Social Media Consulting: 3 Tips for Freelancers on How to Successfully Manage Client Accounts
In fact, did you know that it's overtaken porn as the number one online activity? Proof? The Fast Company article 10 Surprising Social Media Statistics That Will Make You Rethink Your Social Strategy, states, "Apparently it's the most common thing we do online...
It's clearly not a fad, or a phase.
It continues to grow as a habit, and new platforms continue to appear and develop.
" The article goes on to advise businesses to get serious about it by allocating more time to it.
This presents a golden opportunity for freelance writers who are forward-thinking enough to take advantage of it.
Why Social Media Account Management Is Such a Needed Service In two words, content marketing.
In case you don't know, content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers, eg, web articles, white papers, case studies, vidoes, infographics, etc.
The fifth annual Marketing Budgets Report, published by Econsultancy in partnership with ResponsysCompanies and conducted in December 2013 and January 2014, the most "buoyant" area of investment [in digital marketing] is content marketing, with 74 percent of companies planning to increase their spending this year [2014].
Once content is created, it must be distributed - and companies get this.
But guess what? A lot of them don't have the manpower or time to do it themselves.
So, who does this duty fall to? Freelance social media account consultants, that's who.
And it can be very lucrative.
How Much Do Social Media Account Management Consultants Earn The average salary for a Social Media Consultant is $33,000 per year, according to job search site Simply Hired.
But, freelancers can earn much more simply because they can set their own rates - and offer other services (like writing content) to entice clients to sign on.
Now, if you do decide to offer this service, following are three tips to keep in mind.
Increase Your Earnings with These 3 Social Media Account Management Tips 1.
Use Automation Tools: This will make it so much easier to quickly and easily update accounts.
I use these tools to pre-schedule posts, which can take as little as 10 or 15 minutes, depending on how many updates you do.
FYI, a couple of popular social media automation tools are HootSuite and SocialOomph.
2.
Interact in Real Time: While automation tools are great (and I advise using them), do interact in real time regularly.
For example, if a client contracts with you to update their Twitter account six times a day, make one to two of those real-time tweets.
3.
Bookmark Easy-to-Go-to Sources: This is one of the first things I do when my firm gets a new social media client.
I find 20-30 sources I can go to regularly to find relevant content in their niche to send out.
This cuts down immensely on the amount of time you'll have to spend researching.
Conclusion This service is a growing demand - I'm simply astounded by how fast it's growing.
And companies know that they can no longer ignore it, so they're investing heavily in it.
If priced correctly, you can easily earn $2,000 to $3,000 per month as a social media account manager.