get asked frequently is “What exactly does a Social Media Manager do?” As Kat French so rightly puts it “…because apparently, people think social media managers spend all day on Twitter/Facebook collecting followers and congratulating each other on getting paid to spend all day on Twitter/Facebook”. Her “day in the life of…” post covers a lot of the things I do all day, but I wanted to write one of my own. So here it goes...

7:30 Alarm goes off. Luckily I live about 10 minutes walk from Quba so I don’t have to be up ridiculously early. My boyfriend and I usually lounge around in bed for half an hour or so. Sometimes we have sensible conversations, recently one about Apple vs. Google (he’s an Apple fan-boy and I’m a Google lover) but most of the time we talk about rubbish such as what to have for tea.

8:00 Get up and check Gmail to see if anything outrageous has happened during the night. Get dressed, get ready etc. Think about how to respond to emails when I get to work

9:00 Arrive at work and check Quba and client blogs for comments. Respond if required. Fire up Tweetdeck and see if any client account have Tweets needing attention. Check Facebook fan pages and respond to anything outstanding. Go through emails and add the day’s activities to my “to-do” list. Check our monitoring tool to track mentions of clients and see who’s winning the Quba ego search (me vs. Rob Wilmot). Sporadically check/respond on blogs, Twitter etc. throughout the day.

10:00 Most days I have strategy work to do which usually involves explaining what Social Media is, explaining how it be used for business, researching the client and their competitors, considering linkbait campaigns and drafting a bespoke Social Media proposal and cost estimate.

12:00 Lunch time on Division Street with Search Exec Rich Lawrence. Today I crammed my face with a roast turkey sandwich from the fabulous Sandwich Division. It was amazing. Attempted to get my nails done but was stared at like a crazy person for requesting an appointment. Guess I’ll do them at home.

12:30 Read up on blogs and news using feed.ly, which I adore. Think about what my next post for Quba blog could be about…?

1:00 Usually have some phone calls and/or meetings in the afternoon. Often offering advice on projects, how to manage negative PR, how to use Twitter etc etc.

2:30 Check Pay Per Click accounts and Google Analytics to see what’s going on with our client sites. Any problems or suggestions discussed with Rich.

Thursday bonus! Received my business cards from moo.com. They are gorgeous, look at the animals!

3:00 Spend the rest of the afternoon finishing up items on my to do list, responding to emails, managing the technical side of Social Media projects such as build of client blogs, apps etc.

5:30 Return home and see the boyfriend, fight him for the XBox (currently playing Dragon Age). Bore him with details of work day.

Since I started work (first job was writing help systems for software), one of the things I’ve been most interested in is trying to take something that seems complicated and make it simple. My job lets me do that. I love to see realisation dawning on people that Social Media isn’t a big scary monster, it’s a fantastic tool for connecting with your customers and with some clear understanding backed up by processes and policies, the sky’s the limit in terms of returns.

Rebecca is the Social Media Manager at Sheffield based digital agency Quba. Before specialising into Social Media Management, she worked as an agency side digital account handler with clients such as Bravissimo, Kaleidoscope, Playtex, Warburtons, Northern Foods and Nivea. Reprinted from the Quba blog, with permission.