SEO
Social Media Career Path: How To Get Started
The social media landscape has changed drastically since we started using Facebook in the mid-2000s.
Nowadays, companies rely heavily on social media platforms to connect with their customers and build communities around their brands.
As a result, many people are getting into social media marketing as new opportunities arise and career paths develop. But it can be challenging to know where to start.
What steps should I take to start my career path in social media? Is it possible to become a professional social media marketer without previous experience or a degree?
I’ll answer these questions and more in this social media career guide.
How To Get Started
Like with most career paths, it becomes easier once you know what you’re doing.
The first step is deciding which platforms you want to learn more about, researching, and using them. If you’re already comfortable with and have a profile with specific platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, you should already have a knowledge base.
Once you’ve got the basics down, you should also consider building out your understanding of other platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and Instagram.
The best way to get started with social media marketing is to build your audience on your profiles. It’s the best place for trial and error. And it will help clarify which platforms you actually want to work on within your career.
Once you understand the different platforms, you can start evolving your social media skill set.
Essential Skills
Over the years, businesses have relied upon social networks to gain insights into consumer psychology and gauge public opinion.
This has enabled them to identify trends or changes before they take place. But what skills do you need to identify these trends or create engaging social media posts?
1. Copywriting
Now I’m not talking about copyright or intellectual property rights. I’m talking about crafting compelling copy to market a brand, product, or service.
Even if you don’t have a background in writing, you can still develop the skills to become an effective copywriter. Pay attention to the ads and social media posts today.
Who’s getting it right, and what brands are clearly missing the mark? You can start practicing copywriting by simply editing brand copy that misses the mark.
While copywriting is a career in itself, it’s important to practice and perfect the art of social media copy.
2. Research And Analysis
Whether you’re researching a brand and its competitors to get the lay of the land or finding the right time to post, becoming a good researcher will save you time and help you with social media marketing.
You’ll also need to be able to interpret the key performance indicators (KPIs) for different brands. This is usually based on the platform’s insights or other programs used to analyze social media performance.
Comprehending and utilizing the insights social media platforms and programs provide are necessary skills to have in this career path. And things change fast online, and that’s no different for social media, so becoming a great researcher and analyst is a beneficial path.
3. Understanding Brand Personality And Tone
If you’re working as a freelance social media manager or with a marketing agency, you’ll need to be able to understand a brand guide.
These guides usually include the brand tone, colors, fonts, and the target market personality.
Surprisingly, not all brands have this, and sometimes, you’ll need to help establish a brand guide for a company.
Understanding and utilizing a brand guide will help you keep the right tone and personality when addressing customers and creating social media copy for brands.
4. Creative Development
You’ll need to develop a creative perspective incorporating the brand identity when producing videos and graphics for a brand’s posts. In addition, staying within the brand’s colors and font types can help create unity across posts.
Now, you don’t need to be an expert graphic designer to create social media posts. There are numerous free platforms out there, like Canva and Adobe Express, that can help you create professional and unique social media posts.
5. Customer Service
If you go the route of social media manager, you’ll also likely be monitoring the comments and direct messages for a brand’s social media accounts.
Customer service generally requires critical thinking and problem-solving, which you’ll also need in this career field.
In addition, it’ll be important to be polite, respond quickly and thoroughly, and know whom to direct your questions to if you can’t answer them yourself.
Recommended Education
There are numerous ways to educate yourself on social media marketing, from getting a bachelor’s in social media management, interning and getting some hands-on experience, online courses, and countless free online resources.
If you’re entirely new to the field and are serious about learning about social media management, get a bachelor’s in marketing or social media management. The courses within these programs can lay the foundation to understand the business world and prepare you with the skills you need and practice and excel in the field.
If you’re not entirely sold on the career field or simply want to expand your knowledge, you can take a seminar or course for social media management or a specific skill.
For example, let’s say you want to get better at copywriting. Try the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy (CCA) or Copy Posse.
You will benefit immensely from learning more about copywriting and dealing with brands from the CCA course.
Usually, online courses like these also allow you to join online communities, like private Facebook groups. These groups can help give feedback on coursework, answer questions, and even help you land a job.
You can also read online resources such as ours on Social Media Strategy and Social Media Advertising. There are many excellent and free online articles, tools, and ebooks that can help you stay on top of social media trends and learn more about specific skills and strategies.
Roles Available In Social & Career Path To Follow
Today, social media plays a crucial role in advertising, customer service, and brand management. Social media marketers play a vital role in helping businesses scale and grow.
Several career paths are available, from freelance social media manager to social media strategist. Here are a few career paths you might want to consider:
Social Media Strategist
A social media strategist will help develop the brand’s strategy for each online social media platform.
They will help identify and track the KPIs to ensure the social media strategy stays on track. This could include monitoring incoming followers, likes, shares, mentions, and comments across posts.
This role will likely work with different teams within the brand to create a cohesive and accurate portal of the brand. They will also need to understand search engine optimization (SEO) and how to incorporate it into the social media strategy.
On average, social media strategists make anywhere from $46,000 to $73,000.
Social Media Manager
A social media manager needs to know how to create content for various social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The social media manager must also understand how to optimize each platform and use analytic tools to measure performance.
In addition, a social media manager should be able to communicate effectively with both internal and external audiences.
As mentioned earlier, you’ll also need to use your customer service skills to respond to comments and direct messages on each platform.
Your income could vary depending on whether you are a freelancer or work for an agency, but salaries usually range from $42,000 to $66,000.
Social Media Influencer
People who create content using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are social media influencers or simply influencers. Many companies hire them to promote their brand or products through images, tweets, posts, video clips, blogs, and more.
In addition, they usually pay influencers to post content on their behalf because they want to reach targeted audiences.
This can be a lucrative and unique career path. Like being a freelance social media manager, being an influencer gives you the autonomy to create your career path and solely work with brands that align with your values.
Depending on your following and the brands you work with, a social media influencer could make between $41,000 to $69,000. Now, if you have a Huda Kattan level following, this could extend far past that.
Social Media Consultant
A brand might hire a social media consultant if it needs someone to evaluate its current strategy or social media profiles.
Sometimes getting a fresh set of eyes and an unbiased perspective can help take a brand’s social media presence to the next level. They can also help brands set goals and evaluate their SEO for their platforms.
Social media consultants generally make between $50,000 to $82,000.
Final Takeaways
Social media has changed our world, from how we interact with our friends, family, and followers to how brands market their products and services.
The career opportunities in social media are only expanding. You can move through different career paths if you practice the skills mentioned in this article and stay on top of social media trends.
More Resources:
Featured Image: 13_Phunkod/Shutterstock
window.addEventListener( ‘load’, function() {
setTimeout(function(){ striggerEvent( ‘load2’ ); }, 2000);
});
window.addEventListener( ‘load2’, function() {
if( sopp != ‘yes’ && addtl_consent != ‘1~’ && !ss_u ){
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
if( typeof sopp !== “undefined” && sopp === ‘yes’ ){
fbq(‘dataProcessingOptions’, [‘LDU’], 1, 1000);
}else{
fbq(‘dataProcessingOptions’, []);
}
fbq(‘init’, ‘1321385257908563’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘trackSingle’, ‘1321385257908563’, ‘ViewContent’, {
content_name: ‘social-media-career-path’,
content_category: ‘careers-education social’
});
}
});
SEO
Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It
Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when…
SEO
8 Free SEO Reporting Tools
There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?
In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.
Price: Free
Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.
Most common reporting use case
GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.
As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:
- Total Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average Position
Tip
But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.
If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.
Price: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.
Most common reporting use case
Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.
Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.
Such as:
- Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
- Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter
- Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks
Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:
With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.
Favorite feature
The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.
Price: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.
Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.
Most common reporting use case
When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.
Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.
Favorite feature
Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs.
If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.
Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.
Price: Free
Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.
For example, you could use our:
Most common reporting use case
One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
- See the performance of your website
- Check all known backlinks for your website
Favorite feature
Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.
If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).
Price: Free
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.
Most common reporting use case
For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.
With the free version, you get the following features:
- On-page SEO report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
- SERP positions
- Country changer for SERP
The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.
If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.
Favorite feature
The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.
Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.
Price: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.
Most common reporting use case
GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.
Favorite feature
You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.
Price: Free
Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.
Most common reporting use cases
The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.
This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.
Price: Free
Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.
Most common reporting use cases
Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.
Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.
Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.
Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.
Favorite feature
Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.
Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.
You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.
Final thoughts
These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.
The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.
Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂
SEO
Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO
A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.
These findings include:
- When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
- 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
- Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.
Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.
As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.
High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects
The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.
The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.
The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.
This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.
The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.
Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results
With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.
When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.
Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.
New Competition From Unexpected Sources
The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.
On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.
An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.
Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search
The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.
Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:
“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.
Methodology & Limitations
To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.
The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.
While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.
Why We Care
The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.
Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.
SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.
As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.
How This Could Help You
While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.
Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:
- As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
- Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
- Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
- Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
- Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.
Looking Ahead
While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.
By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
-
SEO6 days ago
Contact Us Page Examples: 44 Designs For Inspiration
-
SEO6 days ago
Google’s Advice For Ranking: Stop Showing
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 22, 2024
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
WordPress Block Themes Explained in 250 Seconds – WordPress.com News
-
MARKETING7 days ago
Local Search Developments from Q1 2024
-
PPC7 days ago
The 8 Best Lead Generation Ideas from Marketing Experts
-
SEO6 days ago
Save Time With Keywords Explorer Tool
-
PPC6 days ago
Mastering Lead Generation in Paid Search Advertising
You must be logged in to post a comment Login