Social Media Managers - What do You Actually Do?

[cyaxrex]

Occasionally, I get asked if I can write X amount of Twitter or FB posts for people. I always say no, as I don’t use social media and I hate the idea of saying I can do something when I can’t. However, I’m starting to have second thoughts.

An old regular asked me today if I can write 50 Twitter posts for them. I told them that this isn’t really what I do but when they asked, they also sent a link to their current Twitter account. I looked and I was dumbstruck.

For the past month, they have just been posting nonsense. It is a cryptocurrency client and I myself follow crypto Twitter. In this case, I know what constitutes a good crypto Twitter tweet. What is not a good tweet is a daily link to a random YT explainer video about Bitcoin saying “Check this out! Huge gains coming!”

That though is what my client is currently posting. It is also insane, as I got them to the first page of Google and now they seem determined to make their entire brand look like it’s manned by a maniac with a brain injury.

I asked why they are posting what they were, and they told me that they are paying a fancy social media marketing company but couldn’t afford to anymore. - i.e. Not someone on Fiverr.

Needless to say, I’ve told my old buyer why what they are doing is insane. I’ve also said that I’m sorry, but researching a good topic to Tweet about and create a single Tweet would take me about an hour (because I actually care about what I am delivering and want it to give value to people) and would need to be done on a day by day basis.

Straight away, I could tell that I had said something to upset them. Then they came back with the fact that I offer 500-words of content for $20 and this can be broken up into several Tweets.

Obviously, I have reiterated that Tweeting isn’t really my thing (as a political maneuver) and said I can’t help. However, now I am really confused.

When people get paid to create social media posts, do they just write 50 or more generic sentences and that’s job done? Is this the norm?

Also, what would you say is a fair market price for just 1 Tweet?

[eoinfinnegan]

I stopped offering this type of thing for exactly the reason that people do not understand that 280 characters of text cannot be created pro rata. Most people who want to hire someone for social media have literally no understanding of how it can work for business. This means they have no idea of what’s involved and so they have no idea of price. What is also vital for something like Crypto to be in any way interesting or worth following is that it has to be fresh so you can’t just create 30 one per day tweets, set up a hootsuite autoposting account and leave it.

Many social media marketers take advantage of the lack of client knowledge and just post the type of pointless garbage that makes a social media account unsocial and not worth following.

So yes, that is the norm although obviously not everyone. I’d suggest steering clear of it as your conscience will eat at you and/or you will spend inordinate amounts of time create great tweets for $2/tweet.

[misscrystal]

I stopped offering this type of thing for exactly the reason that people do not understand that 280 characters of text cannot be created pro rata. Most people who want to hire someone for social media have literally no understanding of how it can work for business. This means they have no idea of what’s involved and so they have no idea of price. What is also vital for something like Crypto to be in any way interesting or worth following is that it has to be fresh so you can’t just create 30 one per day tweets, set up a hootsuite autoposting account and leave it.

Many social media marketers take advantage of the lack of client knowledge and just post the type of pointless garbage that makes a social media account unsocial and not worth following.

So yes, that is the norm although obviously not everyone. I’d suggest steering clear of it as your conscience will eat at you and/or you will spend inordinate amounts of time create great tweets for $2/tweet.

Does Twitter work for business? If the tweets are right?

[graphtersawyer]

Does Twitter work for business? If the tweets are right?

Yes!

At least, it does for the companies I do social media for. I’m not a bona fide social media manager, but I run the accounts of my Dad’s church and my godmother’s counseling business. They both have a hefty amount of followers (one has 9k, which is really good for a church of our size and the other has 50k, [roughly because they had like no followers before, ofc idk exact numbers] 95% of which they gained after I took over and stopped them from posting nonsense).

Of course, the types of business I do SM for have different target audiences and goals than most businesses on Twitter, so I can’t say it works for everyone. The church twitter keeps people informed of the happenings and brings members/attendees in. The counseling one has gotten clients from the tweets, and it also brings traffic to her blog, her books, and her Youtube.

tl;dr Twitter can work for business if the tweets are right (imo).