As I do pretty much any time the movie airs on tv, I recently watched The Devil Wears Prada. There’s a scene toward the end when Miranda (played by Meryl Streep) looks at Andy (played by Anne Hathaway – one of my favorite actresses) in the back of their limo and says, “Everybody wants to be us.”
Maybe it’s because I’d just read the gajillionth post in a Facebook group about someone with no experience in social media management starting their own social media business, but this time that scene hit differently. I thought about all of my fellow social media folks and how “everybody wants to be us”…until they get to see what it’s actually like to be us. So let me lay out some of the fun stuff you don’t get to see.
- Social media outlets start rating your account as “unresponsive” if you don’t respond to DMs and comments within an hour of them being posted. The longer it takes and the more times it takes you too long, the lower your rating. This rating shows to fans/followers and anyone who visits your profile, so it affects optics to your audience, but this rating also plays a role in your organic reach. So if you’re a social media manager, particularly if you work as a team of one, you have to be on it ALL. THE. TIME.
- Account get hacked? Guess who gets to work their butt off until it’s fixed.
- APIs change and schedulers no longer working? You got it! You’re posting manually and working on finding an alternative.
- No matter how much you hate dealing with the public (I mean, there’s a reason you went into a position based behind the computer, right?), it’s likely you that has to put on the customer service hat and deal with a bad online review or negative comment.
- We’ve all had that boss or client that just wants more followers. Even though that’s literally pretty much the LEAST important metric in all of social media, it’s you that gets to fight the battle day in and day out of trying to convince the fool to look at other data.
- Hope you love the sound of your phone. You’ll need to have notifications turned on for everything. (See the first bullet for the reasoning here.)
- I also hope your friends and family are awfully understanding because they will never get your undivided attention. You will constantly be listening for a notification, responding to a DM or comment, examining analytics, or dealing with a boss/client that doesn’t get what you do.
Don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing else on this planet that I’d rather do for a living. And I firmly believe that there is more than enough business to go around for those wanting to launch their own business, so I’m not afraid of competition. BUT…getting into this industry without appropriate expectations of the workload then letting clients down because you didn’t properly do your job only makes things harder for the rest of us that actually WANT to do it and do it right.
If you’re a business owner who needs help with your social media management, use the button below to give us a shout! We’d love to see if we’re a good fit for you and your company!