Starting a career in social media can seem very daunting. Over the course of the last five years, there has been a huge increase in people applying for social media and content creation related roles. This may make newcomers feel like it is harder than ever to get their foot in the door. We are here to give you some tips and best practices to help you during the beginning of our journey into social media management. 

Throughout this blog post, I will share my best practices when looking to start a career in social media and content creation. The one thing I’d like to state before starting, is, to ….

Online Courses

There are many college/university courses on the market that would set you up well for entering a career in social media management. If you are not in the position to start university or if you wish not to go to university, there are many options online that you can undertake, such as the Digital Marketing Institute

However, I have listed below some other recommendations if an accredited course isn’t a good fit for you.

Never Stop Learning

One thing to remember when looking to start any career in marketing, is that you should never stop learning! You may have the qualification from college, university or an online educator but that doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed a job straight out of graduating. Once you have completed your main qualification, it is a great time to continue learning. There are so many online courses which I will list down below that are free and can add to your CV to show that you continued to educate yourself and continued to learn, continuing to upskill more even after you had received your initial degree.

1. Google Analytics Academy 
2. Hubspot Academy
3. Semrush Academy

These added certificates and licenses will add to your resume and will show the ambition that you have, the self guidance that you have and the determination and willingness you have to learn more.

Get Creative

One of the biggest tips I can give is to get creative, to not do what everyone else is doing. The great thing about marketing is that it’s very creative and although you don’t have to be the most creative person to succeed with a career in marketing. It is the perfect industry to be able to express yourself in different ways and below I will explain one of the best ways that you can get creative to create your own experience and stand out from everyone else when trying to land your first job and start your social media management career!

Self Made Experience

This is the best piece of advice that I could give you, is self-made experience. Let me explain this in a bit more detail! Self-made experience is taking your own initiative to create experience that can add to your CV to show a potential future employer the hard work that you put in and the passion, initiative and willingness you have to learn.

One of the best ways to do this is to start producing content on a Social Media Platform of your choice. In my opinion, the current best platforms to do this on are LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok.

Speaking simply from my own experience, during my last semester of college, I decided it would be a great time to begin working on a piece of self-made experience that would help me when going for my first post-graduate job. I set up an Instagram account that shared fashion advice and college experience, which tapped into an audience that related to where I was at in life, building a community of loyal followers. To a potential employer, this helped show my experience in growing an audience online, growing a presence and maintaining a level or trust with the audience. All skills that are very valuable in your marketing career.

It also shows a future employer that you have taken the time to manage a community outside of working/studying and have shown that ambition that a lot of employers will appreciate and will help you stand out amongst others. I think that is one of the beautiful things about starting a career in social media management compared to other Industries, you get the ability to create your own experience and have it on your CV to show that you are trying and showing your experience through the services that you offer your clients and whether that be sharing social media tips on LinkedIn or whether it’s fashion content on Instagram, building a following, building a community, will definitely stand with you when you go apply for a job in social media/marketing.

These are all the best practices and tips that I would give to anyone who is looking to start their career in social media or in marketing in general. Always make sure to not put too much pressure on yourself, to have fun, enjoy the journey and I’m sure you will find the perfect role for you!

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Let’s start off with an explanation of what digital and traditional marketing are:

Digital Marketing – digital marketing is any marketing that is conducted digitally/online. For example, social media ads, ppc advertising and email marketing, digital marketing is arguably the most valuable type of marketing and is widely used by the majority of companies today.

Traditional Marketing – traditional marketing is any type of marketing that isn’t online such as billboard ads, television ads, newspaper and radio ads. This type of marketing is known for being the best to reach a local audience.

Deciding which marketing technique to use is largely down to the business themselves and the audience they are trying to reach. When trying to decide on which best suits your business, it is common to choose elements of both to help reach your target audience. For instance, a business may find that their audience is very active on Facebook and YouTube and can best be targeted through those platforms but are also avid radio listeners and will find it beneficial to also reach their audience through radio, taking elements from both forms of marketing can ensure you reach your audience holistically.

When people think of traditional marketing, they tend to think of it only being used for the older generations, for people that are yet to utilise social media and other online platforms, but traditional marketing is still a very important tool for businesses to take advantage of, especially if your goal is to reach a very local audience. Ads can have a longer lifespan when conducted traditionally rather than digitally and the audience can be much easier to reach, for instance from billboards than an ad seen from scrolling social media.

Digital marketing is seen as the most popular form of marketing in recent years, due to the increase in online users and usage. As the world is becoming more digital it is inevitable that digital marketing will become a choice for many businesses as it can be a much more cost effective method of marketing than traditional, not to mention the benefits of being able to report and see exact returns on your investment along with the exact audience that is seeing and engaging with your ad, all very valuable information for a business to have.

Which leads to one of the biggest disadvantages of traditional marketing is the lack of reporting and visible correlation between the return on your investments and the increase in revenue/new clients, whatever your key metrics and goals are. Another big drawback for traditional marketing is the lack of interaction with your consumers. There are very few ways a business can hear the thoughts of its consumers on its marketing efforts and their impact on the intended audience. This is where digital marketing excels! Digital marketing allows businesses to see their target audience’s thoughts and perceptions of their marketing efforts along with being able to interact and create a relationship with potential customers and their larger target audience.

Another advantage of digital marketing is your ability to edit and change ads after they have gone live, contrary to traditional marketing where, once you click print or sign off on your ads, they are out there for your audience to see, no edits can be made without going through the whole process of printing/recording the ads again. With digital marketing, you can easily go in and edit your ads, whenever you like.

It can also be argued that one of digital marketings drawbacks is the fact that it relies on technology and if technology acts up or shuts down for a period of time, your ad isn’t reaching your audience at all, that is why a lot of businesses will take advantage of elements of both traditional and digital marketing at once.

A lot of businesses may switch to digital marketing, not only for its cost-effectiveness and reporting benefits but is also a great way to market if you are looking to market to a more global audience compared to traditional marketing’s benefits of a local audience.

Overall, it will completely depend on your business, your target audience, your budget and your goals. They can work hand in hand or separately depending on the audience you’re trying to reach and the objectives your business sets out with.

Check out our Branding and Digital marketing Services:

• Website Workshop
• Website Updating
• Domain Registration and Renewals
• Website Design & Development
• Content Marketing
• Digital Marketing Strategy Development
• Social Media Strategy
• Email Marketing
• Google Ads (PPC)
• Lead Generation

After 22 years of breathing life into brands for our clients it was Idea’s turn for some love. We felt our mission, brand statement and values were no longer reflective of who we were. So we assessed the risk of rebranding, conducted a client survey, and then asked ourselves some tough, but thought provoking questions. Who are we, and what is it that we love to do?

The results of our client research gave us great reassurance about to our decision to rebrand. What also emerged from this process was that it was time for Idea & Idea Digital to merge under one overall Idea umbrella to create a fully integrated agency with a strong team of creative consultants.

Keeping the name Idea was probably the easiest decision in our rebranding process. It was too good to change. Initially it stood for Image, Design, E-Commerce and Advertising. All which remain relevant to the business today, but we work with ideas…creating them, growing them and making them happen, so it was a no brainer to keep the name, it stood the test of time since Ciaran Flanagan named the company 22 years ago! The client feedback confirmed that this was the right thing to do!

We divided our talented team into two and conducted an internal competition to develop a new brand and overall brand strategy for the business and we were delighted with the end result! We refreshed our colour palette (hello raspberry red!), modernised our logo and more importantly updated our brand values to reflect who we are now. We are thrilled with our new look, energy and feeling. But rest assured, we are still the same Idea that thrives on using branding, marketing and digital to craft strategic and design success stories.

Our new brand reflects the core philosophy of our business; collaboration. We believe great work comes from working collaboratively with great clients and fellow creative partners.

There were several challenges we faced along the way:

1. Time: Making time to treat ourselves as a client. Our client work always came first, which resulted in our rebrand taking a lot longer than we’d have liked (despite us having all the skills in-house!)
2. Colour: After some initial testing it became clear that the neon colour we initially chose was going to be a nightmare to work with and reproduce consistently, so we had to change it! It is important to examine fully how a colour will work across all channels, digital, print, paint etc before going with it!
3. Budget: it would be lovely to change everything at once, but that is just not practical, so we focussed initially on the client facing touchpoints…our website, signage, meeting room, furniture and redecorating key areas of the office (pop in and see our new look!)

Key learnings  

Don’t try to do it all at once, we had to phase our work with the rebrand for both time and budgetary reasons. Once the initial audit was done we knew the scale of the work involved and we had to break it down into phases…we are delighted to have our new logo/ website /documentation and initial office refresh done…but there is plenty more to come in the phases to follow!

Tips

Do some research with your clients, you might think you know what they want/think but let them tell you…this allows for concrete foundations for change/keeping some elements of your brand/values/name/colour palette/tagline/messaging.

Our advice for anyone rebranding

1. Decide why you are rebranding in the first place.
2. Understand the scale and scope of the task
3. Set realistic expectations and measure performance
4. Find out what people’s views of the current brand are before you change anything
5. Involve your people in shaping a new brand for the future
6. Use the opportunity to sharpen up your act across the whole business

Give us a shout if you’re thinking of rebranding or if you’ve a development you’d like to develop a brand for…having just gone through the process ourselves we know what it’s like to be in your shoes! info@idea.ie.
Check out some of the works done by Idea Digital

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