What Makes a Social Media Manager? Insights from the Content Analysis of Job Advertisements in India

Abstract

With time, advent in technology and a sharp increase in internet penetration in India, there has been a dramatic change in the way we use social media from merely utilizing it for entertainment to businesses. As things currently stand in India, we cannot subvert and ignore the significant role social media is playing in developing and promoting the businesses. Consequently, the organizations either big or small trying to maintain their online presence over the various social media platforms in order to create customer base or communities across the platforms, brand awareness, customer engagement, promotions, and expanding their customer reach hence try to understand the various insights related to customer behaviour. For managing social media profile for an organization, a particular designation is purported as “Social Media Manager”. In today’s scenario with every company going digital, the requirement for social media managers has spiked in the last half-decade in every sector. As we go deeper, various questions arise then: what skillsets and prerequisite do a Social media manager requires? What specifically Social media manager do? To gain a better insight into current Social media manager status, our study reports on results obtained by performing content analysis over 200 Indian market job advertisements entailed “social media manager” keyword in the job title. Our finding indicates that there is an evolving requirement of Social media managers with great emphasis on Social media analytical skills followed by strategizing and promotional skills. Besides, customer management and content management also seem to be in demand. These findings may be valuable for fine-tuning Social media manager workability and also updating educational courses according to the current market trends.