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7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers
A must-read for any marketer or hiring manager.
Ish Verduzco
December 19, 2023
What’s up y’all,
First off, I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who is sharing this newsletter on social and forwarding it to others.
I can see the spike in referral traffic and it’s awesome to see the content resonate with so many people.
And for those who are new here (either from social, past e-downloads, or via a referral), I hope you enjoy the series!
Feedback is always welcomed too.
In case you missed it, here’s last week’s edition:
Now let’s jump into this week’s breakdown: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers
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Whether you're hiring a social media manager and not sure what to look for or you're a marketer yourself who wants to step up your game, this post is for you.
It’s not a definitive guide or collection of all aspects that make a great social media marketer, rather, a few of my favorite aspects that I’ve picked up on throughout the years.
I’m not sure the perfect social media marketer exists, especially since social media as an industry is growing so much and I see a future where there are many more niche roles within social (vs catch-all social media manager roles) but these “habits” below are universal across all social-related roles.
Lmk what you think and if you have any that you’d add (tweet me @ishverduzco).
The best social media marketers understand that all of their work has to ladder up to business objectives.
This means doing great creative work, treating your community of fans/customers with respect, but also having the business top of mind. They know the top goal for their company and how their work drives that goal forward. This could be app downloads, sales, referrals, repeat customers, users, retention, or whichever goal is the top priority for the founder and leadership team.
Some of the best social marketers who are insanely good at creating content, building a following, and developing a loyal fanbase can still fall short if they don’t have the broader picture in mind (and try to move the needle forward in terms of growth in that piece of the business).
TBH, if you’re a social marketer reading this right now, this is also how you will set yourself up for promotion or a pay increase.
Align yourself with business objectives and do the best work possible over a defined time period in order to help the company win. Communicate with your manager and/or founder throughout the process and make necessary adjustments as needed.
Document everything, crush your numbers, and you will be set.
Great social marketers know things will not always go according to plan.
This is because they know that there are so many influencing factors in the work that we do and sometimes things are out of our control. Algorithms will keep on changing, content may not always perform as best as we’d like, and you will probably have to deal with internet trolls along the way, but we keep on pushing and remain flexible throughout the process.
Learn with each experience, ask other marketers about their horror stories, and always be testing to see what works (more on this below).
I’ve been in the social and content game for 10 years now and I still run experiments on a regular basis.
I think this is crucial in almost any job but especially in the world of social media. As I said above, algorithms are always shifting and your audience might even be changing over time too so it’s super important to not become comfortable with what has proved to work in the past.
Reserve a portion of your content and overarching strategy to testing hypothesis to find out what might work better than your existing efforts.
This could be a weekly post that is different in format from the rest of your content. Or even a community engagement strategy that does more outbound relationship building with people who aren’t already following you. Anything that is different from what you are already doing, as long as it’s backed up by either data or your intuition that you’ve developed over the years.
Social media is inherently creative — since you’re essentially on a content treadmill. You’re constantly writing, editing, and producing all types of content (short form, long form, written, video, photo, memes, etc.), but a huge part of the job is knowing when to trust your gut vs the analytics.
What is the data telling you about specific points that you wouldn’t be able to understand on your own? Things like top performing content (segmented by category of performance: impressions, total engagement, replies, reposts, clicks, etc.).
Or using data to learn about trends in your content (like what consistently does great, what usually flops, best days/times to post, and how different content formats perform over time (video, photo, text, etc.).
If you’ve done social for a while then you’ve probably developed a gut feeling for what will work or how to do things, but always lean on data to inform your strategy.
You can’t get everything done by yourself. Point blank.
Even if you’re a social media team of 1 you’ll still need support in some form from other teammates.
Working as a social lead means that you regularly interact with product, comms, growth, legal, compliance, leadership, partnerships, customer service, and everything in between.
The best social marketers understand that keeping these relationships on great terms will not only make work more enjoyable, but also more efficient since people will be more likely to help out or respond to your requests much quicker.
Approvals, collaboration, and feedback will all be sped up to a matter of minutes or hours vs days, as long as you’re a great cross-functional partner.
This one may seem controversial but it’s not what you’re probably thinking.
I’m not saying that you need to be on Slack & social 24/7.
I’m saying that the best social marketers are able to identify moments of learning (and picking up on data/trends) in their daily lives.
Walking down the street on a Saturday morning and noticing great social copy on a billboard so they snap a pic and add it to their swipe file.
Scrolling through their personal Instagram feed and seeing something that sparks an idea for a content series for the brand account — so they jot it down and actually follow through on the idea.
Watching YouTube and really loving the hook that the person used to grab your attention so you jot it down and use something similar in a future tweet.
Use the world as a learning tool to help you become a better social marketer.
Look, this job is stressful.
You are being pulled in different directions every day, depending on your organization you may have to work with compliance and legal which can be tricky, and the work itself can be exhausting since social doesn’t sleep.
I’ve found that you have to know how to have fun — both in the work itself but with the people who you work with on a daily basis.
Share that funny meme with the team, laugh at your own mistakes when they happen, and try to have fun as you develop your craft.
Yes, the work is very important and crucial to the business. But we aren’t curing cancer so it’s vital to ground ourselves and not be so serious all the time. This will show itself in the work that we produce and ultimately attract the right community of people for your brand.
If you’re finding value in this newsletter, I’d really appreciate a share on social or forwarding it to a friend!
It goes a long way for me.
In return, here’s a meme that I made in hopes of giving you a chuckle.
And if you’re not enjoying the series then that’s totally ok too - no hard feelings (still hope you liked the meme though 😂).
Cheers,
Ish
Something I enjoyed this week:
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