3 Problems a New Social Media Manager Faces

& How to Overcome Them

When I became a social media manager I soon found that instead of the laidback, 4 hour work day I was expecting, I had a handful of full time clients, a head full of anxiety and a heart full of regret.

Problem 3: Attracting soulmate clients

For me, a soulmate client is someone who I click with instantly, whose business I love and believe in and someone who values, respects and trusts that I know what I’m doing. Sadly, I didn’t seem to be attracting many of those.

After I broke down what my problems were, I began to tackle them one by one.

Pricing my services:

I grew up believing it was rude to talk about money so when it came to my rates, I didn’t know what to charge.

I researched other social media managers online but the results confused me.

I googled “How much to charge as a social media manager” & found that the average fee for a SMM was $51 USD an hour. I’d never earned more than £10 an hour so the idea of going from £10 to $51 an hour made me feel uneasy. I decided I was happy earning £20ph so spent ages working out how long I thought each task would take & then multiplied the number of hours by £20.

“WELL NOBODY’S GONNA PAY THAT ARE THEY REBECCA?!”

Ok, new formula: Estimated hours x £20 - £100-200 = what I think a client would be willing to pay.

Yes, I’d shave off the £’s BEFORE sending the proposal.

I’d focus too much on what I thought a client would want to pay instead of realising that the client had come to me WILLING TO SPEND money on their marketing.

Everytime I received a response saying my prices were too high, I’d happily agree to drop them because:

• I found social media easy AF so didn’t feel I deserved to charge a lot for it

•I was clueless about what was an acceptable rate + what wasn’t

•I lacked CONFIDENCE

I knew carrying on like this would see me fail and leave me feeling completely burnt out and overwhelmed.

So what action did I take?

I began networking and surrounding myself with confident SMM’s who were charging £1-2k+ a month for their services.

I spent time learning and invested in marketing courses that increased my knowledge, and therefore confidence, around social media management.

The best investment I made was to start working with a coach. She encouraged me to work on my mindset daily, to constantly condition my mind for success and helped me rewrite the limiting beliefs that were holding me back from charging what I deserved.

Within 6 weeks, I’d gone from charging £115 per platform per month to £400 per platform per month. Not only had I almost tripled my prices, but I felt CONFIDENT charging that amount of money.

I felt proud of the results I delivered and I felt I deserved to earn that amount.

And you know what happened the first time I told a potential client my newly increased prices?

They signed up immediately.

•They didn’t question the price

•They didn’t ask for a discount

•They didn’t ask me to remove services to make it cheaper

THEY JUST SAID YES

They saw my confidence. They saw the higher prices as a symbol of my experience and ability to achieve results for them and that particular client continued to renew their contract.

Because I believed in my mind that I deserved to be paid for the results I delivered, I no longer feared telling potential clients my prices. If someone told me they were too high, I’d say “I appreciate how you feel but the quality of my work and the results I can achieve for you reflect what I charge.”

Want help pricing your services? Access my Price with Confidence Bootcamp here.

Imposter Syndrome:

When I started my business as a SMM, I spent my days feeling stressed and anxious that I’d never sign a client.

A voice in my head would tell me I wasn’t good enough, people didn’t want to work with me and I didn’t know what I was doing.

I tried to ignore it but as the weeks went by, it got louder and louder.

When I signed my first client, the voice began telling me the results I was getting weren’t good enough and that my client would surely be disappointed.

So I began working harder, over-delivering and taking on tasks outside of our agreement just to prove I was worth hiring.

Because I wasn’t being paid for these tasks, the voice started telling me I wasn’t valued and I wasn’t doing a good enough job or they’d have offered me extra money.

For months I listened to the voice and started to believe it was right.

It wasn’t until I read a post in a Facebook group about Imposter Syndrome that I realised this was a completely normal thing to experience.

Imposter Syndrome was something I’d never heard of before so I researched it + realised that the majority of us all have an imposter inside us that makes us question our decisions and abilities. The imposter’s there to make us frightened and to protect us from making a mistake or failing.

By continually feeding our minds with negative thoughts of self doubt, the imposter fills us with so much fear in the hopes we won’t try and reach those goals or we won’t take that risk in case we fail.

Because failure’s really embarrassing right?

Although it’s trying to protect us, the imposter holds us back.

As soon as I knew this was something we all experience, I began to work on tackling the imposter. I worked hard to appreciate the voice but know that in order to succeed, I had to push past its fears and concerns.

When you think of imposter syndrome as just trying to protect us from making a fool out of ourselves, it becomes less powerful.

Even now my imposter shows up and chances are it’ll continue to as my business grows.

But the difference is now, I know how to tackle her and how to ensure I’m not letting her hold me back.

Want to tackle the imposter? Click here to grab the Master Your Mindset workbook.

Attracting soulmate clients

“I want to work with everyone” I naively thought when I launched my social media business.

A few months in, with a few clients under my belt, I realised that actually, the clients I had weren’t a dream. They made me feel insecure, anxious and far from valued. I decided it was time to start being picky and only work with people I loved.

But how?

Step 1: Figure out who my dream client is

Before you decide to attract your soulmate clients, you need to determine what that client looks like to you. Is it based on what their business is, where they are in the world or what their personality’s like?

For me, a soulmate client is someone who I click with instantly, whose business I love and believe in and someone who values, respects and trusts that I know what I’m doing.

Step 2: Uncover their problems

When you know what someone’s struggling with, you know how you can help them. If your dream client is a mobile beautician, you can put up a poll or send them a message asking what their struggle is. Once you’ve got your feedback, you can begin marketing to them by telling them how you can solve their problem.

Step 3: Give VALUE

This is the number one way to attract clients. Every single social media client I signed either found me through my social media profiles or was recommended to work with me.

Why? Because my posts contained a tonne of value and tips for how they could do their social media themselves. I repeatedly explained the importance of having social media, the importance of engaging and the importance of creating a brand online. I shared tips for how to schedule content, how to create a content calendar, how to engage with people and other things that’d be helpful for them.

Don’t be scared to share value. Yes, not everyone who learns from your posts will sign up to work with you but the ones that do will be serious about investing in themselves and their business and they’re the people you want as clients.

The number one thing that will propel your social media business forward is confidence:

•Confidence to charge higher prices

•Confidence to ignore the imposter

•Confidence to get clear with your message

•Confidence to put yourself out there

•Confidence to say no when things don’t feel good to you

•Confidence to let go of the clients that aren’t right for you

•Confidence to just say YES, I’m gonna go for it

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