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What Is Social Media Management? A 2025 Beginner's Guide

These days, having an active social media presence is crucial to your brand's digital marketing success, and that all starts with social media management. Learn how to use social media management to build a loyal online following with this 2025 beginner's guide!

 

Social Media Management FAQs

Ready to dive deeper into the question, “What is social media management?” These FAQs will give you a better understanding of some of the key aspects of social media management, becoming a social media manager, and more.

What are the best social media management tools?

Social media management tools are software solutions that streamline day-to-day social media tasks like scheduling posts, responding to messages & comments, and more.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT TOOL NOTABLE FEATURES SUPPORTED CHANNELS PRICE
Buffer
  • Content ideation tools
  • Post scheduling
  • Analytics dashboard
  • AI assistant
Bluesky, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, YouTube Free plan, or starting at $5 per month, per channel
Hootsuite
  • AI content ideation tools
  • Post scheduling
  • Analytics dashboard
  • Social listening tools
  • Social ads
LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube Starting at $99 per month for one user and 10 channels (free trial available)
CoSchedule
  • Social calendar
  • Drag and drop scheduling
  • AI assistant and prompts
  • Templates
  • Engagement reports
Bluesky, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, YouTube Free plan, or starting at $19 per user, per month
AgoraPulse
  • Post scheduling and publishing
  • Reporting dashboards
  • Social listening tools
  • ROI tracking
Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube Starting at $79 per user, per month (free trial available)
Mention
  • Social listening
  • Content publishing and scheduling
  • Sentiment analyses
  • AI tools
LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit Starting at $41 per month (free trial available)
Sprout Social
  • Content publishing and scheduling
  • Social listening
  • Analytics dashboard
  • Community management
  • AI and automation tools
  • Influencer marketing
See full list of channels and integrations Starting at $199 per seat, per month (free trial available)

Keep Exploring: Top Social Media Dashboard Tools

How do you become a social media manager?

To become a social media manager, you must possess a set of diverse skills, including:

  • Creativity: Social media is about communicating with people through text, images, and videos, and doing so in a fun and engaging way. That said, being creative is a major aspect of being a successful social media manager.
  • Writing: Social media management requires excellent writing skills (because nothing’s worse than a caption that doesn’t make sense, or includes typos!).
  • Editing: When writing captions, a good social media manager also needs to have editing skills so they can look over everything that’s being published and ensure it’s error-free.
  • Social media savviness: To be a good social media manager, you need to understand the ins and outs of social media. This includes knowledge of all major (and minor!) platforms, and staying on top of the latest social media trends, developments, technology, etc.
  • Flexibility: Social media is changing all the time, and with so many tasks falling under the umbrella of social media management, being flexible and able to switch tasks (or juggle multiple at once) is crucial.
  • Data interpretation: Social media management requires constant work, and that starts with being able to accurately interpret campaign data and using those insights to optimize your campaign for success.
  • Awareness: Part of a great social campaign is taking advantage of current or trending topics, and making it your own. But with that comes a great sense of awareness and understanding of what should and shouldn’t be used for social media content.

Along with these skills, social media managers often begin their careers by obtaining a relevant degree — like marketing, communications, or journalism — or getting internships and entry level social media jobs like:

  • Social media analyst
  • Social or digital content producer
  • Social media or digital marketing associate
  • Social media coordinator or strategist

How do I know if my audience is on social media? How do I find them?

Understanding your audience is key to creating social media content that resonates with them and encourages them to purchase from your business. You want to reach the people most likely to purchase your products or services so you can earn the highest return on investment (ROI) from your efforts.

Follow these steps to find and reach your target audience on social media!

1. Analyze existing audience data

When it comes to understanding your audience, the best place to start is your existing data. If you have any website analytics tools, like Google Analytics, use it to learn about your website visitors. For example, you can view info about their gender, age, location, and more.

2. Look at existing customer information

You can also analyze purchase transactions and history to understand who your current customers are, where they are located, and what products or services interest them the most.

3. Develop audience personas

Then, you can use this data to develop audience personas. For example, you may find that many of your customers live in the same city and are around the same age. You can then create social media content for this persona to resonate with their interests.

How do I manage social media content creation?

Content creation is a fundamental part of your social media marketing management process. Without content, you’ll have no way of reaching your audience on social media.

Here’s how to manage your social media content creation process with ease:

1. Determine how often you want to post

It’s essential to post frequently on social media to keep your brand top of mind and audience engaged. For most platforms, you’ll want to post at least once per day.

2. Generate content ideas

Leverage your social media audience personas from the previous section to develop your content ideas. You can create a wide range of content for social media, include videos, images, user-generated content, text-only posts, and more.

3. Create a content calendar

Keep your content organized by creating a calendar. Make a note of what content you will post on what day and time. You can also use a social media tool like Hootsuite to schedule your posts in advance.

4. Monitor and report on content performance

Ensure you take the time to monitor your engagement metrics to learn which content performs best with your audience. Which posts received the most likes or comments? Then, use this info to create more of that content type in the future to achieve higher engagement rates.

What is social media listening and how do I do it?

Social media listening is the process of monitoring mentions of your brand across social media. It helps you understand how people feel about your company and respond to any questions or concerns prospects may have.

You can also follow these steps to manage social media listening:

1. Choose the right keywords

Your keywords are the words or phrases you want to monitor mentions of across social media. You can search for these words on the social media platform directly or through your tool. Keywords you can search for include the name of your business, topics related to your industry, mentions of your products or services, and more.

2. Monitor your mentions

After you select your keywords, your next step is to view posts and comments from people who mention them. If you have a social listening tool, it will take care of tracking these mentions for you. Read these mentions to understand how people view your brand, what they say about your company, and identify any areas where you can improve.

3. Respond to mentions

Engage with people who mention your brand and products or services by responding to them. You can answer their questions about your company, try to resolve an issue they are having, or promote your products or services to people who mention topics related to your industry or products.

How do I manage a paid social media ad campaign?

Depending on your budget and goals, you may want to develop an advertising strategy for your company. If you want to earn more genuine followers, encourage user engagement, and boost sales and revenue, social media ads are essential.

Platforms, from Snapchat to Facebook, vary in their approach to ads. They feature different ad types, as well as different goals. Facebook, for example, offers the option to create ads for increasing brand awareness, generating leads, earning store visits, and more.

Some other ad features that your social media manager will look at include:

  • Audience
  • Calls-to-action (CTA)
  • Cost-per-click (CPC)
  • And more

These are all critical factors that influence the success of your advertisements. You may create an ad with a compelling CTA, but if you target it to the wrong audience, you won’t see the results you expected.

To manage your social media ads, follow these tips:

1. Determine your budget

First, think about how much you want to spend on your ads. Social media networks have many different ways you can pay for your ads, such as paying each time some views or clicks on your ad.

2. Choose your ad type

Next, you’ll choose what type of ad you want to create. You can create a video ad, a carousel of images that feature your products, or text-only.

3. Select your audience targeting options

Audience targeting features enable you to ensure your ads display to the people most likely to make a purchase. You can target users based on their age, location, job title, and more.

4. Monitor the performance of your ads

Last but not least, make sure to closely follow the results of your ad campaigns. You can rack metrics like impressions, clicks, and conversions to determine the success of your ads and tweak them to drive better results in the future.

How do I monitor a social media campaign?

The key to a successful social media marketing campaign is constantly improving your strategy to achieve the best results. And to do that, you need to monitor and report on your campaign’s results to keep track of your success.

Here’s how to manage and report on your social media campaign:

1. Define your social media report

It’s essential to keep your reports organized. Just throwing a bunch of random metrics into a spreadsheet won’t cut it when it comes time to analyze your results.

First things first, define your report. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who is this report for?
  • What is the timeframe for this report?
  • What do I want to learn from this report?

It’s also a good idea to keep your report organized. For example, you may create a separate section in your report dedicated to results from your social media ads, while having another section dedicated to your content.

2. Choose the right metrics

Your next step is to choose the right metrics to include in your report. Think about your social media campaign goals and what you want to learn from your report to determine which metrics to keep track of.

There are various metrics and insights to include in your report, such as:

  • Audience demographics
  • Reach
  • Impressions
  • Mentions
  • Comments
  • And more!

3. Analyze your results

Now that you’ve selected which metrics to track, you can finally compile your report and analyze the results.

Look for any trends in your data. For example, you might notice that your top-performing posts are all videos or that you receive the most clicks on your carousel ads.

Then, you can use these insights to improve your social media campaign moving forward, like launching more carousel ads and video content to drive more clicks and engagement for your company.

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