01. Roadmap for a Sustainable Social Media Management Business

Podcast
Written By Jessica Sheehy
 

You have the skills to be a social media manager, but how can you turn them into a profitable business? Or a business that leaves a legacy?

In this episode, I'm sharing the six steps to our signature roadmap to building a booked-out social media management business. Learn how to build a sustainable social media business with the exact steps that I took to build my six-figure agency.

Hello everyone. I am your host Jessica Sheehy. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Hashtag Managed. I am the owner and founder of Social Savvy and I'm so excited to start this podcast journey.

This podcast is for social media managers, but I just want to say that this podcast is for any business owner trying to leverage social media in the online marketing world to grow their business.

So in this first episode, I want to go ahead and talk about the six crucial steps into building your booked out social media management business.

So stay till the very end because the last one is probably the most important measure that we recommend all social media managers to take in order to really book out their services. But not only that, but to retain social media management clients because it's so difficult to find new clients all of the time who are going to value your services and pay your prices.

And we don't want to churn and burn. We want to have a consistent income as a social media manager and that's what we can get when we do this 6th and final thing of the timeline.

So let's go ahead and start by diving in to everything that entails with building a booked out social media management business.

So the first thing is determine your niche. Now I know you're already thinking, oh no, not the word niche. I hear that all the time.

So many people tell me I need to niche down and who I'm working with. I need to niche down in what I'm doing and we'll cover that all really soon. But I want you to think about who you can niche down with, who you're going to work with, who are you going to serve. If you plan on being a social media manager offering management or content creation services for every single platform, you'll end up finding it more difficult to find clients than if you niche down to who you're serving.

So a great way to determine your niche is start by thinking and brainstorming. Go ahead, grab a notepad, open up your notes app and think about who you want to work with.

  • Who are the ideal accounts that you follow as a consumer of content?

  • What do you love?

  • What are you passionate about?

There's so many different things that we can niche down our services to. So when we think about what we love, what we're passionate about, we'll create better content with that. Now the other way that we can niche down, and I kind of mentioned this a few seconds earlier, is that we can niche down with what we are doing.

We don't have to offer management and content creation for every single platform, but we can niche down in the platforms that we're working on. So what I'm talking about here is our signature service and this is something that we will talk about in a later episode to go really in depth into how you can craft your signature service. I'll share about our signature service at Social Savvy and I'll talk about some that I have seen work really, really well for social media managers. But for now, for the sake of working on, establishing and building out our booked out social media management business, let's figure out a niche of who we work with and what platforms will manage.

Now, I also want to say before I move on to the second item on my list is that whatever you decide for your niche in terms of who you're working with or what services or platforms you're working on, you can always change them. You can always pivot, you can always add on to the services that you offer.

You can do more platforms, you can work with more people that are outside of that niche. But when you niche down and get crystal clear from the start, this is how you start to attract clients and then you can always expand as your business expands.

Alright, so for the second item on our list is we want to set our prices.

This is something that is always going to be on the top of your mind as a business owner and entrepreneur and that's okay. It's something that is going to also grow and evolve as your business grows and expands. The one thing you want to do is create a sustainable rate that you'll be able to grow your business at so that you're happy, your clients are happy, and you can scale to support yourself.

So you're supporting your lifestyle, you're supporting your business, and you're making sure that you're covering all of your costs not only in your business and in your life. So there's so many topics that I just immediately want to start branching out to and talking about with setting prices. But I really want to just keep this general and give you one actionable piece of advice for right now, and that is to set your hourly rate.

Now I'm just going to preface by saying I am a huge proponent of not working on an hourly rate. I think it's way more valuable for you to create a package or service to offer to your social media management clients. And we'll share that formula pretty soon here on the podcast. But I want you to pick an hourly rate that's going to be the basis of every package and every service that you create. And I want it to account for your time, your expertise, the continued education that you're doing, any investments you're making in yourself and your business.

And also I want to make sure that this is going to be a sustainable hourly rate that you can work on throughout your social media management journey. You can always build on it, of course you can always raise it as needed, but I want to make sure that from the start you are getting paid what you're worth and what you need to be paid, what needs to be in your bank account. I want to make sure that that is the foundation of your business, because we can get booked out on a super low hourly rate, but we're not really booked out because we're going to keep continually needing to book and sign more clients to make more money, and then we're going to be drained. We're going to be burnt out. It's going to lead to so many different things.

So keep in mind a real sustainable rate thatyou can set for yourself right now and then we'll build a foundation on that shortly. And how you can create a booked out business and create your packages around this rate or price. Now for the third thing that you need to build out your booked out social media management business is you need to set up your systems.

It's one thing to be an expert in social media, it's another thing to run a social media management business. So what I mean by that is there are a few things to consider:

  • What are you going to offer?

  • How are you going to onboard clients?

  • Will you have a contract? Yes, please have a contract.

  • And how will you handle collecting payments?

  • How will you create content for your clients?

  • How will you deliver that content for an easy approval process?

  • How will you schedule content for clients?

And there's so many things. So think about every single thing that youwould do to work with a client. Start by writing out a detailed list about everything you need to do and from there you'll start to see similarities in the tasks that you list out, whether theymare tasks that you are doing for prospects. So these are people who aren't yet clients in your client roster.

There are tasks for onboarding a new client. They said yes on the discovery call, they're so excited to work with you, you're so excited to work with them, but you've got to get that payment collected and you've got to get them onboarded to set the project up for success. So there's so many systems that entail with running your business and choosing a few really great tools can really help set your business up for success and to help set you up for a sustainable social media management business. Now the fourth thing that you need to build your booked out social media management business is you need clients, you need people who are going to hire you and pay you for your expertise.

So there are so many ways to find and land clients as a social media manager. But one of the most important ways that I think everyone should really tap into is to reach out to your network, your immediate network, to find clients. So in order to find clients that value you as the expert in social media, you want to know. So in order for clients to find you and see you as an expert that they want to hire, you need experience. So when I'm saying that we need to connect with our network, that means reaching out to friends, family, local businesses, and other people or professionals that you've worked with in other capacities to let them know about your social media management services. And you can then do a couple of different things to sign them on as clients. So you can, if you have the ability to work with clients on a free or trial basis, you can work with clients on a free or trial basis to build out your portfolio.

That's completely okay. I've done it. So many other people have done it. And I really want to stress the fact that you can do that, even though some people say you shouldn't. But you can do it if you have the means, if you have the support system in place to allow you to do that, you could do it for a discount.

You don't have to necessarily let them know it's at a discount. You can if you want. That's a really great way to close people in the sale, but you can offer them a lower rate just for starting out. And I just want you to say, do what feels right for you to gain the valuable experience.

And when we tap into our local network to find clients, we're tapping into people that already know us. They like us, they trust us. And that is the three most crucial things into closing any sale, whether it's free or paid. We need someone to trust us, that we know what we're doing in social media management. So offer your services up and start to build out your portfolio. So then that way, when you do start attracting new clients in your niche, they have some work that they can see. They can see your content creation style, they can see the growth that you can provide for them, and they can ultimately see themselves in these clients that you have in your portfolio.

Next, number five on the list. You want to build up your content strategy to position you as the expert. So you want to be seen as an expert in what you do, right? We all do. So by Niching Down, like we suggested at the start of this show, you'll be seen as an expert for that industry. So providing content related specifically to them is how we are going to target our messaging to speak directly to what they need.

So focus on sharing value around what you know. Your audience will trust you and turn to you when they're ready to hire and when they're confident that you are the person that they want to hire to fill that role in their business.

So you really don't need a fancy website, a full branding suite, you really don't need a whole lot to start a social media management business which makes it so great. It's one of the amazing services that you can offer online as long as you have the skills and you are ready to put in the work to create the business. It's something that anyone can do.

Even if you have zero social media experience as well. Because there are so many skills that you might have from previous jobs in customer service or retail or administration that's going to help. Set you up as success as a business owner versus someone who has the social media skills, but they're not willing to put in the work to really generate a social media management business that is client focused.

So figuring out who your niche is is important because we want to talk specifically to them. We want to use the terms they use. We want to call them by the titles they go by in their industry. And we want to create content as to why this industry needs to leverage social media to grow their brand awareness, to grow their impact, to grow their income, to help them get their time back in their business.

There are so many great reasons why someone would hire a social media manager versus the number of deliverables that you put in your packages or the number of platforms that you manage. So putting it in perspective for them is going to be so, so important. So now we're at the 6th and final piece that you need to start building out your social media management business.

And this is the framework that we teach inside our social savvy collective membership. If you are looking for a community for support and guidance, go ahead and go to the show notes of this podcast and find out more about our social savvy collective membership.

We'd love to support you, your business and your overall mission as a social media manager. So the final 6th piece is to exceed your clients expectations and this all comes down to their experience of working with you. So when you're working with a client, the best way to stand apart from your competition, besides being true to who you are and sticking to your values, is go above and beyond for your clients. Exceed their expectations by delivering work faster than you said you would.

Now you don't have to do anything crazy fast, you don't have to do sloppy work by any means. We want to make sure we're putting out the best content for our clients. But you can exceed those expectations, introduce them to new trends, test new strategies, all within reason and scope of course, of your project. But go above and beyond.

So I also want to add to that is just keep in mind any boundaries that this could break by doing so. We don't want to break our own boundaries and forfeit our own values just by making the client happy or making their experience better, but with small actions and a great work ethic that is going to speak louder to your client. And that's going to help retain them long term, because you're getting great results for them, you're doing great work for their business, and you're making their lives so much easier. That is where your clients are going to see the most value for your services.

So I hope you loved this first podcast episode and I'm so excited to keep diving into this podcast with you week after week. We'd love to connect with you over on Instagram at Social Savvy Collective.

And if you have any questions at all about what has been said in this podcast, any links we mentioned, any resources or just have any questions about implementing these six steps in your social media management business.

Head to the show notes and go to our free social media Facebook community, the Social Savvy Collective.

Links From This Episode

Thanks for listening!

Jessica Sheehy
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02. Booked Out Social Media Series - Part 1: Becoming an In Demand Manager