Why smm. What is SMM and how does it work in social networks. What does an SMM manager do during the day?

SMM (Social Media Marketing) is one of the methods of promoting your goods and services using social media. The main goal of SMM promotion is to increase awareness of your brand, greater interest in your product, and constant communication with potential and existing customers.

But, before “going” to social media. network, you need to determine for yourself whether you and your business need it. Do they say on social media? networks about products similar to yours? Is there any social media? networks, what is your target audience and what is its volume?

And the last but most decisive factor: do you have something interesting to tell your audience online?

So where to start an SMM strategy?

• First of all, you should consider where exactly your company needs to be present.
• Next, develop a content strategy, a strategy for attracting an audience and promoting your pages, sections and communities.
• And of course, support the entire promotion campaign with two-way communication between you and users.

So, who to go to (we determine our target audience online)

These indicators must match the data of the consumers of your product/service and their immediate environment.

Remember that the person who made a purchase/placed an order from you will not always be a consumer; perhaps it is a gift. But losing such people by focusing only on a narrow segment of the audience will not be right for you in the first place.

Most likely, your first subscribers will be relatives, friends and colleagues. Next, these will be your clients, who must be invited to subscribe to you. Of course, you shouldn’t forget about your employees, because they are the core of your company.

Having assessed the interests of your environment, you can understand what the content should be, on what topic and in what form it is best to present it.

And by filling your content with “live”, interesting and useful information, friends of friends will join your page, thereby spreading information about you and your activities.

Remember! Expanding the reach of an audience of users interested in you and your activities will not only increase your recognition as a brand, but also bring your site to the TOP when ranking in search results thanks to natural links.

Now let's talk about where to go (which social networks you should choose when promoting your projects on the Internet).

When choosing the platforms on which you will carry out your promotion, it should be noted that you do not need to “enter” all existing media at once.

Analyze which your target audience prefers and run your pages there. Often the most popular services are: Facebook, VKontakte, twitter and YouTube.

Important!You can view the traffic activity of your website through social networks using Google Analytics.

VKontakte is more aimed at young users who respond well to entertaining communication and gladly take part in all kinds of competitions and sweepstakes. Twitter is probably the most popular microblog, but communication on it should be instant. You need to constantly monitor Twitter and it is very important not to forget about it.

YouTube is one of the best video hosting sites in the world. It contains billions of videos. A huge number of users become attached to a brand after seeing its advertisements on YouTube. This network has a high level of trust among users.

Important! When you start a page on social networks, do not forget to notify about it on your official website!

When we talk about how to go (what exactly we do to promote on social networks), we mean all those actions that may interest users.

• First of all, these can be competitions (engagement, call to action), sweepstakes (expanding audience coverage), promotions and bonus programs (only for their subscribers), etc.
• Secondly - special projects. These are short projects that are uniquely specialized, have high interest and good returns.
• And thirdly, it could just be useful articles, essays, video tips or master classes that will be of interest to your audience and they will be happy to share this information with their friends.

On social media networks there are three main pillars on which all SMM promotion rests:

1. Quality content.

2. Constant online presence.

3. Working with negativity.

The main value for the end consumer from your presence on the Internet is content. One way or another, everyone comes to the network precisely for it, for content.

What you talk about should be relevant, interesting, and most importantly, useful to the user. You should publish content on social networks carefully and unobtrusively, so you must first decide what exactly you will write about and in what doses.

Try not to use “naked” and long texts. Your messages should be short, informative and thematically correct. With the addition of a picture or video, perhaps with a touch of entertainment. Try to provide content that will match the mood of users. You can even break down topics by day of the week.

Monday- the day after the weekend, when users (most often) are in a depressed mood, in anticipation of a long work week, you should not “overwhelm” users with a large flow of information on this day.

Tuesday- a good day, everyone is actively starting to get involved in work and is ready to “consume” new information.

Wednesday is considered the most productive day of the week, since everyone is actively working and at the same time can very actively take part in various sweepstakes and competitions.

On Thursday all users gradually begin to think about the weekend, and on this day the perception of information declines, although useful content “tied” to the weekend will be perceived well.

On Friday Everyone plans their weekend, so the content needs to match.

Saturday and Sunday- weekends and users spend their time offline, based on this, you can take a break until Monday.

Try to update the content no more than three times a day, and in order to keep everything structured, it is very convenient to maintain short thematic sections (their topics can be “linked” to the days of the week). By having an unconventional and creative approach to creating your content, the audience of your subscribers will grow.

Remember, all information you post must be shared online. If this does not happen, analyze whether you are giving the wrong information or to the wrong audience.

But before you think about what content you will provide to the user, it is very important to determine how exactly your communication with them will be structured.

Will you create yourself as a brand and communicate on your own behalf, but representing the company and creating associations with users, or will it be a company page that you or someone else from the company will maintain, but incognito, in order to increase recognition specifically brand.

Another possible, and one of the most popular, option would be to create a company page and a page for an employee officially representing the company.

By choosing the latter option, you tend to create a more trusting relationship with your audience.

Important! If you have employees who have noted their place of work in their accounts, then you should monitor their online activities, as they are a direct reflection of your business and create a certain reputation for the company.

), is the process of popularizing a product/brand, or an individual as a brand, through social platforms in order to increase its recognition and increase trust in it.

In addition, this is a set of events carried out in social media, which allows you to solve a number of business problems, including attracting traffic to your project’s website. The main emphasis is on creating various types of content, which in the future people will distribute on social networks independently, without the participation of the organizer.

The use of promotion methods in social networks allows you to specifically influence your target audience, select for communication only those platforms on which they are most concentrated, and in the least affect those people who are not interested in your advertising offer.

What issues does SMM promotion solve?

• Formation of audience loyalty.
• Increased brand awareness.
• Working with brand reputation.
• Receiving traffic to the site.
• Direct sales.

Why do you need SMM

Having a presence on social networks gives you the opportunity to get closer to your target audience and your followers to feel involved with your brand. By working on social platforms with your audience, you can increase the level of trust among potential clients and improve your product service.

But before you decide to create a business profile on social media. network, you need to determine for yourself the need for this presence for you and your business. Do people talk on social media? networks about offers similar to yours? Can you find your target audience there and what is its size?

And most importantly, can you tell your potential subscribers something useful and interesting to discuss? Do you have the ability and desire to generate content for discussion and communicate with your growing army of fans?

Where to start SMM promotion

The basis of any successful strategy is a clear definition of the goals you want to achieve.

• Determine which social networks you want to be present on.
• Determine which target audience you will work with (age, interests, social circle), and analyze their activity on social media. networks.
• Develop a social media promotion strategy. networks. Create a content plan and strategy to attract the target audience.
• Be prepared for live communication with your subscribers. Be prepared to respond to comments and questions on your posts, both positive and negative.

When choosing platforms for promotion, do not try to go to all social networks at once. Firstly, this requires very large resources, and secondly, your target audience will not be present everywhere. Often the most popular are Facebook, YouTube, twitter, VKontakte.

By starting a social page. networks, notify your customers about this on the official website, install social buttons on the site.

Most likely, your first subscribers will be acquaintances, friends, and employees. But the more your social profile is filled with interesting content, the greater the opportunity to reach potential clients.

Once the profile is filled enough with content, you can start promoting it for greater reach. Carry out, create promotions and specials. offers to attract new subscribers. Publish interesting articles and master classes that people will be happy to share with their friends.

To successfully promote on social networks, you should always remember the importance of the following things:

• The distributed content must be interesting, high quality and unique. Try to post content at least once a week, but no more than three times a day. Your communication should not be intrusive, and the information should be concise, informative and thematically focused.
• Once you start maintaining a social profile, you need a constant online presence to develop and promote it. A few days of “downtime” can negatively affect your social page.
• Social networks are visited not only by your fans, but also by your competitors and ardent opponents. Always be prepared to deal with negativity and never leave negative comments or reviews unanswered.

And remember that social networks are a place where users relax, have fun, share their photos and impressions, and discuss something. If you start pursuing an aggressive sales policy, you will most likely encounter negativity. Your offer should interest the user, and only after that does it make sense to discuss the “price of the issue”!

SMM in Russia is becoming more and more popular day by day, and now only the lazy do not know that “the company must be present on social networks.” But which industries feel the greatest need for this? And what do they expect from social media marketing?

To figure this out, Likeni's editors turned to major Russian agencies for help.

The following people took part in the study:

• Affect
• Creative People
• Fistashki
• Hungry Boys
• Ingate
• Pichesky
• Studio oneTOUCH
• Doctor Jung Agency

Likeny asked them three simple questions:

1) Representatives of which industries most often turn to you for SMM services?

2) What services do representatives of each industry order?

3) What goals do your clients from each industry have for you?

To answer the first question, respondents were offered the following options:

• Cars
• Real estate
• Construction and repair
• Computers and office equipment
• Communication and Internet
• Clothes and accessories
• Medicine
• Tourism and rest
• Business
• Finance
• beauty and health
• Other (your own answer)

And this is what happened:

• Cars - 75%
• Business – 75%
• Communications and Internet – 75%
• Other* – 50%
• Beauty and health – 50%
• Medicine – 50%
• Real estate – 50%
• Construction and renovation – 50%
• Clothing and accessories – 35%
• Computers and office equipment – ​​25%
• Tourism and recreation – 25%
• Finance – 25%

*In the “Other” column, survey participants indicated such topics as Transportation and Cleaning Services, Pet Products, Furniture, Retail, FMCG.

Thus, most often SMM services are ordered by companies operating in the areas of Automobiles, Communications and Internet, and Business. Slightly less popular are Real Estate, Construction and Repair, Medicine, Beauty and Health.

As for the specific services that interest representatives of each of these industries, the picture is as follows:

Among the representatives of top topics, the following services turned out to be the most popular:

Communications and Internet: Maintaining representations in social networks (62.5%), Monitoring social networks (62.5%), Creating representations in social networks (50%), Purchasing advertising in social networks (50%).

In general, the top 3 most popular services include: Purchasing advertising in social networks, Creating and maintaining communities in social networks.

Based on the respondents’ answers to the question “What goals do clients from each industry set for you?”, the following results were obtained:

Customers from top topics most often set the following goals for agencies:

Cars: Loyalty (75%), Awareness (50%), Reputation Management (50%), Product/Service Dissemination (50%), Traffic (50%).

Communications and Internet: Awareness (62.5%), Reputation management (62.5%), Dissemination of information about the product/service (62.5%).

Business: Awareness (75%), Lead generation (50%), Traffic (50%).

Overall, the most common goals were Loyalty, Awareness, Product/Service Awareness, and Reputation Management.

conclusions

1. Most often, SMM services are ordered by companies operating in the areas of Automobiles, Communications and Internet, and Business.

2. The most popular services in general are Creation and maintenance of communities and Purchase of advertising in social networks. It follows that most companies do not have representation on social media at the time of contacting the agency. At the same time, hidden and viral marketing are the least popular.

3. Most often, companies expect social media marketing to work for loyalty and awareness, and also to help spread information about a product or service and work for reputation management. Least of all, clients expect to receive any economic effect and leads from SMM. Also, receiving feedback through social networks is not very popular.

The 21st century is the era of computer technology... It must be admitted that the Internet has completely absorbed the life of modern man. I saw the time when, in order to get on the World Wide Web, you had to connect the modem to the telephone cable, then listen to the hiss for a long time, and then the coveted signal appeared! Back then, just reading news on the Internet was such a blessing!

Now it is difficult to imagine life without the Internet. Therefore, it is not surprising that the 21st century is also the era of Internet professions. You can list them endlessly, but, as you guessed from the title of the article, we will talk about SMM. And no, I will not now list the books you need to read or tell you where to go to study. Let's talk about the most important things: motivation, principles, trends.

How can you characterize the specialty of SMM manager?

First of all, it is creativity, a love of writing, the ability to analyze and think strategically, a developed sense of aesthetics and a thirst for knowledge.

About motivation

In general, I think the golden rule for any profession is to LOVE what you do. It’s a bad idea to put profit or career growth, the desire to prove your worth to someone or get a fashionable profession as the main motivation.

If you are not able to have a passionate romance with your job, quit it!? Mountains of books and years of studying in steep courses will not help if you work from 9 to 18, counting every minute. You've probably noticed how time flies when you're busy doing what you love and vice versa - how long does it last when the activity is not a joy? You need to put your soul into SMM. Therefore, there is no way to do this without love!

Please don’t go to SMM if: “My husband recommended it,” “Friends told me how much they pay there,” or “You heard somewhere that it’s fashionable.” Make your choice consciously!

Do you want to be a cool SMM manager?

Get ready to improve yourself! And no, you don’t have to pay crazy amounts of money for prestigious courses in your city or buy a new book every week. But keeping abreast of new trends is the sacred duty of a social media manager. Therefore, thematic blogs, news sites, professional groups on social networks are what you should read with pleasure and in any free minute.

Are you traveling in public transport while plugging into your phone? Get off Instagram and better read Rumyantsev’s group "Internet marketing from A to Z." Are you watching a series in the evening? Pause it and read the news on Like! Just one week without Digital news is enough to get lost in the world of SMM.

About trends and innovation

If you are by no means an innovator and not at all a fan of experiments, it is better not to meddle in SMM. Social networks are a unique platform where you can constantly experiment with content and strategy, introduce cool features, and test new services.

The competition in the Internet market is colossal, so it is increasingly difficult to stay one step ahead. In 2016, copy-paste and Googled images are no longer enough to make a cool post. Only unique and engaging text, only high-quality images. And even better - cool videos!

Be a little bit of a psychologist

Social networks are social for the reason that people interact in them. SMM is an understanding of human psychology. If you do not intuitively understand how a person makes a choice of a particular product or cannot assess his social profile, do not rush to go to SMM.

You will also have to be a strategist and an analyst. And a little bit of a designer! A kind of man-orchestra. Although in fact, it’s unrealistically cool to try yourself in different guises, manage a project completely from start to finish, and then watch its success with pride!

And once again about love

Only not to work, but to projects. Each person is unique, and each customer is special, as is his project. Nobody says that you have to like all the topics, and you have to make friends with all the clients. But turning away from a project without compelling reasons is stupid. What to do in this case? Abstract yourself! Or find for yourself undeniable advantages in working with a specific project. Remember, every experience is equally unique and rewarding, whether positive or negative.

Do not be afraid to defend your position if you have sober arguments. The man whom I consider my first mentor in marketing taught me the main thing - to express my opinion in work matters. But only if you have something to confirm your point of view in facts and figures.

Respect yourself and value your time– another important postulate that applies to any profession. More than once I have met people who sacrifice their time and health to please their superiors, for the sake of an additional bonus, or for even more banal reasons. Work overtime solely for your own pleasure. And success will come to you as a consequence.

As Evgeny Leonov said: “Happiness is when you want to go to work in the morning and go home in the evening!” And if in the evening over a cup of tea, you complain to your family: “How tired of this work you are,” think about whether it’s time to change something in your life?

Well, now let's talk about specific facts, without which it is impossible toSMM!

As they say, it hurt. I conducted interviews and listened with a smile as one of the candidates said: “My friend leads a group, but I can do it too.” Now I work at a factory." I have nothing against factory workers, but the lack of a burning interest in social networks and development in general, the desire for easy money and just sitting on VKontakte and posting cats is killing me.

If you are seriously thinking about becoming an SMM specialist and are thinking where to start, what you need, what to read and where to study– this article is for you.

First of all, I want to introduce you to the responsibilities of an SMM manager and the skills that will be useful to you.

TASKS OF AN SMM SPECIALIST:

• Analysis of SMM activities of competitors.
• Development and implementation of SMM strategy.
• Maintaining communities.
• Writing a content plan for the month ahead.
• Planning publications (via auto-posting services).
• Content branding (make a picture for a competition/promotion, develop templates for sections, or at least stick a logo on the picture).
• Setting up targeted advertising.
• Search for communities for advertising.
• Conducting competitions and promotions: mechanics, picture + text, attracting people, summing up results.
• Search for opinion leaders.
• Analysis of the effectiveness of SMM events and development of recommendations for improvement.

SKILLS that will help you:

Literacy. Agree, it’s disgusting to read posts from a cool brand with errors? Trust immediately goes to zero.

Marketing knowledge. Yes, this is the case when economic education will help you, or rather the thinking that you learned at the institute.

Copywriting. There are certain formulas and nuances of writing texts and you need to know them. This skill is necessary for writing posts and advertising texts.

Analytic skills. Calculation of the cost and effectiveness of campaigns, analysis of results.

Logics. It will help to put forward hypotheses about the target audience and divide it into segments.

Creativity– come up with activities, catchy features and interesting ideas to promote the client’s business.

Knowledge of graphic editors. Corel Draw, Photoshop, Illustrator, online editors for creating images for posts, advertising, promotions, competitions.

Sales– communication with the client, creating effective presentations, being able to persuade.

Knowledge of trends and technologies— track the latest tools, updates, solutions, follow trends.

Needless to say, an SMM specialist should love social networks and actively use them? 🙂

BOOKS FOR SMM SPECIALISTS

There are a lot of books on the Internet, the SMM field is rapidly developing, so books quickly become outdated. Here I am attaching a list of books for a minimum reading base that I have read myself.

Important: Despite the fact that you plan to work in SMM, you also need to understand the basics of Internet marketing, because All channels - SEO, web analytics, copywriting, email - are closely interconnected.

1. “Business promotion on VKontakte. New practices and technologies", Dmitry Rumyantsev

2. “100+ practical hacks for internet marketers”, Evgenia Kryukova

3. " ", Damir Khalilov

5. “Facebook - effect for business and self-PR”, Olga Filina

6. “Content, marketing and rock and roll”, Denis Kaplunov

7. “”, Denis Kaplunov

9. " . We create texts that sell”, Dmitry Kot

PUBLICS FOR SMM SPECIALISTS

In contact with

1. Internet marketing from A to Z - https://new.vk.com/bizness_online

1. Practice SMM 3.0 - https://new.vk.com/praktikasmm

1. SMM promotion and sales! — https://new.vk.com/smmprosales

1. SMMers - https://new.vk.com/smm_pub

1. Marketing. Advertising. SMM - https://new.vk.com/marketing_reklama_smm

1. Cerebro Target (public service for specialists in targeted advertising) - https://new.vk.com/cerebro_vk

1. Lazy SMM manager's blog - https://new.vk.com/lazyness_smm

1. SMM|Targeting - https://new.vk.com/target_smm

1. SMM planner (public auto-posting service) - https://new.vk.com/smmplanner

Facebook

1. Content Marketing - https://www.facebook.com/groups/235160016573323/
2. SMM Party - https://www.facebook.com/groups/smmrussia/
3. Internet marketers' smoking room. Articles, cases, tools, tricks - https://www.facebook.com/ikurilka

BLOGS FOR SMM SPECIALISTS

Like books, blogs are devoted not only to SMM, but to various areas of Internet marketing. Subscribe to newsletters!

Russian-language sources:

• https://netology.ru/marketing/programs
• Academy of Internet Marketing Web promo expert - https://webpromoexperts.com.ua
• The first one-day Internet marketing school “I-marketing” - https://i-marketing.ua
• GeniusMarketing (facebook, email, business development) - https://geniusmarketing.me/trainings/

Free webinars are held almost everywhere, stay tuned for updates or subscribe to newsletters)

I would especially like to highlight the courses that I took:

1. A unique practical course “Targeting from A to Z live.”

1. Internet marketing school “I-marketingschool” in Kharkov - https://i-marketingschool.com.ua

Good luck to everyone! I believe you.

Who is an SMM specialist from a business point of view?

Benefits of working on social networks for businessmen– this is a very wide coverage, “word of mouth”; precise targeting of the audience, because on social networks people share very detailed information about themselves; interactive interaction and prompt response to negativity.

What do customers want fromSMM-specialists?

1. Sales, more sales)))

LinkedIn works great in b2b, especially in the Western segment. Companies even have special managers who work exclusively with this professional social network and bring in leads or potential Clients and transfer them to the sales department.

Facebook works great in b2c (for some topics it’s even better than Google AdWords contextual advertising, as discussed in Perry Marshall’s book “Contextual Advertising That Works”) and VKontakte.

2. Branding

3. Traffic(especially relevant for news resources)

Common and distinctive features of SMM and SEO

Who is an SMM specialist?

Over time, this specialty turns from unknown to anyone into very popular and in demand. It is intended for those who are not afraid to experiment, look for new approaches to solving problems and always be open to communication.

An SMM specialist manages the presence and promotion of a brand in social networks or the “promotion” of a website in social channels. It solves a number of problems related to attracting customers from social networks, increasing the company’s image, as well as the recognition and popularity of a product or service. Not directly, but still, an SMM specialist has an impact on increasing sales volume.

Prospects and salaries. Due to the high demand for these specialists in the market and relatively low competition, the salary of a representative of this profession is about $300 per month.

As for the prospects, according to most experts, this area will develop rapidly, and with its help more and more opportunities will open up.

Hello, my dear readers! Rimma Belyakina is with you. On the pages of the blog site we talk about remote work and the opportunities it provides. Internet technologies are no longer even the future, they are the confident present.

More prudent and enterprising businessmen began to think about introducing business into the Internet space and attracting consumers to their goods or services on social networks.

Are you thinking about this too? Looking for ways to sell your product? Then you definitely need to know what SMM is and how it works. This is what we will look at in more detail in this article. We will also talk about what problems can be solved using SMM, its advantages and how to learn SMM promotion.

A lot has been written about the role of social networks in our lives. And if we put everything together, we would probably get a pretty big ledger, some kind of treatise on how 70-80% of all humanity spend their second, parallel to the real, virtual life in them.

And if we associate social networks with life, albeit virtual, we mean, if not all, then many important aspects of this very life: hobbies and entertainment, learning and work, shopping and sales. That is, everything that we previously had only in real life has now smoothly migrated to the virtual one.

SMM: deciphering the abbreviation and analyzing the essence

What does SMM mean? It is also called social marketing or online marketing. This concept came into use from the English language (“Social Media Marketing” literally means “marketing on social networks”) and is the process of attracting interest to any Internet resource through social platforms.

In other words, this is a mechanism for attracting traffic, that is, a flow of visitors (aka potential consumers), to a brand, service or product through social networks.

To put it even simpler: you are a businessman (real or fictitious), want to do business on the Internet, choose a social platform for this, go there with your product, determine your target audience and offer them your product in every possible way.

And if you want to succeed in online entrepreneurship, you definitely need to be present on a social platform, take part in communicating with users of this social network and selecting interesting, useful and constantly changing content on the topic of your product so that interest in it does not disappear. This is the whole “salt”, it is the essence of SMM promotion.

SMM management tasks

It is clear that SMM is not done by itself; there is a person behind this process. He is called differently: SMM specialist, SMM manager, SMM specialist, Internet marketer. The essence does not change, and the tasks are the same in any case:

1. Determine your target audience and study their interests.
2. Conduct a niche analysis: on which platform is it better to promote the brand, in what ways and tools.
3. To achieve an increase in the number of audiences through a set of activities, which includes advertising, promotions, competitions, and sweepstakes.
4. Work on creating the company’s image: conduct a PR campaign, monitor feedback, eliminate negativity.
5. Monitor the promotion process: analysis of statistics and dynamics.

I have listed only the main tasks of SMM management, but, as you understand, this is not the entire list, since each company pursues its own interests and sets its own goals.

SMM in action: stages of promotion

SMM promotion is not an easy job, carried out in several stages:

1. Choosing a site for your target audience. Why might this be important? Because there are quite a lot of social networks now, and each has its own contingent. Accordingly, their interests are different.
2. Placement of a communication platform. Having decided on a social network, it is important to think about where the audience will gather for communication. What could it be? A specially created group, or community, or public, or your account. The main thing is not this, but that this platform is constantly working, giving the audience “bread and circuses”, i.e. the content it needs. And this is the next stage.
3. Content creation and posting. It should not only be interesting and useful, but also viral, that is, one that is liked and shared. To quickly promote your public, you need to invest money and run advertising.
4. Making a profit or monetizing the project. The most difficult and ambiguous stage, because the main goal of the SMM manager is to ensure that the bulk of subscribers are transferred to the customer’s website and become consumers. Here, whoever is lucky. There are various cases of monetization, both successful and exactly the opposite: you can achieve good earnings from a group with a number of subscribers of 3 – 5 thousand, or you can receive “mere pennies” from groups of “hundred thousanders”.

Here, perhaps, it would be useful to recall the development of the right strategy and tactics for the successful implementation of the project. And also that in every business, in addition to the plan, you need your own mechanisms and tools.

SMM tools

This paragraph of the article will be the shortest, because I have already written about Internet marketing tools and do not want to repeat myself. You can read about this in my previous article about. By the way, there you can watch a video with a detailed analysis of all SMM tools and find out how it all works.

I also advise you to refer to another of my earlier articles “”, where you can glean a lot of useful information and even life hacks on this topic. Don't be lazy to do this. After all, your success will depend on how effectively you use SMM tools.

Pros and cons of SMM

Any industry has its pros and cons, and before starting any business, you need to weigh the pros and cons. Let's now look at what priorities social marketing gives and whether it is worth doing it at all.

So, here are the benefits that social marketing gurus highlight:

1. Demand. The demand for the services of SMM specialists is steadily growing.
2. Freelance work. Having understood IT technologies and mastered SMM mechanisms, you will be able not to “steam” in the office. Many people prefer to work from home.
3. Creative path. An opportunity to show all your hidden talents.
4. A huge audience of potential clients: after all, social networks have millions of users.
5. Minimum costs at the start and high payback after promotion.
6. Solid reward for quality promotion services. The minimum cost of one SMM project is from 30,000 rubles.

What about the downsides? I would prefer to call them difficulties that will have to be encountered in the course of work. And first of all this:

1. Selection of content that favorably illustrates the promoted product. It requires a rich imagination, which is inherent in few people, and a considerable amount of time to find the right material and design it.
2. Working with advertising. Most likely, it won’t be possible without investments. You will have to spend money on advertising the product, and you will still need to learn how to do it.
3. Competition. Business is firmly moving to the Internet. This is where competition comes in.

How to become an SMM specialist?

Since the specialty in question would most correctly be characterized not as narrowly focused, but rather as broad-profile, a lot of knowledge and skills that an SMM specialist must have are required.

What knowledge and skills should an SMM specialist have?

It is clear that he must know the basics of marketing first, but also:

• understand information technology,
• know media automation tools and be able to use them,
• know the features of community management,
• have analytical skills,
• understand and be able to use targeted and other types of advertising,
• have communication skills,
• be able to establish contacts and interest,
• be creative: be able to create exciting viral content,
• be able to develop and put into practice strategies to attract audiences from social networks to the customer’s website.

Self-organization and self-discipline are important qualities. If a specialist needs a kick from his boss, then he is a bad specialist. However, excessive initiative is also unnecessary. As you know, it can be “punishable.” Here it is important to “find a middle ground” so as not to “burn out.”

Where can you learn this?

Social marketing can be learned in specialized online schools or courses, of which there are plenty on the Internet. In a separate article, we have compiled for you a selection and review of the best SMM courses.

Of these, we can highlight the TOP 3 best:

• Course from the ConvertMonster project.
• Three-month course “SMM Manager” from the online university Netology.
• “SMM Manager” course from the Geekbrains portal and Mail.ru company.

Apparently, there are options, there are many of them, because progress does not stand still. Those who want to study science can only “roll up their sleeves” and get down to business. Well, when you “grind your teeth on this granite,” you will, in the same way and without difficulty, find something you like in the online space, since this business is modern, relevant, and profitable.

Let's sum it up

So, we looked at what SMM is. I tried to present the material as simply as possible. I hope it was clear.

Summarizing all of the above, we can draw a simple conclusion: SMM is in trend today. This is a difficult but effective way to manage your turnover and relationships online. This is a varied and promising job that will suit energetic, pragmatic, people who keep up with the times.

In the next article we will look at the profession of an SMM manager in more detail. Stay tuned.

I would like to believe and know that the article was useful and helped in some way. One way or another, I look forward to your feedback, comments, and suggestions. Let's discuss. For now - bye. And see you again.