A day in the life of a social media manager

You know those memes where it's like: what society thinks I do, what my parents think I do, what I think I do, what I actually do? Here's what I actually do! Full disclaimer: my work is not just about social media I also offer digital marketing support including website content updates, email marketing, etc. 

MORNING:

Herbal tea + meditate + Coffee. Lots of coffee.

I can't help myself - I have my laptop open in bed checking emails within ten minutes of waking. I also check my clients social media accounts to make sure nothing urgent has popped up over night and to have a quick glance at how the latest content has been received. 

I respond to anything urgent in my emails or anything that can be done in under 5 minutes before making myself vertical. 

I then move to my desk and list my tasks for the day. I try and group them together e.g. blog posts, content scheduling, analytics reporting, web updates - you get the idea.

I log on to all client accounts and check engagements, retweets, comments, etc. that happened while I was sleeping. I then go ahead an publish the first round of content for the morning. I schedule all of my clients content on Thursday afternoon so for the remaining week there's no rush and panic to get something of quality out. It also ensures there's a strategy in place rather than haphazard content creation and random posting. Something else I look at is the optimum time to post the content for the most engagement. 

I chunk out about an hour before to get stuck into some 'deep thinking' project work. I'll usually switch off my phone and shut down emails to really make some progress on client projects. 

AFTERNOON:

By about 2pm I'm soooo sick of sitting at my desk staring at the laptop so I pack up and head down the road to my local coffee shop. I usually find the hour and a half I'm there is usually my most productive. Again, I dive into some tasks I've been putting off or have felt 'stuck' starting. I find the change of location really helps me get out of a funk and smash out some great work. 

I then head home and check on the content on platforms that was published the day before. Usually, there are comments to be responded to, and questions to answer.

Around 5pm I publish any new live content, like a blog post just in time for the evening commute home by my client's readers. I also write new content like blog posts, film any videos that need to be done, video editing, email campaign writing, checking on any search engine campaigns...

I make sure every day that I'm engaging with followers and clients. This could take many different forms including a twitter chat, instagram messenger, facebook chat, etc. 

I again check my emails to see if any information I'm waiting on has come through from client's. I'm an email addict - it's terrible!

EVENING:

I run analytics at the end of each day. This is important for me to see which content is performing well for my clients, and allows me to re-adjust the marketing plan if necessary.

I review the content and posts going live the next day and make a to-do list so my monkey brain will sleep at night before checking my emails once more and wrapping things up for the day. 

Of course, this can vary from day to day depending on my balance between ongoing social media management and digital support clients and project-based clients. When I say project-based I'm referring to web builds, launch campaigns, design projects, etc. Some days I'm super structured, some days I'm jumping from client to client, you just have to roll with the punches! 

Have you considered working with someone to relieve your team from the burden of digital marketing and social media management? Book a free consultation here to see how I could help your business.