Being a social media professional means knowing your audience. Here at Hootsuite, our audience happens to be largely composed of other social media professionals.
Social media pros in general share many commonalities: they have overlapping responsibilities, they face similar challenges within businesses and on their own, and they often share a specific set of interests that fuel their online activities.
So what are the things that bind us together? Here is a list of “Stuff Social Media Pros Like.”
Using their phone to document every. single. situation
In the eyes of many parents and grandparents, this is an epidemic. Phones at the dinner table, phones at weddings, phones at a party… we’re using our phones everyone. The difference with social media professionals is that they’re usually not checking their phones because they’re bored or because they feel awkward in social situations (though both of those things might be true), in general they use their phones to document whatever is going on.
If they’re not checking in on foursquare, they’re posting photos to Instagram. Maybe they’re live-tweeting the party they’re at or posting to the bar’s Facebook page to let them know about the awesome waitress they had. For a social media professional, social media is an appropriate part of almost every situation.
Working on weekends, even when they don’t have to
“Social media never sleeps” could easily be expanded with “and social media professionals never sleep either.” Whether or not there’s actual work to be done, social media pros just LOVE working on weekends. They fiddle with social networks, check for new messages, scan analytics, see what their followers or competitors are posting, etc.
Unlike the factory worker or banker who would actually need to go into work to work, the social media professional has work in their pocket whenever they need it. So, we tend to work from bed, from the couch, from the bus or car, at the restaurant, at our friend’s weddings, etc. When working for the CFL, Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Media Jaime Stein would even “respond to CFL fan Twitter comments on my BlackBerry during Christmas holidays from the chairlifts at Whistler in between runs.” We can’t let it go. Thankfully that tends to pay off when something actually goes wrong.
“Evergreen” content
Evergreen content refers to content that is not associated with any specific time or event. It’s not news or an announcement, but a video, blog or graphic that maintains its relevancy through time. In other words, it’s as valuable to our audience at 5 a.m. today as it will be at 8 p.m. six months from now.
Social media pros like evergreen content because it fills the gaps between the timely or newsworthy content we post to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. So often businesses ask how we can create enough content to send 15 or 20 Tweets a day, and the truth is that over half of the Tweets we send point to old evergreen content. These are tips posts, lists or videos that we created knowing they would have a long lifespan. Not everything you post needs to be new. Space it out for different time zones and use it sporadically over several months to really get the most out of your evergreen content.
Game of Thrones
Social media pros, and everyone else. #amirite
People who understand what they do
“You Facebook for a living? What are you a professional Farmviller?” LOL, you’re hilarious. Oh wait, no you’re not. Social media is now contributing to the success of sales teams, human resources, marketing and beyond across nearly every industry. It’s contributing to the bottom line in a big way and revolutionizing business techniques that have been used for decades.
Yes, we are social media professionals. The people that aren’t surprised or offput by that fact earn big kudos from us. For everyone else, think of us like the guy that installs your internet at home. His job didn’t exist 20 years ago either, but you don’t question him.
Talking to other social media pros
It’s hard to deny that social media pros are a bit of an incestuous bunch, but when your parents and friends don’t understand what the hell you do for a living you tend to find the people that do.
Social media pros love to take part in Twitter Chats with each other. They love to Tweet about attending conferences with each other while they attend conferences with each other. They absolutely love it with the social media managers of big brands talk to one another publicly. We love each other. Deal with it.
Free stuff
There are perks to having a sizeable audience. Maybe you won’t wear that random startups t-shirt ever again, getting it in the mail for free still felt awesome. Free #HootKit? Need it. Twitter t-shirt? Need it.
Lists
This post should do well on Facebook.
We want this to be a constantly growing list of things social media professionals like. Please share your ideas, funny and serious, with us in the comments or using the hashtag #SSMPL. We’ll add the best ones to this post.