NUMEROUS career options have either been created or recreated with the advent of social media. One such is that of social media manager, a risk management employee who is trusted with the role of monitoring, filtering, measuring and guiding the social media presence of a brand, product, individual or corporation.

The role is similar to that of a community manager on a website forum or public relations representative in a firm. Social media managers are often found in the marketing and public relations departments of large organisations.

Digicel Jamaica has, within the last year, developed a new social marketing team with the aim of matching and managing the official soft copy information and media content published on the company’s behalf on the web.

This new social marketing team includes Shaun Birch, a social media manager. Birch, a Jamaica College graduate with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Technology, has been employed to Digicel for seven years. He started as a customer care representative and has been appointed corporate sales assistant, retail merchandise executive and marketing and communications executive. He was appointed social media manager in August last year.

This week he shares some information about the career with Career & Education.

Who is a social media manager?

A social media manager is someone who leads in implementing the strategies that help to promote the brand via social pages. I manage the social media team by co-ordinating activities that they use to interface with customers. This involves co-ordinating commercial messages that are posted on the pages. A social media manager has to be a creative individual who is informed daily of the various trends, viral videos and stories that positively or negatively affect the image of the company. We like to stay in touch with all social media trends and everything that goes on within our market. We try to have fun with it.

Describe a typical day on the job.

A typical day on the job for me is sharing a smile with my great team, working together on ensuring that the brand is represented properly, and extending that smile to help lighten the day for our nearly 500,000 followers with our daily content.

What is the value of the work that you do?

Being able to encourage the adoption of social media trends and happenings into the corporate culture and building a closer relationship with our customer base is valuable. We’re also able to gain insights instantly through social media in order to help evolve business strategies and deliver the best products and services.

What do you enjoy most about the work that you do?

Marketing is my passion, social media is a part of my life. I enjoy having the ability to show people a fun and warmer side to the company, and that we here are just like them in many ways and are interested in a lot of the same things based on the content we share.

What are your responsibilities as a social media manager?

My responsibilities involve managing the social media team by co-ordinating activities that they use to interface with customers. This involves co-ordinating commercial messages that are posted on the pages.

What are the academic requirements for your job?

The academic requirements for this career field is based on experience in media, communication, marketing and information technology.

Why would you advise someone to enter your field?

I would advise them that there are so many opportunities in the field of social media. It’s good to be creative, trendy, relevant and most of all, love what you do.