What You Should know About Being A Corporate Social Media Consultant For Nigerian Brands

Caroline Social Media Consultant

A Social Network industry report: by Yinka Padonu featuring Caroline Wabara as Consultant 

One of the easiest ways to attract the right type of clients in internet marketing business is to discover a niche and be the ‘go-to’ in that niche. This is the case with Caroline Wabara.

Caroline Wabara is a female online marketing consultant. She is also the author of the best-selling e-book titled “Digital marketing For Nigerian Business Success” – Her expertise in the social network marketing niche has opened doors of opportunity for her to land jobs from corporate clients.

She provides social media management services to organizations and smiles to the bank. It’s quite obvious that there are still thousands of organizations either big or small who are yet to establish their presence on the social media platform. The few ones there are however, connecting with their customers in more meaningful ways through social media and of course through mobile devices.

In this write-up, she shares with us on how internet savvy Nigerians can leverage on this big market to generate income.

Social Media Marketing has become trend

Since the advent of varying social media networks such as facebook, Tweeter, Google

+, linkdin, badoo, etc, on the internet, life has never remained the same for everyone.

It’s amazing the way social media has become a part of our lives even at the global level. It has gone beyond connecting just with friends, family, groups etc. In fact, the Social media fever has also caught up with organizations at all levels.

Social media participation has become a must for companies globally including Nigeria. They are all looking to get publicity, capture new leads, create awareness and communicate directly with fans.

The Challenge and your opportunity

But the challenge right now bothers on how these organizations can manage their online social media profile. They do not have the luxury of time in the world to monitor what people and especially fan page followers are saying about their brands online. They do not have the time to engage their

fans with fresh posts daily. This is challenge therefore creates a gap that needs to be filled which where a social media marketing manager comes in.

Big job opportunity for social media managers

As a social media manager, your job is to become the “face or spokesman” of the company. You do this by telling attractive stories that gets liked, gets your fans talking about it in a positive way throughout the social media community.

Companies pay juicy fees to experts who can take care of

their online community. This is one opportunity that is not fully explored. Caroline Wabara is a life proof playing in this niche because she has about four clients she manages their online social media page. Some of her clients operate in the oil and gas, logistics, clothing and electrical/electronics industry.

So how do you qualify and build a successful career out of social media management? Well, these steps would be a guide

8 easy steps to land a Social Media Manager Job offer

1.Have the Communication Skills and Passion

To start-out in this career as a social media manager, you must have a level of competence in some basic skills. First, you must possess very good communicating skill with people. You must be very good in copywriting. And then have persuasive skills. You need to be a good listener, have a sense of humour and lastly the passion to succeed in this business.

2. Do online research

Caroline asserts that she didn’t wake up one morning to start

this business. She explained,“I stumbled on this idea while surfing on the

Internet and landed on two websites – www.mashable.com and www.sitepoint.com where I read two articles on “social media marketing” and “7 after-support services that web designers can offer their clients to generate multiple streams of income.”

Coincidentally, I was offering just web design services to clients at the time and nothing more, so I began to brainstorm and drummed up more services that I could offer my clients which I have included on my website and that was how my career as a social media manager was born. So my advice is that you engage in doing research and reading related books and blogs on the subject to get more clarity.” She concluded.

3. Get your pricing right

Once you have acquired the knowledge and made your career choice, decide on your pricing by calculating the cost of social media marketing and management and know your profit at the end of the month.

According Caroline, she has about four corporate clients she handles their portfolio. She charges each of them as much as N30, 000 each. If you multiply that by her four clients she will be having N120, 000 per month. She earns that figure while having fun growing and managing their social media community.

Truth is, you can earn much more than this depending on your ability to negotiate and the type of client. You can also make extra cash when you recommend the pay-per-click advertising platform to your clients. Caroline does this and earns her commission from it as well.

4. Create and promote your service

Once you are certain you have what it takes to deliver as a social media manager, then you don’t go to sleep. You need to begin to make ‘smart’ noise about what you can offer your prospect. Caroline said her ideal tools includes using; a keyword-rich blog that is search-engine friendly. She has a social media presence on face book, twitter, linkedin, foursquare, google+ and pinterest where she sells are profile.

Make sure you fill out your bio with the services you render and your blog’s url. Upload a good photo in the avatar and sync your social media profiles with each other.

Then start connecting with others in your community by blogging, posting and tweeting valuable information, discussing hot topics, trends and helping others achieve their goals, this will make people begin to see you as an expert.

At the same time, let your friends know what you do for a living and how to contact you. Have fun doing it.

5. Automation tools to the rescue

Now, you are not a machine and you got that eat and sleep, therefore you cannot spend the whole day starring at your computer or mobile screen and listening for conversation around your brand or trend. Therefore you need to create a social media marketing schedule using www.hootsuite.com

Hootsuite.com is a free online tool; you can craft 140-character messages with photos that you can post on all your social media boards like facebook, twitter, digg, foursquare and linkedin for up to 30 days.

This is a “set and forget” automated system. What’s more, you can monitor your pages from your hootsuite dashboard for more details. Also integrate getresponse.com’s email marketing web from your blog and facebook page for capturing your reader’s contact info (name, email and phone number). It would be great for future follow-ups via email and mobile marketing.

6. How to Source for clients

If you have started doing the following in step 4 , then you won’t have a problem sourcing for clients. You could also try targeting a specific audience through the use of Facebook adverts. With as little as $10 you could get new leads. Then try contacting and telling your old clients, family and friends about the services you render. I got my present clients through networking on Facebook and referrals from family and friends. Another method is to search local business pages on Facebook, take a critical look at their pages for any problem then contact the company via phone or email with your proposal to help them manage their community and increase sales. This is a method has worked for me too.

7. Managing Your Clients’ Community

Once you have landed the contract, ask your clients what goals they would like to achieve with social media marketing and then go ahead to create their pages.

You can make use of the automated tools like hootsuite, fan of the week app to engage my community.Then start engaging the fans by using creating posts such as motivational quotes, promotional messages, Question and Answer topics, free giveaways, attractive company photos, tips on how to utilize the company’s products and services.

These types of posts will get your clients’ fans talking, liking,

Re-tweeting, and sharing in no time, thereby making your client’s brand likeable on social media. For twitter, make use of the ash tag (#) followed by keyword.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ATTEND THE 1 DAY COURSE ON SOCIAL MEDIA JOBS SLATED FOR SAT. JULY 7TH? Then mail me for details: padonuyinka@yahoo.com,   or SMS 0809 516 2285