The daily life of a Populate Account Manager

“So you just scroll Twitter all day?” is something I hear regularly when I tell people I work in Social Media. I suppose in a way they are right, I do spend a hell of a lot of time scrolling Twitter, reading Facebook posts and discovering the latest Instagram updates. However, there is a lot more to it than that. I, therefore, thought it was time I gave you an idea of what the day-in-the-life of an Account Manager at Populate really is all about.

Daily Tasks

A key part of managing a social media feed is the focus on engagement, interaction and growth across all channels. Each day, it is hugely important that I put some time aside to check through each client account. This involves ensuring that any incoming messages are answered, scheduled posts have been published successfully and all networks are functioning correctly. Of course, the content we create is a main factor in how well we perform on each platform, however we cannot forget that people are ultimately convinced to follow a social media feed based on the reactivity and interaction they receive. Taking some time to reach out to followers manually is a great way to get our client’s businesses under the nose of people who may not have heard of them (yet), and increase their overall brand-awareness. It can be time consuming to Tweet individuals or target specific demographics, but this is a fantastic way to get noticed on Social Media and therefore a key focus of my daily workload.

Content Planning + Creation

We work on monthly schedules here at Populate, meaning that each month we research, plan and create social media content for every account. This is then presented in the form of a calendar which we send to clients for comments and approval. As we work a month in advance (for example, throughout December we are already planning for January), it is crucial we stay on top of things and ensure that everything is ready to go out as soon as a new month begins. This includes the planning and creation of social media posts, adverts and campaigns across all channels. As you can imagine, it is a rather time-consuming task and one that must be worked on daily in order to ensure that everything is ready on time. Liaising with the team to review ideas and content together comes in very handy here as we want to ensure that the work we’re doing is of the highest quality and upmost professionalism – something that our clients always expect from us.

Client Updates

Checking and responding to emails is something I do continuously throughout the day as I want my clients to feel comfortable with the knowledge that they can get in touch with me any time and receive a prompt reply. We must remember that a huge part of their business is in our hands and they might have questions, concerns or general comments they want to discuss. Therefore I always make sure that I am available to respond to them by email, phone or even Skype call when they need to get in touch. Keeping in close contact with clients is hugely important as we are essentially part of their team – we just sit in a different office. Weekly check-ins by phone and regular face-to-face meetings are also essential in maintaining this close relationship and ensures that we are all on the same page.

What else can we be doing?

Once all of the above tasks are completed, I like to take some time to brush up on my own knowledge within the Social Media world. As we all know, it is a fast-paced industry which changes unbelievably quickly, meaning we must continuously look out for new trends and updates in order to stay ahead of the game. As our client base is SMEs, the channels we manage are not necessarily comparable with global brands such as Nike, Apple or Netflix. However, I always like to take a look at what the big-players are up to, as well as our smaller competitors, as this is an excellent way to make sure we aren’t lagging behind. Browsing Social Media is also a great way to draw inspiration from industry leaders and see how we can use similar ideas and make them our own. We pride ourselves on being industry experts and knowing the ins-and-outs of social, therefore continuous daily education is crucial.

So, as you can see, it’s not about spending my day scrolling or laughing at the newest memes (although sometimes that can be unavoidable!), my focus is on creating and maintaining the best possible Social Media channels for each of our clients. I have to be honest – it’s a pretty great job.