The 12 Tasks of a Social Media Manager

When people ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them I am a Social Media Manager, their reactions lead me to realize that not a lot of people know what a Social Media Manager does. “So, you get paid to tweet all day?” “Your job is to play games on Facebook?” “So, all you do is watch YouTube videos?” Although watching YouTube videos and tweeting through out the day is something that happens in the life of a SMM, that’s NOT all there is to do.

That’s why I decided to write a blog post on this topic. So I can let everyone know what it is that I do as a Social Media Manager.


1. Curating
Curating content is discovering and sharing content from external sources. This takes up some time as it requires you to seek the most relevant content, make sense of it and understand it.

2. Crafting
After finding the content you want to share to your audience, it’s now time to figure out a way to present it. Crafting content could be slightly challenging. You might sit there for a couple of minutes in order to type even one sentence but it’s okay. This task will go by faster and much easier with experience.

3. Posting
Next is posting the content, that you’ve previously crafted, on your different platforms whether it be a blog, a tweet or a Facebook post. When working with multiple accounts, social media management tools, like hootsuite, buffer or sprout social, can really come in handy to organize and manage the different platforms all at once.

4. Scheduling
Using the same management tools mentioned above, this is where you can write your updates ahead of time and schedule them to post through out the day, at night when you’re sleeping or during the weekends – or any other time where you can’t be actively posting.

5. Measuring
Here is where you get your numbers. You scan and look for the metrics, that should matter most to your social media objectives, for each post. How many impressions did that post get? What was the reach of that post and how many clicks did you receive? This will help you determine what content is working and what content is not.

6. Analyzing
Put your thinking caps on! Now that you have gathered all your quantitative data, you analyze these metrics and make data-driven decisions to improve your overall strategy. For example, posting at 3pm as opposed to 1pm may have better engagement rates. Measurement and analysis is crucial to revealing new opportunities.

7. Responding
Hopefully individuals are responding to the social media updates that you’ve been sharing. To keep the conversation going and to see more responses you should respond to them too – through a fav, a like, a reply or a R/T.

8. Listening
Keeping a look out for anyone across the globe having conversations about and around your brand is so important. Using social listening tools like Sysomos or Social Mention to find those conversations can give you ideas about what people are saying. This can open the doors to so many opportunities.

9. Engaging
This is an important part of a Social Media Managers day. Creating new relationships and strengthening current relationships is what keeps your audience coming back for more. This can be done by simply having a conversation with an individual or by reaching out to others by simply following, friending, liking or retweeting content from them.

10. Helping
You are very active on social media. You should be active when it comes to customer service and helping others, especially your consumers. You might get someone who has a problem with one of your products or services – handle their inquiry and try to solve any of their issues. This will go a long way and your audience will remember this.

11. Planning
Plan for the future. Social Media is in constant change. Tactics that work today may not work tomorrow.

12. Experimenting
This ties into many different tasks already on the social media manager schedule: curating new ideas to try, measuring results, analyzing the numbers, scheduling, crafting and posting.


Aside from building and executing social media strategies, the 12 Tasks of a Social Media Manager listed above is our job and what we do.

Next time someone asks me what I do, I’ll be sure to say: Curating, Crafting, Posting, Scheduling, Measuring, Analyzing, Responding, Listening, Engaging, Helping, Planning and Experimenting. Oh yea, I’m a Social Media Manager!

Are you a SMM, too? What are your daily tasks? Please, do share your daily routines. I’d love to hear if your day is similar or different from mine!