Digital Marketing Manager? Social Media Manager? Is there a difference? YES!

If you are looking to hire someone to help with your marketing you may have seen the terms digital marketing manager and social media manager. You might have asked yourself what the difference is between the two, or even if there is a difference? Both talk about posting on social media, so are they just attempting to make themselves look more important with a fancier title?

I used to wonder the same thing when I first started 8 years ago. I thought they were interchangeable. Then I discovered that there was indeed a difference, and a big one depending on what you need for your business.

I have talked about the difference a couple of times on my social media pages, but I wanted to go more in depth about what each does.

Social Media Manager

A social media manager is someone that markets your business directly on social media. They create a social media marketing strategy that works with your existing marketing strategy. They will work with you to create graphics, videos, or use images of the products or services you sell to effectively promote them on social media. They can specialize in one or two social platforms, or all of the social platforms.

Some of the largest social platforms they could specialize or post on are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• Google My Business

Even if your social media manager specializes in only a few of these social platforms, that is maybe all you need to reach your client base. Let's say you are a fashion boutique with a target audience of 20 - 30 year old's, and the social media manager you are looking to hire specializes in Facebook/Instagram and TikTok. Well, that is really what you would want.

Facebook is the largest social network and is pretty much a necessity for any business because so many people are on it. Instagram is second, and is a very visual platform. Plus, Instagram is owned by Facebook and you can easily cross post between the two platforms without needing to change much. So, I always group those two platforms together.

TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platform currently with over 700 million people on the platform. One way you can tell it is big, and is here to stay, is because every single social media platform is starting to copy the types of video content that TikTok creates. Facebook and Instagram now has Reels, Pinterest has now created Idea Pins or Video Pins, and YouTube is even adding short content video to their platform because 60 second video clips are so popular.

Between these 3 social platforms you can certainly reach a wide audience and take advantage of many of the features like Facebook and Instagram selling where your customers can purchase directly on the app, and show off different outfit ideas on TikTok and reuse those videos on Reels.

So as you see, a social media manager can absolutely be extremely beneficial for your business, and essentially be the only type of digital marketing that you need.

 

Digital Marketing Manager

A digital marketing manager is someone that does social media marketing, but they also handle many other aspects of digital marketing. I often get asked what is digital marketing? People understand what social media marketing is, and they can picture what traditional marketing is, but when I say I am a digital marketing manager I often get confused looks.

Digital Marketing Managers can handle:

• Social Media Marketing
• Paid Ads (PPC Ads)
• Email Marketing
• SEO and Keyword Research
• Website Design and Development
• Blogging

Basically, digital marketing managers can handle all of your online marketing needs that creates a cohesive and integrated marketing strategy.

If your budget can allow it, a cohesive marketing approach is going to be the most beneficial to grow and scale your business. Why? Because you aren't going to have disjointed messaging between your different online channels. Many times I have seen paid social media ads run for a company and when I go to their social media page I don't see ANYTHING about that particular ad.

So let's say you own a travel agency and your organic profile posts focus on all inclusive adult only vacations but run an ad for a family Disney Cruise and I go to your page and see nothing but adult only resorts, you are not inspiring trust that you know family vacations or cruises.

Or maybe you send out an email to your newsletter subscribers about a fantastic sale but have nothing about it on your social media pages. Maybe you are only opening the sale to your email subscribers, or opening it to them first, or maybe you just forget to post it on social media and miss out on capturing all those new leads.

When creating an omnichannel approach you would talk about your upcoming sale on social media to build awareness and excitement. Maybe you email your subscribers and let them know that they will have first access to the sale for the first 24 hours, so you will want to build up that awareness with several emails. Then you run a paid ad with a minimal budget to expand your reach and bring in new potential clients that are excited for this sale.

Now the sale is here! You post on social media, you send out emails, promote via paid ads, and now you send everyone from those online platforms to a landing page on your website where you can easily measure how many people are coming in directly for this sale.

Once on the website you want your website design to work as a sales funnel. You want to lead your customer on a journey through your website to ultimately an end goal or sale. Your website design is important because if it is incomplete it can confuse or turn away your customers, and if it is disjointed it can turn people away because it is too difficult to navigate.

When creating or updated your website you also need to think about the long game in marketing; SEO. The problem with social media is because it is so saturated your posts can get lost or after a couple of days, forgotten about. So you need to keep posting in order to stay relevant or top of mind. But your website is your 24 hours a day sales person that if it done correctly can make a sale for you at 2 AM in the morning while you sleep. But how is your business getting found on search engines. SEO!!!

SEO is considered the long game in marketing. Think of SEO as the tortoise and social media marketing as the hare. In the end, the tortoise wins the race, and while the hare is super fast and can reach a much larger audience faster, SEO in the end will be what keeps your business relevant. By proper keyword research, posting, and cross posting, your web page could rank on the first page of Google, and if you are anything like me, you really get desperate for answers when you click on the second page of Google. So being on the first page is key to utilizing your SEO effectively.

OK, so a digital marketing manager can create a holistic marketing strategy, but there is a cost associated with it, higher than just hiring a social media manager. But what is great with a digital marketing manager, is most DMM's will offer packages where they can do organic social media marketing, or paid marketing only. They can do email marketing only. They can create your website and sales funnel only. But they are also there when you want to add to your marketing and they know your business. Maybe you only can afford social media marketing for your business posting 3 times a week. Later as your business grows maybe you move up to 5 posts a week and paid ads. Then you start bringing in email marketing. Next you want your website to work for you while you sleep. By hiring a digital marketing manager, adding new services is seamless because your digital marketing manager knows your business. You don't need to try to hire someone else, train them on your business, send them all of your content again, only to realize that maybe that marketer isn't a fit for your business and you need to start all over. Essentially, your digital marketing manager is able to grow with you as your company grows!

Now You Know the Difference

Now you know what the difference is between a social media marketing manager and a digital marketing manager you can decide what is the best for your business.

Have you thought about hiring a social media or digital marketing manager? Has this article helped you figure out which way you would like to go? Let me know, and if you like this article please share it with other business owners that might also find this beneficial.

If you have any other questions about marketing that you would like to see a blog on, send me a message or comment below and I can add it to my content calendar to write about!