Today, running and expanding a business successfully by using social media seems impossible. More than 70% of small to mid-sized companies use different social media channels to increase their reach and improve sales.
Such companies depend on social media marketing coordinators to create engaging content for their audiences and improve marketing results. Social media coordinators perform multiple tasks in their department while keeping in mind the key objectives of the company.
This article explains everything you need to know about social media coordinators, including their responsibilities, roles, qualifications, skills, and salary.
What is a social media coordinator?
As the job title indicates, a social media coordinator, also called a social media marketing coordinator, is a member of the marketing department who collaborates with sales and marketing professionals to create interactive content and run social media campaigns.
He encourages audience engagement using quality content on social platforms. He organizes and supervises an organization’s social media strategy to increase sales and promote marketing efforts. His ultimate goal is to improve the company’s social media presence using different marketing tactics, techniques, content types, and social platforms.
What skills and qualifications do you need to become a social media coordinator?
A social media marketing coordinator collaborates with different team members, communicates with freelance content producers, and shares metrics reports with his seniors and stakeholders. In order to perform multiple tasks and work with several people every day, he needs to have a number of skills to become a successful coordinator.
If you want to be a successful social media marketing coordinator, here are the skills and qualifications you need to have.
A bachelor’s degree
A bachelor’s degree is a must-have for interested candidates. Since it is hard to find an educational institute that offers a bachelor’s degree in social media coordination, you can get a degree in a field that teaches skills and gives the knowledge you need to be a coordinator. Some examples of these fields include:
- Sales
- Mass communication
- Business administration
- Social media marketing
- Journalism
- Management
Strategy planning and execution
A social media marketing coordinator should know how to formulate business strategies, execute them, and analyze their effects on the objectives of the organization. He should know how to prioritize tasks, focus resources, make all team members work towards common goals, and adjust strategy according to the new trends.
Experience in writing, editing, and distributing engaging content
A social media coordinator should know the value of content marketing that costs 62% less than traditional marketing and still produce better results.
Though he is not a writer, he often has to work with writers and content creators. Therefore, he should know what makes a compelling copy, how to edit material to improve its performance, and how to effectively distribute content on social media channels that are more beneficial for your business.
Content and technology optimization
Content optimization is crucial to rank your content higher in the search results. More than 70% of marketers believe that content SEO is more beneficial than pay-per-click (PPC).
A social media coordinator should know the basic SEO techniques. He should use them to make his content, company’s website, and social media profiles rank higher in the search results.
Organization
Since the coordinator has to collaborate with different teams across the marketing department, he should know how to maintain organization while working with several people and performing multiple tasks.
A social media marketing coordinator works in a planned and ordered way that saves him time, effort, and energy. He keeps track of the campaign progress and makes sure all team members complete their tasks on time.
Aptitude to learn
He should have the natural ability to keep learning no matter how experienced he gets. He should be interested in increasing his skillset to open new doors to success.
He knows continuous learning is the best way to reach his full potential and avoid stagnation; that’s why he never stops learning.
Problem-solving abilities
A social media marketing coordinator encounters multiple problems every other day. Instead of losing his heart, he should be willing to tackle problems with interest, no matter how big they are.
Interpersonal skills
Interpersonal skills guide the social media coordinator on how to interact with customers on social media to build their trust and communicate with team members to deliver their message clearly.
Negotiation skills
A social media marketing coordinator works with influencers and industry leaders. He communicates with customers through social media channels, websites, and other platforms. When communicating, he uses his negotiation skills to come to an agreement while avoiding arguments.
Team management and leadership traits
A social media coordinator must keep his team motivated and encouraged. He assigns tasks to different team members to ensure they know their roles and work hard towards achieving mutual goals.
When working on a project, he should know how to lead and manage a group of people to accomplish a particular task.
What are the basic responsibilities of a social media coordinator?
While the responsibilities of a social media coordinator vary from company to company, here are the common roles they often play to help companies grow via social platforms.
Research audience preferences
Facebook audiences prefer videos over other forms of content; as several studies show that posts having videos experience 13.9% more engagement than posts without videos. In contrast, data shows that the Twitter audience prefers images over videos.
It is a social media coordinator’s responsibility to conduct online research and find which content type his particular audience likes, and then create content accordingly.
Collaborate with content creators
A social media coordinator works with content creators to create engaging, readable, interactive, and informative content for his audiences. He reviews every kind of content before it is published on any social media platform. He gives suggestions to content creators when he thinks content needs to be improved or revised.
Engage in online conversations with clients
Responding to the messages or comments of customers helps companies keep them engaged and improve their loyalty. Statistics show that 83% of Facebook followers expect a response from an organization on the same day they ask a question. Therefore, a social media coordinator makes sure that his customers receive excellent customer service.
Engaged customers keep your organization at the front of their minds whenever they think about buying a related product. A social media coordinator ensures that content creators produce engaging, captivating, and trendy content. He uses a combination of different forms of content to improve post engagement and performance.
Monitor SEO
Checking SEO performance from time to time is the optimal part of the marketing plan. It helps you see what is generating results and what is not, helping develop better strategies.
Social media coordinators use advanced SEO techniques to ensure customers find the company at the top of the search results. In addition to this, he uses different tools to analyze SEO results. He makes changes to the SEO strategy according to the SEO performance and results.
Track content performance
While producing exciting and engaging content is important, tracking content performance and checking stats is also invaluable. It helps you measure the impact of content on your audience.
A social media coordinator uses a variety of tools to measure content performance and present the results to content creators so they can improve their content strategy accordingly. Some examples of tools that he may use to analyze content performance include Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Sprout Social, and Keyhole.
Maintain good relationships with influencers
Maintaining a good relationship with influencers helps brands establish a long-term professional relationship, which brings benefits like consistent user engagement, more committed influencers, and more loyal customers.
Social media coordinators arrange meetings with influencers to let them understand business needs better. They reach out to them in creative ways and build a true partnership that benefits both parties.
Design an optimal posting schedule
Scheduling posts helps businesses grab their audience’s attention more effectively. Studies show that the best time to post on social media during three working days (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) is 10.00 AM.
Social media coordinators take full advantage of the ‘optimal or the best time’ by scheduling their posts beforehand. They create a social media content calendar to manage and schedule posts better.
Find new ways to attract the audience
A social media coordinator arranges team meetings to discuss new methods of attracting clients to the team. He shares his ideas, and lets his team members share their ideas as well. Popular ways that social media coordinators use to attract audiences include:
- Use visuals in every post
- Encourage tagging
- Hold contests
- Improve customer services
A day in the life of a social media coordinator
There is no set routine that all social media coordinators follow, meaning the routine varies from one coordinator to the other. Generally, we can say that a social media coordinator starts his day by checking emails and voicemails. After sending replies to emails, he goes for meetings.
He checks the progress of the content strategy and talks to content creators if something needs to be changed. He collaborates with designers, video makers, etc., to share his ideas and review their designs or videos before they are published online.
When inside his office, he goes through social media profiles of the company and checks their stats. He encourages and appreciates positive changes. But, if he notices a decline in performance, he points out areas that can be improved.
Expert tips for becoming a social media marketing coordinator
Here are the tips you need to follow to become a successful social media coordinator.
- Get a bachelor’s degree in a field that you think can improve your social media coordinator skills.
- Close the skill gap by learning different social media marketing skills that can help you get your dream job. Many employers do not give degrees as much importance as they give to skills. Your degree will just be icing on the cake.
- Start using social media platforms like professionals, not like a regular user who simply scroll through the feed, likes, comments, and shares posts. Create your professional social media profiles. Share informative content on them regularly. Doing so will help you understand how businesses use social media. It will also help you catch the attention of potential clients.
- Work with small businesses to test what you have learned so far. Generate exceptional results and use them to build your portfolio and gain the loyalty of your current clients.
- Keep improving your skills by practicing consistently.
- Apply for a higher post in a big organization where you have always wanted to work. Prepare for the interview. Polish your portfolio and don’t forget bringing it to the organization when going for the interview.
- Open your own social media agency to provide social media services to your clients. Hire a team of hard-working workers consisting of content creators, editors, designers, and social media specialists. Keep learning, adapting, and improving with time.
Social media coordinator vs. manager
The difference between a social media manager and a social media marketing coordinator lies in seniority. Compared to social media coordinators, the role of a social media manager is more senior. Managers handle main tasks within the department, while coordinators seem to complete entry-level tasks required to design and run a campaign.
What is the average salary of a social media marketing coordinator?
Your pay as a social media coordinator depends on your experience, qualification, and the organization type where you work.
Irrespective of these factors, the average salary of a social media coordinator in 2022 is around $60,091 per year. The base pay is $43,136 per year, and the additional pay is $16,954 per year.
Summary
Social media marketing coordinators collaborate with different social media experts like content creators, strategists, influencers, etc., to help the company accomplish its business goals.
They are good at many things, including communication, team management, multitasking, problem-solving, content writing, editing, and SEO. They use all these skills with a single goal in mind – to improve the marketing campaign results by generating better content, optimizing social media channels, scheduling posts, and using advanced marketing tactics.