Digital Professions: Social Media Management Yesterday & Today
By: Ciara Doyle
Tags: Smm, Social Media Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social

Photo by Marvin Meyer

From instant messaging to advanced analytics, here’s how communicating online has changed us, and us it.

Of today’s global 7.7 billion-strong population, nearly 4.4 billion use the Internet. Even more staggeringly, over 5.1 billion frequently access and use mobile devices. By comparison, 2.5 billion people lack access to a toilet, 2 billion people drink contaminated water and 821 million are undernourished. In 2019, with more people having access to communication technologies than to basic necessities for living, one can only ask: How did we get here?

From the 1960s through the 1980s, early incarnations of the Internet and primitive forms of email, e-newsletters and internet protocols were the most advanced features digital communication technologies offered. Only a decade later in 1997, however, the door to the future of online communication was cracked open by Six Degrees. As the first social networking website to allow users to create profiles and add others to their personal networks, Six Degrees also granted users the ability to become rudimentary content sharers.

In giving users a platform to share details about their jobs, friends and social lives, Six Degrees paved the way for later platforms including MySpace and Facebook to grant the masses the ability to take their digital presence one step further to become content creators.

Prior to the age of algorithms and audience analytics, the role of social media managers was to create profiles and posts on popular social media sites that caught users’ attention through competitive pricing and enticing products or services, in other words, to be product-centric. Today, the power of a post seemingly no longer rests with the social media manager alone, but rather with a social media manager’s ability to respond to what consumers want.

In an age where endless information, content and opportunities are no further than a swipe away, a brand’s customer experience must be exactly that — an experience — in order to continue to survive and thrive.

According to Falcon.io, today’s social media managers must have a variety of skills that they can apply across diverse social media channels. Four such skills include:

Reactivity: being able to respond to and learn from immediate digital customer feedback to help establish and maintain a good reputation. Proactivity: having the ability to anticipate trends within customer bases and changes in markets, as well as knowing how to preemptively adapt a brand to potential issues or unexpected occurrences. Strategic Execution & Follow-Through: understanding the importance and value of using in-person and digital audience analytics to monitor what precise elements contribute to either the success or the failure of a post, profile or brand. Being Customer-Centric: acknowledging that through the generation of customer experiences, a brand can continually tailor its offerings and their presentation to ensure that the customer experience is of the utmost importance from start to finish (and beyond).

As strategies for targeting consumers, engaging with diverse audiences and monitoring a brand’s digital success continue to increase, the role of a social media manager will simultaneously evolve, too, so instead of merely wondering how we got here, the next question that remains to be answered is, “Where do we go from here?”