• Who is an SMM marketer? SMM specialist - who is he and what should he know?

    SMM (Social Media Marketing) is a tool for clients and sales from social networks.
    Today SMM is not only about cats and likes, but also real sales. Of course, you can just create a group, post 5 messages a week there and wait for crowds of new clients to come. It doesn't work that way. Without systematic approach there will be no result.

    What does it include?

    Where to start? From the development of a plan to achieve the company’s business goals using social networks. The strategy will help determine the goals of presence in social media, ways to achieve them, set priorities, and most importantly - predict the potential effect and not deviate from the intended route.

    To write an SMM strategy, you need:

    • Assess the current position of the brand in social networks: number and activity of subscribers, relevance and quality of content, find all mentions of your brand on social networks - what and how they say about you.
    • Conduct a competitive analysis.
    • Create a consumer portrait
    • Formulate a unique selling proposition - something that distinguishes the company and its product/services from its competitors. Helps brainstorming with colleagues, surveying clients - why they chose you. You can differentiate yourself from competitors not only due to low prices.
    • Determine the format of presence on social networks
    • Commercial format: you do not hide your commercial interest and openly invite users to buy your product or service. As a rule, in such groups a product catalog is posted, discussions are held with questions and feedback from customers, and the content is of a commercial nature. The purpose of a commercial format is sales.
    • Format according to interests. Such communities build a sales funnel. The goal is to collect as many potential clients as possible from target audience, and then publish advertisements little by little. As a rule, at first subscribers do not even realize that the community belongs to the company. Users are attracted to the group through interests, publishing useful and relevant content: about music, business, fashion, cooking, etc.
    • Mixed format. The company acts as an expert - publishes useful thematic content, periodically diluting it with commercial content. If the content is useful, unique and relevant, then your reputation as an expert will grow, and therefore audience loyalty. Your opinion will be trusted, your advice will be listened to and, most importantly, it will be consistent with the brand being promoted. The level of professional competence is one of the key factors that influences the purchasing decision. For example, Alfa-Bank develops its community for b2b clients using this principle. Community administrators understand that only commercial content will cause boredom and negativity, so they provide information useful for business by mentioning the brand.

    Graphic design of groups

    They greet you by their clothes. A corporate account is the face of your business on social networks. It should look professional: develop, create a post design template that will highlight your publications in the news feed of your subscribers.

    Checklist for creating a community

    Name. Formulate the name of the community according to the principle “brand” + “core” key query" Think about how potential clients might search for you and check the data in Yandex.Wordstat.

    Groups URL. Must correspond to the brand name and be the same on all social networks. Sometimes the address you want is already taken. It’s worth finding a short, memorable name that can be written on a business card, packaging, or sign.

    Description of the group. Try to keep all the information concise and immediately state your benefits.
    These points affect the positions of your groups in search results Yandex and Google:

    Privacy settings. Make the group open so that anyone can join. Don't disable comments on posts. Restrict the ability to upload photos and videos to albums only to group administrators. VKontakte has a great opportunity to add words to the spam filter, which helps block obscene language. Monitor comments on your posts daily.

    Alerts. To promptly respond to messages in groups, set up alerts and check the email you receive notifications. For our clients we use special services, which instantly notify you of new comments on all social networks.

    Showcase. Available on VKontakte and Facebook: you can add products and services as cards with prices. There are services that allow you to automatically upload products from a catalog on a website to social networks. We recommend using them if you have a large catalog of products and prices change frequently.

    Identification marks. Geotags and branded hashtags should be created and used within the official community to help users find and share your content on social media. Simply adding a hashtag to a post is not enough. Certain rules must be followed. We create guidelines for using hashtags for our clients.

    Creating a content strategy

    What is content marketing? This is the creation and distribution useful information, which meets the interests of your audience and helps solve their problems.

    What is content marketing for? In order to demonstrate your competence, gain the trust of the audience, increase its loyalty and ultimately exchange this loyalty for money. Investments in content are strategic: brand loyalty is not built overnight, so expect to see commercial impact in 3-6 months. Content is the foundation effective promotion business on social networks.

    The content strategy should answer the following questions:

    1. What do we want to tell our audience?
    2. How often will we talk about this?
    3. What format and style of content will we use?

    Content categories

    1. Entertaining content is what users come to social networks for. This type of content gets good viral coverage, i.e. users actively share it with their friends. This type content is well presented.
    2. Educational content - helps the user solve his problems, educates, broadens his horizons. This great way demonstrate the company’s competence as an expert in its field. With expert content and more.
    3. Commercial content. In fact, this is an advertisement for your products or services. Motivate your audience to follow a link, call or take another targeted action. Do not abuse such content; the user will respond to endless advertising publications by unsubscribing. This content is great for promotion.
    4. User-generated content is posts that your customers post on social media. Reviews of your services, product reviews, restaurant photos, and any other content that mentions a brand or company. Holding a competition helps a lot in obtaining user content.
    5. News content. Subscribers are interested in the content that you create yourself. None beautiful picture from a photo bank will not tell about your business better than a photo taken by you. Don’t be afraid to talk about your inner workings, introduce your employees, and share your successes and failures. Your sincerity builds trust among your subscribers. We very often give clients' products and services to small but active bloggers to try.
    People don't buy from companies. People buy from people.

    What else is important to consider when creating content:

    • talk to the subscriber in his language
    • break large text into blocks - it will be easier for the reader to perceive it
    • maintain the frequency of publications - content should be regular

    What to do if there is not enough content?

    Information hunger often occurs in b2b companies. If in the first month you make 50 posts, and in the second you find that there is nothing to write about, this is a bad scenario. Evaluate your strengths, determine categories and sources of content.

    An example of categories and content sources for one of our b2b clients:

    • getting to know the company’s employees: a few photos in a work environment, a short story about what the employee does in the company;
    • photos and videos production process: we immerse the reader in the atmosphere of the company;
    • photos of goods in the interior: we clearly demonstrate the possibilities of using the product;
    • repost of user publications with company products:
    • chronicles of events: advanced training courses, exhibitions, seminars in which you participate;
    • graphics from the designer: branded holiday greetings, presentation of a new product, etc.

    Advertising on social networks

    It’s not enough to publish content, it needs to be promoted. In order for your publication to be seen by the target audience, you need coverage, i.e. as possible larger number views. It’s good when you have a large and loyal audience of your own that actively shares your publications. What to do if your own coverage is not enough?

    Targeted advertising

    Targeted advertising on social networks are text and graphic ads that are seen only by those users who meet certain criteria: gender, age, geography, etc.
    • relevance of the content to the selected audience - the more relevant and useful the content, the lower the cost per click;
    • amount of text on the image - the more text, the higher the cost per click;
    • level of competition - the more advertisers show ads to the same audience, the higher the cost per click.
    What publications should you promote? Primarily commercial. You can combine an informative post with a link to a product. Do not forget to put UTM tags in your ad links to track the effectiveness of advertising in analytics systems - Yandex.Direct or Google Analytics. Along with commercial posts, promote entertaining, unique, interesting content. This will allow you to get large and cheap coverage, an interested audience and media effect.

    What targeting options exist?
    Basic: gender, age and geography.
    Additional:

    We are often pestered with requests to write step by step guide according to SMM, as if “for dummies”. People often associate such complaints with the fact that we seem to have so many articles on our blog, and people want “well, what exactly?”

    Ok, we give up and decided to write a simple (seemingly) guide to SMM in which we will tell you step by step what to do and how. One caveat: we have already written an article on each point, and even more than one, we will provide links to them, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to read them.

    If you need to learn right here and now how to properly engage in SMM, then go ahead!

    Step 1 - Understand/Introduce Your Audience

    You will need the so-called .

    You may not do some of the following steps, or you may do something “crooked”. But without a consumer portrait - just nowhere.

    If you haven’t really thought through who your consumer is, who you work for, then this will derail all your other work in SMM.

    You don’t have to do it in as much detail as described in the article, BUT be sure to work through issues such as - what does a person want to get— its desired end result, and what a person is afraid of/what annoys him.

    Step 2 - create

    Start by simply jotting down in a file all the ideas you have for what people in your customer personas would search for.

    Starting from the banal “buy wallpaper in Moscow”, ending with “what to do if the linoleum goes in waves.”

    Then, based on your ideas, create a semantic core (as described). This tool is perfect for creating a semantic core.

    Step 3 - website

    If you have it, go for it. If it doesn't exist, it needs to be made.

    Making a simple website “with your own hands” now costs about 0 to 10,000 rubles; if you entrust it to some contractor, the price will be up to 20,000 rubles.

    No, there are any contractors, it happens that they will ask you for 100,000 or more than a million. But the price is right. A simple online store - up to 50,000 rubles.

    Step 4 - fill the site with content

    You have created a semantic core - now you just need to write articles on each cluster. It is not necessary to first create ALL the content for the site, and then start SMM.

    No, do it a dozen or two useful articles that answer the wishes or fears of your clients, and correspond semantic core, and you can already start SMM.

    For posting, you will naturally need pictures. Here is the most affordable paid photo bank.

    (But at the same time you should keep creating new articles! You won’t “get away” by writing 20 articles and that’s it!)

    If you don’t have the strength to create content yourself, of course we can help + there are plenty of other agencies.

    Step 5 - start managing your communities on social networks

    At a minimum, you need to create a VKontakte group, a Facebook page, and a group on Odnoklassniki. .

    Post your articles there from the previous step at a rate of at least 2 articles per week. That's enough! Send away those who say that you need to post 6 times a day.

    Read more about managing communities.

    For posting, you can use a scheduler that allows you to do “delayed posting” - for example, this one, but in general there are many different ones.

    Step 6 - recruit at least 200 people into the community

    Step 7 - Start Promoting the Community

    It has been written about this in great detail. In short, you should try the following:

    • Regular advertising (targeting) in your social networks - naturally, using targeting those people you need, competitor communities or an active audience from thematic communities (which can be selected using Cerebro and similar services).
    • Paid posts in popular communities in your topic (via sociate.ru)
    • If you are unable to get new members from your target audience in this way for less than 20 rubles per person, you should try paid invitations and competitions.
    • As a result, you choose the most economical way to recruit subscribers from your target audience, and focus on it as tightly as your budget allows.

    If you don’t have at least 10,000 rubles a month to promote the community, you don’t even have to start any SMM. Nothing will grow on its own.

    Step 8 - Periodically make offers to buy

    Introduce offers into your group to buy or order something from you. SOMETIMES (not all the time! - more precisely, not more often than non-commercial materials). In any form - promotions, prizes, discounts, or at least just links to product cards in an online store.

    Step 9 - promote community activity

    That's it!

    If you have gathered at least more than 5,000 people (normal, honest, not bots) into a group and still can’t sell your products/services, it means you were doing something fundamentally wrong: either no one needs your product/service in principle , either there is something wrong with your price, or there is some other problem in business.

    Either the product is too expensive, or you did not correctly identify the pains of your consumers, were unable to convincingly answer them, or convince them that you are the one who will get rid of it.

    Does all this seem too complicated to you? Are you ready to say “to hell with all this, just do it for me”? - Ok, - we will help you develop a client profile, fill your communities with interesting thematic content, promote them and promote them to be active

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    SMM stands for Social Media Marketing or social media marketing. An SMM specialist or SMM manager promotes a company, its brand, products and services on social networks - Vkontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Odnoklassniki, Youtube, Telegram and others.

    The profession of an SMM specialist involves complex, multi-purpose work - writing posts, maintaining public pages, advertising, communicating with visitors and clients, launching activities for users and other tasks. This kind of work requires constant communication and being online. You need to prepare for this psychologically.

    To better understand who an SMM specialist/manager is, I will describe what he looks like from the outside:

    Artem, my “workshop” colleague, did not work at his desk, but sat on the sofa all the time. He had a laptop on his lap, an iPhone on his left, a notebook and a tablet on the coffee table. Something was constantly beeping, buzzing and vibrating. He regularly picked up the phone, looked, laughed, pointed and moved his finger across the screen and whispered something with his lips. Nobody called him, but they wrote and liked him a ton, and he kept track of everything and responded to everything.

    Places of work

    SMM managers work in online agencies, digital agencies and in companies that build sales and promotion through social networks.

    Tasks and responsibilities of an SMM specialist

    The main responsibilities of an SMM manager are:

    Requirements for an SMM specialist

    As a rule, an SMM manager is required to:

    • Competent communication (oral and written). Ability to write interesting texts.
    • The ability to develop communities and attract subscribers without promotion or direct purchase.
    • Experience in conducting targeted advertising. Knowledge of programs and services that automate and simplify work (for example, Cerebro Target or Pepper.ninja).
    • Knowledge of web analytics (Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica).

    Sometimes the requirements for an SMM specialist include:

    • Work experience and portfolio of completed projects.
    • Knowledge of graphics packages for photo processing, creating pictures and infographics.
    • Excellent knowledge English language.
    • Experience in organizing events.
    • Knowledge of marketing and ability to promote products and services in the market.

    The first way to become an SMM manager is through self-study and freelancing. Development of your public pages and blogs (for example, about a hobby or an interesting topic), freelance work with orders entry level in six months to a year it will provide practical experience and allow you to develop a portfolio. This, in turn, will give you a chance to get a job in a digital agency and grow into a professional. This is one of the shortest routes into the profession, but it requires self-discipline.

    The second way to become an SMM specialist is to obtain a higher education in the field of PR, journalism, marketing, or take courses in SMM and find a job in promotion on social networks. Even an entry-level position is suitable - an assistant to an SMM specialist or a copywriter. In the process, you can quickly gain experience, grow and start leading serious projects.

    SMM specialist salary

    Market analysis shows that SMM specialists earn approximately 30 to 90 thousand rubles per month. The higher the salary, the closer the SMM manager is to marketing and the more serious the problems he solves.

    Who is an SMM manager?? Profession SMM manager— one of the most popular and promising in the IT industry. In addition, this profession requires constant dynamic training to keep up to date latest trends and knowledge in this area.

    Thus, he is a universal specialist whose activity is the professional management of people and processes within the brand’s social platform.

    Publishes interesting material from the results of an on-line survey of the site MediaJOBS.RU.

    Results of the on-line survey “About the work of an SMM manager according to the SMM managers themselves” published the portal MediaJOBS.RU, the leading Russian specialized resource about work and professions in media and advertising.

    317 people took part in the survey. These include both users of the MediaJOBS.RU portal itself and specialized groups in social Facebook networks and VKontakte.

    Three main questions were asked:

    1. The job of an SMM manager: what qualifications are required first of all?
    2. Where do they provide quality training for working as an SMM manager?
    3. Your advice on sources of knowledge for the work of an SMM manager.

    The following emerged as leaders qualities of a successful SMM manager such as an understanding of the promoted brand, a sense of humor, as well as knowledge of the laws of marketing in SocialMedia and the social base of the audience. Only a little more than half of respondents (54%) consider literacy an important quality of an SMM manager. 51% of respondents believe that social media workers need skills quick search and information processing, analytics. 39% of respondents indicated that for SMM campaigns to be successful, a manager needs to work beyond time (it would be interesting to know how many of them are really willing to work long hours for the sake of results). A third of survey participants noted the need to work with graphic packages and knowledge of design. And one in five said knowledge of SEO basics would be useful.

    As for the professional training of an SMM manager, according to the majority of survey participants, a person working in social media gains 50% of their experience independently, through their own trial and error; the rest helps by participating in conferences on SMM, monitoring foreign resources upon request, reading books on general marketing , advertising, consumer psychology, as well as publics and communities on the topic.

    During the survey, it was noted that there are several good courses in Russia for beginners to work in SMM. Among them, respondents indicated such courses as IKRA, Center for Online Education “Netology”, School of Social Media “Involve”.

    Among the authors of specialized courses and seminars more often than others, survey participants named Igor Ashmanov, Damir Khalilov, Dmitry Sidorin. In addition, the courses were noted Natalia Odegova, Ilya Balakhnin, Dmitry Rumyantsev and Alena Lenskaya.

    At the same time already increased criticism towards to the “founders” of SMM “generation SMM-next”. “Some “gurus” remained in the time when they themselves first looked into social networks, and social networks have already left and turned aside along the way. Yes, there is still enough trail of the past “guru”, but there is no desire to learn in the dust of the past. And what “funny” accounts the teachers themselves have! Come in and laugh. What can people teach who don’t know how to keep their own company page interesting?” noted one of the respondents.

    “We need to communicate and read those who truly run client and brand publics and receive these rights not because of a kickback. Pros - Fedyunin Sergey, Malikov Sergey, the guys from the RIA Novosti team, someone from Apostol, those who lead groups of all kinds complex goods and services (pumps, windows, machines), which are difficult to attract an audience to,” points out another young SMM manager.

    There are many tips on sources of knowledge for the work of an SMM manager. Among Western sources, “Social networks” were noted as the most interesting. An Instruction Manual by Mike Dalworth, Marketing in the Age of Like by Dave Kerpen, and the work of Odden Lee.

    Among the most interesting resources, which help to “understand” the profession are called, likeni.ru, cossa.ru, smm2.ru, seopult.ru, ingate.ru, socialbakers.com, lifehacker.ru, advertology.ru, adindex.ru, netology.ru , fb: SMM 100% , fb:ideablog , vk: SMMers , vk: Online magazine about SMM, twitter: SMM News.

    However, there is currently nowhere to get a systematic and high-quality education in this area. “But getting a job for a beginner is a pain,” say SMM managers.

    The editors of MediaJOBS.RU asked leading experts to comment on the results and respond to current issues SMM managers themselves:

    Katya Tulyankina, Head of SMM and Reputation Management Department, Internet Marketing Department, Ashmanov and Partners

    “I think about a sense of humor that it is important in any job. But whether it is good or not is not the most objective concept. Rather, it is important for an SMM specialist to be on the same page with the team. As for education, I personally can only single out Damir Khalilov and his school; everything else, in my opinion, is a way of making money. It is ideal when the educational base of an SMM specialist is a higher marketing or psychological education, and everything else comes with experience.

    The three most important qualifications of an SMM manager today: understanding the basic psychology and behavior of the social media audience, strategic thinking, and easy-going.

    We accept people into our team, first of all, based on an intuitive feeling of whether this field of activity is suitable for the applicant and whether he will join our team. The internal atmosphere in every project team is the key successful implementation project. We will never accept a person into our team who does not understand the goals and objectives of his actions. That is, in my opinion, a good SMM specialist should be a good analyst, be aware of the performance indicators of each SMM tool, be able to predict the achievement of indicators, and promptly adjust the direction of his activities if the result does not live up to the forecast.”

    Ekaterina Rukavishnikova, SocialMedia manager at Beeline

    “The main qualification requirements for an SMM manager are the highest degree of responsibility (social networks are not just a public space, they are a hyper-public space where you need to monitor your every move). Ideal literacy, knowledge and understanding of the stylistics of the Russian language. It is also important to understand the specifics of the promoted brand and its target audience on social networks.

    A candidate for our team must have one or two years of SMM experience. Plus, I would add stress resistance and the ability to quickly gather in an emergency situation, correctly prioritize large quantities tasks. We will never hire a person as an SMM manager who still believes that the job of SMM is to post once a day over a cup of coffee and engage the audience with cats. More seriously, a person who cannot clearly define the line between a joke and harsh banter, which can be very dangerous for the brand.”

    Alina Bazelyuk, editor-in-chief of COSSA

    “One of our goals is to train new people in the industry. It’s great that, judging by the polls, we are succeeding. By the way, materials on SMM are some of the most read and commented on Cossa). Sometimes such interest is even frightening: do readers need anything besides social networks?!

    At the same time, we are not an agency, we do not have the position of SMM manager, social networks are handled by editorial staff. We formulated the basic principles of running social networks for ourselves as follows.

    User, not page. A social network is not a mirror of a website, it is a separate territory, one might say, an independent mini-publication. We strive to not only announce our main materials, but also to use the features of the platforms: we communicate with users, look for new topics in the dialogue, discuss news, materials from colleagues, posts from readers. We strive to behave on social networks like a “who” and not like a “what” - a user, not a page.

    Dialogue and self-criticism. We try to answer questions and comments and “make contact.” It is not always possible to do this without emotion, especially when you need to respond to a remark: the reader loves to grumble, and not always to the point. But criticism can also be fair, and it is important to accept it with dignity and extract a lesson, benefit, or even material for a future article from the comment.

    Time and immersion. Practice shows that social networks cannot be dealt with sporadically - the reader notices this. You need to be there constantly to promptly offer news and be a participant in communication. This is perhaps the most difficult thing.”

    Kristina Mikheeva, managing partner of the MediaJOBS.RU portal and expert recruiting agency States.RU

    “The results of the survey on qualifications in the work of an SMM manager, in my opinion, demonstrated the obvious “maturing” of this profession. It is important that the functionality is structured - at least in the profession of SMM manager there is an SMM analyst, marketer and editor. The majority of survey participants already working in SMM recognize the need for a serious background: marketing, branding, Public Relations and journalism. Plus psychology is desirable. In addition, cases of internal self-restraints and responsibility for SMM activity have been developed, which always indicates that the professional group as a whole is emerging from a childish state.”

    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 in every possible way offer her your product.

    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. Known different cases monetization is both successful and exactly the opposite: you can achieve good earnings and on a group with a number of subscribers of 3 – 5 thousand, and you can get “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, you can watch a video there detailed analysis 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, these are the benefits of a guru social marketing put forward in the first positions:

    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. It is most likely impossible to do 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 and foremost, 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.” The important thing here is to “find golden mean”, 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 the 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 trending today. It's difficult but effective way managing trade turnover and relationships in the network. 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.