Brands will always need someone to manage their social media. The explosion of digital marketing is clearly evidenced by the fact that SMMAs (social media marketing agencies) are popping up like Starbucks. But “social media” is a huge field that can mean a lot of different things. So, if you’re wanting to sell your services, how can you know exactly what to offer your clients? Here’s a social media services list that’s perfect for anyone trying to get their foot in the door — even if you don’t yet have a ton of experience (which is okay!).

A Social Media Services List for Freelancers and SMMAs

The goal here is to give you a few services you can start charging for sooner, rather than later. For that reason, we’re going to keep things basic. I’m suggesting these as starting points, so bear in mind that as you gain knowledge and experience, you can branch out and evolve.

Organic Daily Management

If any brand wants to stand even a chance of getting noticed on social media, at the very least, they need to keep their pages updated, fresh, and active. Posting only once or twice a week all but guarantees that you’ll swim in the ocean of other pages’ content.

Thus, a simple social media service that you can offer to your clients is organic daily posting.

When we say “organic,” we mean the posting that you can do on a page for free — not paid ads. (Paid ads are great, but there’s a much steeper learning curve. That’s not a bad thing, and you can make a lot of money managing paid ads, but remember, our goal in this blog is to help you land clients fast.)

There isn’t a social media platform that won’t benefit from at least one post a day, and some need more than that. For example, since the lifespan of a tweet is so short, it’s usually in your best interest to tweet quite a bit — maybe five to 10 times a day. On the flip side, you’d likely never post with this frequency on a platform like Instagram.

You can offer daily platform management for Twitter, IG, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and whatever other platforms your clients have.

There will still be a learning curve — there always is — but it’s manageable. At a minimum, you’ll want to learn:

• How to create text for each platform (meaning how to structure a tweet vs. a Facebook post vs. an IG caption, etc.).
• How to use hashtags. Be sure to check out my blog on how to use hashtags on LinkedIn.
• Basic graphic design, which brings us to…

Graphic Design

Because social media posts so often require imagery, this is another service you can offer as an SMMA or freelance social media manager.

Let’s keep this simple: Start with something like Canva. You can use it for free, and it helps you get your feet wet and learn how to get creative with graphics.

While you’re getting comfortable with a tool like this, you can be playing with something more robust on the side, like Photoshop. Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool. The stuff you can do with it will blow your mind. But that also means that’s a much steeper learning curve. So, don’t plan to hit the ground running with this, because you’re going to put yourself under a ton of very unnecessary pressure.

Something else I love about Canva is that they’re really dedicated to helping you get better not just at using their tool, but at creating graphics in general. They have tons of courses, tutorials, and blogs.

You can start by offering clients graphic design for their various platforms, and this can easily extend into add-ons like logos, cover photos, newsletters, ad creative, and banners. (BTW, LinkedIn has pre-set dimensions for just about everything you can think of.)

Outreach and Partnerships

I can tell you from experience that finding partnership opportunities for a brand is a job in and of itself. It’s really important, though; it’s called social networking for a reason: You need to network.

This can include combining forces with influencers and related brands to collaborate on something awesome.

Offering this as a service would include finding the right people and brands to work with — ones with dedicated audiences that overlap with who you’re trying to reach. This is actually more involved than you might immediately suspect. Researching and reaching out to people takes time, energy, work, and a lot of digging. Plus, your communication skills need to be top-notch.

This is a social media service that brands greatly benefit from but might not have the time to manage internally. So, they can outsource it to you.

Community Management

This won’t apply to every brand… but it probably should. Here are a couple of examples.

For my client acquisition course, Revenue Spark, we have a private Facebook group for students. As of right now, I manage this myself. But as the program grows and we enroll more students, I’m going to need to train someone on my team to help me manage it. She’ll need to help accept people into the group, respond to questions, and celebrate students’ wins. That’s the role of a community manager.

Another example: I have a client in the fitness industry. They have a community of people on who receive first looks at new products, exclusive deals, and other perks. I help to manage this community by posting regularly in it and keeping the activity going.

Communities can be really valuable to brands because they’re typically a group of very hot leads, if not already paying customers. Therefore, maintaining and growing a community takes a serious strategy, and the payoff is real.

Brands are slowly but surely understanding how important these communities are because they’re an excellent way to build real relationships on a social media platform that’s otherwise completely saturated.

This type of social media service might include adding people to the group (or removing them), moderating and responding to comments and direct messages, and posting valuable content to increase engagement and activity. Think of them like their own little platforms — not unlike Instagram or Facebook as a whole.

A Couple of Tips for Success When Choosing Your Social Media Services

I want to offer you a couple of final tips for how you can successfully grow as a social media manager and increase your income.

Pick One Service and Master It

So often, I will tell you not to put all of your eggs in one basket.

This isn’t one of those times.

Where so many people go wrong (and where I went wrong) is trying to offer everything to everyone, trying to be everything to everyone. They pitch themselves as a full-service digital marketing agency.

So, you end up offering organic posting, and paid ads, and graphic design, and email marketing, and blogging! And SEO! And on and on and on. It’s a slippery slope.

You might be thinking, “Well, I don’t want to limit myself.” And I get that rationalization. I used to say the same. But here’s the problem with that approach.

When you offer too many services and spread yourself thinner, you leave yourself no time to really master anything. This means that you end up being meh at everything.

People who are meh make way less money, even if they’re meh at a million things!

You want to be a specialist, not a generalist. Specialists make more money.

So, pick something to specialize in, and focus on that, for now. Don’t try to tackle every social media service on this list. Choose one and run with it — like organic posting. Heck, you can even choose a specific platform to focus on. There are professionals who only manage Instagram pages, or YouTube pages, and so on.

Later on, you can consider expanding.

And on a similar note…

Consider Picking a Niche

This might also mean you pick an SMMA niche. Why? Once again, this means that you will specialize in that niche, thereby positioning yourself as an expert in that one thing. And experts get to charge more.

For instance, in the beginning, I was focusing on reaching out to brands in the fitness and nutrition industries. I went in this direction based on my own personal experience with training and competing as an athlete for many years.

If you need help figuring out how and where to narrow your focus, then check out my blog on profitable SMMA niches. I’ve got a video on it, too.

Also, be sure to grab my list of 189 profitable niches.

I know that you might find versatility to be a good thing, but look at it like this. Your clients don’t care if you know how to offer your services to other industries. They want to know how familiar you are with their industry. Social media managers who specialize make the big bucks. (And as an added bonus, you can pick a niche that you actually, you know, enjoy.)

You need to become almost obsessed with quality, and being the very best at what you do — not to the point where it’s unhealthy, of course. But settling for being mediocre certainly won’t cut it. Aim to become an expert on what you offer. You’ll get more clients through word of mouth alone.

When you put these two things together — specializing in a service and focusing on a niche — you position yourself to become an authority in your field. And you’re going to stand out from those competitors of yours who are still trying to be a Jack/Jane of all trades.

Offering a high-quality service is one piece of the puzzle. Knowing how to land clients is another. If you want to get a taste of the process I teach, check out The 7-Day Secret, the mini-course I built to help you start connecting with your ideal clients in one week.