Imagup General Magazine 2024
If you dream and see yourself as an SMM expert, but wake up and go to work, where you are a lawyer/teacher/accountant/anyone else, follow a step-by-step plan on starting a career on social networks. We’ll tell you how to become an SMM specialist (copywriter, demographic investigator or creator for social networks), even if you don’t know anything (yet), or you know how to, but haven’t found your dream job yet.
1. Learn
Enthusiasm, learning, and readiness for new challenges are good phrases for resumes, but only on the willingness to learn to find a job will not work. Learn the theory yourself, before finding a job. A story about what topics you covered (not even in courses, but in free sources) will prove to your employer much better if you are ready to learn new things than a line in your resume.
What to learn to become an SMM manager:
– Fundamentals of marketing and communication theory;
– The basics of SMM;
– The theory of targeted advertising on social networks;
– Instagram services such as Insta4likes.com.
– Web analytics basics;
– Work in Excel;
– Basic level of knowledge of graphic editors.
Pick up a free course, read professional blogs, join the chats of specialists and follow them with questions from the real practice of colleagues.
Everyone loves the video (still)
If you still think that video content is needed only on YouTube, feel free to create videos for all platforms where your page is represented. Now it is a good idea to add a video to your SMM strategy.
If you still think that video content is needed only on YouTube, feel free to create videos for all platforms where your page is represented. Now it is a good idea to add a video to your SMM strategy. Generate video for advertising in video editors, where even an inexperienced user can easily make animation.
2. Get experience
The most difficult thing is to find the first projects when no one is ready to trust you with the conduct of social networks or advertising campaigns. But there are positions for beginners – take up an assistant in an advertising agency (they write about such vacancies in agency groups on social networks and on job sites or with an assistant to an SMM freelance specialist (look for such offers in chat rooms).
Such vacancies have high competition: they involve training, experience, and even a small payment. Therefore, work experience is an advantage even for starting positions. It seems to be a vicious circle: to get a job, you need work experience. To get out of this circle:
Find a project where you will work for free
Free work is almost always a bad idea, but at the start of a career, you can neglect this rule. After all, you gain experience, and the customer risks spending time and an advertising budget due to your first mistakes.
Such a project is usually among friends. Write on social networks that you are studying SMM or targeted advertising, and will work for your portfolio for free for two weeks or a month.
If your personal pages have a small audience, look for the first customers in groups of entrepreneurs: among them, many small business representatives try to save on everything.
Make a fake portfolio
A fake portfolio consists of work that no one asked for. For example, you are creating an SMM strategy for Coca Cola or IKEA. It will not be implemented, but it is the customers who will look at it when they decide to work with you.
In targeted advertising for the fake portfolio of an SMM specialist, an advertising campaign strategy, examples of creatives, a mind map with audiences are suitable.
3. Write a resume
Tips for writing a resume for an SMM specialist are no different from the standard ones – choose the relevant experience, briefly describe the tasks and achievements in previous positions, list the key skills and do not use template expressions about stress resistance and learning.
Adapt your resume to the vacancy and indicate your work experience before sending it out – this project may be what the former kindergarten teacher/accountant/ logistic provider needs to create content based on real experience. However, this experience should be indicated additionally – if you have not worked on social networks, show in the resume that you are moving into this field, taking courses and looking for the first projects.
Portfolio rules for SMM projects:
– Give a link to the pages of the brand with which you worked.
– Indicate the period of work on the project.
– Write about your tasks and achievements. If you just answered comments or held contests – it’s better to tell this honestly.
– Attach links to the posts that you created (wrote, made a design, led the process, came up with the mechanics of the contest). If a couple of months have passed since your work on the project, the potential employer will need to scroll to this period to evaluate your work. And he will not do this.
4. Find your first job
– Directly through an agency (office work).
– Large agencies with office work schedules post vacancies on official sites.
– Sometimes agencies do not publish vacancies on HeadHunter or other job search sites but post them only on their sites – on the site and in groups on social networks. Consider the work of various agencies, find teams whose projects inspire you – and send a short story about yourself and a link to the resume by email.
– Look for a list of agencies in the ratings of digital companies on the topic you need (SMM, targeted advertising, design, etc.).
Conclusion
We hope that this article helped you to learn more about how to become an expert on social media. Following these steps will get you where you want to be. Learn from your mistakes and strive for perfection, that is the only way you will beat the competition.
